Monthly Archives: September 2018

Study Questions for “The Storyteller”

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Some questions to guide your reading/thinking on Benjamin’s formidable text for Thursday’s discussion:

  1. Early in the essay, Benjamin claims that, in the early 20thC, “It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences.” Why is this? What is it about modern life that makes storytelling more problematic than in the past?
  2. What are the two kinds of “experience” that feed into traditionally storytelling, according to Benjamin? How does Benjamin use this distinction to link, on the one hand, literary form and, on the other, labor? [n.b., in the original German, Benjamin distinguishes between Erlebnis and Erfahrung, which both often translate to “experience” in English]
  3. WB claims that the novel’s rise in the 18th-19th centuries is the “earliest symptom” of a process culminating in “decline of storytelling.” Why? I thought that novels are storytelling!
  4. What does WB make of the rise of “informational” writing, such as news articles? How do these new literary forms compare to traditional storytelling?
  5. Why, for Benjamin, is death so central to storytelling? What happens to the relationship between death and storytelling in modernity, with the rise of the novel?
  6. More German, folks! What is the difference between remembrance (Eingedenken) and reminiscence (Gedächtnis)? How do these categories map onto a) the deep historical currents WB is tracing between the “old days” and “modernity,” to speak very broadly, and b) the “story” and the “novel”?
  7. Near the end of the essay, Benjamin claims that the story and the novel are shaped in a fundamentally different way: what is the distinctive closure of each form? How does this mode of closure relate to a) WBs discussion of death throughout the essay and b) the distinctiveness of the novel as a genre?
  8. What are some questions we might raise about Benjamin’s argument in light of our study of the audiobook? In what ways does listening to an a-book edition of a recent novel on our phone while commuting to work square with Benjamin’s thesis, and in what ways might it force a revision of it?

Bartleby, new and oldish

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You might enjoy an early 2000s Bartleby hypertext edition that I’ve rediscovered via the Internet Archive’s invaluable Wayback Machine. It starts with Bartleby’s blank wall and goes from there: cute, no?

Pretty cool version of Bartleby edited by a Slate writer, Andrew Kahn, last year. It’s richly illustrated and contains a wide range of notes that provide historical context and a sense of some of the diversity of critical opinions on the text over the years since its publication. And there’s even an audiobook version on the site for good measure.

As such, it also points towards our second collaborative project together, in which we’ll be doing something similar (though with much lower production values!) with Benito Cereno, so as you check it out, think about what Kahn did to make this work. Or not.

Finally, although it sometimes seems like ancient history, Bartleby played a starring role in the Occupy Wall Street movement in and around Zuccotti Park in 2012. I’ve collated a few pieces from that time that capture the flavor of the way Bartleby haunted that space and that time:

  • Jonathan Greenberg riffs on the use of “occupy” and cognate concepts like self-possession, property, and vocation in Melville’s text, in Zuccotti, and on campuses.
  • Lauren Klein thinks about the politics of language in both Melville’s text and the movement.
  • Jac Asher examines the way Bartleby dismantles the logic of homosociality that underpins Wall Street from within.

GROUP PROJECT #1: audiobook version of Bartleby (due 9/27 in class)

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Whether or not you prefer to, you will collaborate with peers in the production of an audiobook version of Melville’s enigmatic novella, Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street (1853). Each student will be assigned to a team, and each team will decide on how to divide up the work. I suggest that, at a minimum, each team have:

  • reader/s: readers will read/record the text (duh). Each team will decide whether to have one voice read the entire text (it should take about 1:20 of continuous reading, excluding breaks) or whether to assign parts in a “radio play” format. More experimentally, a team could deliberately shift the voice of the narrator, having numerous actors voice one character.
  • editor/s: editors will compile the audio files into a format that is listenable. This could involve a single long track or several chapters (though the original does not have chapters, you could create them); it could involve mixing in a soundtrack or sound effects as well. You could use Garage Band for Mac or the free/open Audacity; if you have the skills/software, you could use more sophisticated software. The key is not to have a product with high production values, however: I’m more interested in the process and how well you reflect on it.
  • presenter/s: each group will present its a-book to the class on the due date of 9/27. Presentations will be brief (max 15 mins) but focused. Presenters will play a sample of the a-book and walk us through the process and the product: how the team divided the work, what strategic/aesthetic decisions were made, what worked well and what didn’t, how the final product speaks to (sorry) the secondary readings we’ve been doing.

