20140630.0800

Amid the many things today
The many things of every day
I have to find time to write

The Mrs. will be on her way
To work so she can earn her pay
I have to find time to write

My daughter will need me to play
With her and though I will I say
I have to find time to write

How else will I find my way
To the kind of job that offers pay
Unless I find time to write?

20140629.0808

One of the things I sometimes do to find what I will write of a morning is to look back over what I have written. There are times, such as yesterday, when I leave a stub of a piece for myself. I am not always of a mind to pursue any individual stub, of course, to build from any one toothing stone, but I sometimes am, and it helps to have such a thing from which to work. Indeed, my upcoming presentation at the South Central Modern Language Association conference is such an outgrowth; I had a nascent idea as I was writing the dissertation, footnoting the possibility, and I have returned to it for the conference paper. Or I will return to it; I have a few other projects that require attention before I get to that one.

Sometimes, though, what I find is less fortunate. I admit that the writing I do in this webspace is largely unpolished. I do not review it closely before releasing it into the world, checking over it only lightly before clicking "Publish" and releasing my words into the digital ether of the Internet. (It occurs to me that ether is a good term; the online environment does wonders as a sedative.) That means that errors of usage occasionally escape even my eyes, and when I look back over what I have written, I am vexed to find them. When I do, I correct them, of course, but that does not mean that evidence of my mistake is not available. After all, once information is on the Internet, it is nearly always on the Internet, through being shared and through being archived. It is likely that I have escaped notice, but I may not have done so; there are many people who spend much time online, and I might have been seen and copied so as to be ridiculed by them.

That I should not worry about such things, I know. In truth, I do not worry about them in themselves; catching someone with a terminal degree in English in occasional spelling errors is embarrassing but hardly harmful. Catching other people in moments of weakness when they have exposed far more damaging things, however, is far worse, and it happens more often than it ought to have. It is in part because I do worry about such things that I share myself in text rather than image in this webspace and elsewhere. I have had the unfortunate experience of teaching a class with my fly down (entirely accidentally); I know whereof I speak. Fortunately, it happened without so many cameras available as has since become the case. Were it to happen now and to be taken out of context--which is easily done--I could be subject to disciplinary action and perhaps litigation or prosecution. None of these suggest themselves as desirable; each would be enabled by a sharing of error.

I suppose I need to take more time to look over what I write, even here.

20140628.0840

I yesterday received a copy of the newest addition to the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game, Sword and Fan. Written by Marie Brennan and others, the book presents information about the world of Rokugan taken from the perspectives of two major in-milieu texts: the Book of Sun Tao (modeled after Sunzi's Art of War) and Otomo Madoko's The Subtlety of the Court (an extended application of the Book of Sun Tao to diplomatic settings). Discussed are strategy and tactics (and the differences between the two), the use of cavalry, in-milieu factional conflicts, refined etiquette, seasonal politics, and outsider politics; new game mechanics are presented in an appendix in the back. Overall, the volume is an excellent addition to the materials for the fourth edition of the L5RRPG.

This is not to say the volume is perfect; there are some flaws which mar the otherwise superb work. One is minor, but annoying: erratically throughout the text, italicization is misused. This is not in the sense of putting into italics what should not be; it is in the sense of individual characters within words that are otherwise italicized (and should be) appearing in plain type. It suggests a lack of attention to detail and implies that other parts of the text may not have received the kind of inspection and consideration that they ought. The implication is confirmed by how clunky some of the mechanics in the appendix are. Some of the quirks in the presented techniques make sense, given their thematic flavor and the need to be adaptable across more than twelve hundred years of in-milieu history. Others, however, seem to be heavy-handed attempts to balance power, and while power-balance in a game meant to be fun for all players is good, principles of good storytelling (with which L5R and RPGs generally are concerned) suggest that the mechanisms underlying the story be kept hidden.

There is far more good in the text than bad, however. The extended discussions of battlefield and courtly strategies and tactics are welcome. In particular, the more exacting discussions of etiquette and protocol included in the three political chapters are helpful; much of the culture of Rokugan appears in its forms of etiquette, and help in navigating those forms promotes engagement with the milieu and thus a more immersive storytelling experience. Too, the major fictional thread that unites the book is handled well. Detailing a conflict over a particular province, it exemplifies the theories discussed in the main text of the book, including that of the ultimate power of the political over the directly martial. Further, the way in which the vignettes are divided creates the impression of a long time spent in study on a read-through of the book. The events depicted span some time, and reading through the book carries the reader through that time. At the end, then, the reader has the impression of having been deeply in contemplation of the work across a significant span, fostering a sense of wisdom that appropriately echoes the study of major cultural touchstones.