The last requirement is that you compose a brief post for the blog (500 words max) reflecting on a) the process/product as a whole and b) your specific role within it, with an emphasis on what the experience taught you that merely reading about audiobooks (or, of course, merely reading Bartleby!) would have missed. The post is due on 9/27 as well.

You will be evaluated on the following criteria, which I will not boil down to a simple rubric, since they all interact with one another in subtle ways:

  • adventurousness: does the text take risks, or just play it safe? Is the audiobook a straight reading of the text, or does it do something strange/experimental in some way? Does the audiobook transform Bartleby radically or merely transpose it to a new medium?
  • quality: is the product accessible? Does it sound good? Did the voice actors review the text and look up the pronunciations of unfamiliar words? Did the editors smooth out problems with the files, maintain steady audio levels, reduce noise where feasible, etc.?
  • reflectiveness: does the presentation reflect the group’s careful thinking about the project? Did the secondary readings by Rubery, Allred, Benjamin, etc. feed into the conception of the project?

All group members will receive a collective grade for the group’s work. This can be unfair, I realize, and a given member can be uncooperative or unresponsive, but that’s also true in postgraduate life, so it’s good practice. Each of you will receive individual grades for your reflective post, as well. And all of the group projects will be folded into one grade (20% of total grade), so each project is “low stakes.” If your group is having problems (or has one problem member) you are encouraged to contact me privately for help.

As you plan your attack on this project, feel free to be a bit zany. It may be that “quality” and “adventurousness” are somewhat at odds (since it’s easier to have good quality if you know what you’re aiming for and easier to experiment if you’re not worried too much about quality), so consciously decide what you’re going for, go for it well, and have fun. I’d be tempted to play with the following (not a list for you to copy, necessarily, but a springboard for dreaming about it):

  • representing Bartleby’s famous silences and repetitions: what if you used a whispered second track mixed in to represent B’s inner thoughts? Or played with very different vocalizations of the “same” statement that haunts the book (“I prefer not to”)?
  • What about a crude video version, using photos or drawings or puppets along with the audio to capture the tensions at work in the text?
  • Since the Occupy movement very consciously drew from Bartleby for inspiration, what about a transposition of the tale to a more recent setting to capture this connection in some way? Or even a montage (drawing from the above idea) of imagery of Occupy to accompany the original text?

The overarching theme here is to embody the ethic of “serious play”: there is truly no wrong way to do this, and we will all learn from your efforts, very much including the mistakes or the parts you wish you’d done differently. And I don’t know whether this is an incentive or not, but I will post the finished products to the blog so future students (or anyone who is interested) can enjoy your work.

And here are the two resulting books from the above project: enjoy!

ASSIGNMENT: “found” audiobook + presentation

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For our next meeting on 9/13, I want you to write a blog post and report on it with a very brief (max 5 min) presentation on any audiobook version of a fiction text that you can get your hands on. Sources might include:

  • free/open texts read by amateurs on librivox.org (which Rubery mentions in his article)
  • texts you download/check out from your local library or the GC’s library
  • texts you buy from iTunes or Google Play or audible.com
  • texts you own or discover at flea markets/secondhand stores

I’d like you to think about and comment on some of the following:

  • production values: how much went into the recording, in terms of vocal training, editing, recording technology, etc.?
  • style: is there a single voice or multiple voices? Does the narrator (or do the narrators) do “voice characterization,” modulating the voice for different characters, or not?
  • fidelity: is the recording abridged or unabridged? Does it stick rigorously to the text or deviate from it?
  • affect: what does it feel like to “read” this text? How does it differ from reading a printed work of fiction?