Sword and Fan will doubtlessly be useful to me as I run more games and play in them. I have the notion that it will also be useful away from the gaming table, which I appreciate and may, at some point, discuss in this webspace.

20140627.0754

Because I am in a contingent position, and because I have financial responsibilities, I remain on the job market. Admittedly, recent months have seen me only lightly on it; I have been trying to attend to other projects, those of the sort I believe will help me find continuing positions. But I have not ignored it, and I will doubtlessly return to it in force once the new term begins and job postings in the academic world begin again to proliferate.

I send out scores of applications for such jobs, somehow. Many of the application materials remain consistent from application to application. My CV changes, but as I do things and not necessarily in response to the job (my resume does change, however). My teaching and research statements are fairly constant. My transcripts are more or less done; I do not see myself going back to college at the undergraduate or graduate level, certainly not soon, although I may end up seeking continuing education to develop or enhance certain skill sets I currently perceive as lacking. (If any of you have a lead on inexpensive copies of and courses in graphic design software such as Adobe's, I would appreciate knowing.)

Letters, though, are different. I admit that I reuse materials from letter to letter, although it is not the case that my letters are all the same. They do shift from job to job, foregrounding my teaching or my research, and foregrounding different parts of that research as the job posting suggests. Community college jobs and small four-year posts focus on the teaching, to which I had an accelerated introduction and intensive experience. Other academic jobs, which are usually either medieval studies or generalist posts, receive different treatments. In the former, I highlight the beginnings of my dissertation and some of the work I have done at various conferences since. In the latter, I present the fortunate breadth of my coursework and the fact that my research is often diachronic and so suited to general studies.

So far, I have not been successful. I remain contingent faculty, although I am at what is evidently the high end of that category. I am repeatedly told by many people that I have to continue to make the attempt; my typical first reaction is on record here and here, and I do often feel as though I keep my chin up only so that it can be the more easily struck. But I do press on, even if it is because I am too stubborn to concede defeat despite not being able to envision victory. I do cling to the thin thread of hope that I will find a continuing faculty position, despite seeing friends of mine--published authors and Fulbright scholars--seek and fail to find despite their more impressive credentials, better locations, and more helpful demographics. (I do not mean to say that they would be hired only because of their demographics, or that I am not only because of mine, but I do know that an impulse to demonstrate diverse recruiting/redress evident and systematic injustice obtains.) And I am trying different tactics, since the ones I have deployed thus far have not seemed to work.

Perhaps they will work.

20140626.0833

I made a comment yesterday about "the idea of literary succession," the notion of writers taking over the works of other writers (with permission or other ethical justification), indicating that I might take it up again. Today does not seem like a bad day to do it.

Some clarification is needed before I go on, though. Succession implies legitimacy as determined by the originator of the intellectual property,* so those works which have passed into the public domain and are given refigurings or sequels are excluded from this discussion, as are various forms of fan fiction (although Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons argue in Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution, and Female Sexuality that there is some legitimacy in fan- and slash-fiction, albeit of a different sort than that I mean by "succession"). Instead, it will focus on such things as the estate-authorized expansion of a given corpus and the assumption by a child of the continuation of that corpus; examples include the Second Foundation trilogy and the Dune volumes of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

While the former cases are legitimate in principle--a person's estate and its executors, in which that person presumably vested trust and authority, have the right to open the person's property to the use of others--they do operate under the necessity of fidelity to the demonstrated intent of the original person. While the exact intent cannot ever be known, of course (following a weak version of Wimsatt and Beardsley's intentional fallacy), it can be strongly suggested. If, for example, an author's corpus never ranges to, say, avocadoes, then it can be inferred that the author had no intention of treating avocadoes. Authorized successors who then range into avocadoes do poorly in doing so; they go against the wishes of the person who ultimately authorized them, which is rude at the very least and, in other circumstances, actionable. Such is the problem of the Second Foundation trilogy, which runs headlong into matter that Asimov appears to have abjured in his own writing.

The latter case, that of an heir assuming authority after the death of the original person, is also clearly legitimate. And it offers, at least potentially, privileged insight into the intent of the original person; it hardly strains credulity to believe that authors will speak to their children of the directions they mean to follow in their works. The thing for which they must watch is the difference in narrative voice. Each author will be distinct, of course, as each person is, and it is not to be expected that the child will be a duplicate of the parent. Trying too much to be so results in problems; what one person does as an expression of that person's being, another can only do through an effort that cannot be hidden and which mars the performance through being obvious. This is the problem with the Herbert/Anderson Dune books. Anderson is not a good writer, however many titles he may have to his credit, and he and Brian Herbert tried too hard to replicate Frank Herbert rather than adding to him. The texts suffer greatly as a result.

There is clearly more that can be said, of course. There always is. I could do more to consider the issue, although I do not think it likely that my own work will push forward as some others' has.

*I realize that my making such a statement places me ideologically on the side of traditional understandings of copyright, which provokes another discussion entirely. But I do believe that those who develop works have a right to benefit from the labor involved in doing so and that the benefit involves some control over how it is presented and displayed.

20140625.0839

While I was writing yesterday in the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, Travels in Genre and Medievalism, a thought occurred to me that relates to what I posted but is not of the sort that I can really put into that webspace for a couple of reasons. More important is that I am not sure it will fit. Less is that I do not think it will take the kind of treatment that it needs to receive to be in that webspace. But it will work here, and the idea will nag at me until I get it out and onto something resembling the page, hence this post.

One of the traditional definitions of the Middle Ages, of the medieval, is as the time between the end of the Western Roman Empire (usually set at 476 CE) and the emergence of the Renaissance or Early Modern period (dates vary, but they seem to focus around 1500 CE for various reasons). It occurred to me as I was writing yesterday that Asimov's Foundation series, which proceeds from his reading Gibbon, focuses on the end of the Empire and the millennium between its end and the emergence of a similar order. It is, then, a quiet and subtle iteration of medievalism in a place that would not be expected to display medievalist tendencies.

I have not done the work to explicate the parallels, and I am not likely to do so anytime soon; I have many other projects requiring my attention. But it would be interesting to see who the historical (and perhaps legendary) parallels are for Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, Hober Mallow, the Mule, the Darells, Golan Trevize, Janov Pelorat, and the like. It would be interesting to see explicated the parallels to the incipient Galaxia seen at the end of Asimov's own work on the Foundation corpus. (As something of a purist, I reject the Second Foundation books despite their authorization by the Good Doctor's estate. I may well comment further on the idea of literary succession in another post; it seems like a good idea to pursue.) And it would be interesting to see what all comes of such analyses of works written by a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York City who was educated in the natural sciences at Columbia; the take on "the medieval" thus presented seems like it would be worth reading and would serve in part as a corrective to normalizing views of the time.

Having such ideas occur and knowing that I will not have the time to be able to pursue them is one of the great curses of my work on The Work. It is one of the reasons I would not mind stumbling into riches (instead of currently working to secure some semblance of financial stability); had I but the time to follow up on all of the thoughts I have...but that will never be the case. Even I can only endure so long, after all, and there are always new thoughts to be had.

20140624.0804

In some of what I write
I write to tend the garden of my mind
I write to pluck the weeds that grow within my head
I write to uproot them and cast them aside
I write to yank them from the ground

When I do
I see how deep their roots really go
Yanking on them
I feel how strongly they cling to the ground
And I find that I never get them all
Pieces of them remain
Soon to spring up again

I bend repeatedly to the task
My hands are gnarled from grabbing and pulling
They sting from the nettles
My back is sore from the work
For my legs will only let me go so low
And still exert the force to pull the weeds

Yet for all that
The weeds return
It seems I feed them instead of the flowers I seek to nurture
Through spreading around manure

20140623.0547

A few days ago, a friend of mine commented on the stories of his library collection. Like most scholars of the academic humanities, I join him in having an extensive home library. Like his, mine is filled with stories, not only those within the books but those of how the books came to me. Some are simple enough, author to publisher to bookstore shelf to my home shelves. Others have been gifts, and so their stories are a bit more complex. One of the piece on my shelf is yet more complicated, and quite dear to me; my name is on it, not inside the cover but outside on the spine, and I hope to have others join it yet.

There are some others of the sort I have mentioned before, others whose pages have been marked by scholars who have gone before me. I have from them not only the benefits of teaching but of their own notes and notations. Were I a better reader than I am, I might be able to develop somewhat of their character and their scholarly process through examination of their marginal notes. Not all of what those of us who work in the academic humanities do reaches the pages we publish and that few others read. Most does not, actually, with pieces getting rejected and ideas explored and found lacking and others only fleetingly considered but soon forgotten because not written down or not read again once written. The marginalia only appears when the book is read; if the pages are not opened again for a while, the words they bear, inked from the press and from the pen of the purchaser, are also left entombed.

The exhumation of such words makes for interesting stories of the sort my friend discusses. The image of the book as mausoleum for the author (something that plays in part with Mark Edmundson and in part with the assertion by Barthes of the death of the author) is perhaps macabre, one that makes scholars of literature ghoulish, grave-robbers as often or more so than archaeologists (although without the fedora-and-bullwhip social cachet, more's the pity). But delving through dungeons and raiding the tombs of the long-vanished, searching for the knowledge and treasures hidden therein, makes for entertaining narrative. It is one of the primary plot-arcs of the role-playing game, from Dungeons & Dragons (which has the one in the name) through text-based video gaming through the raids of the MMORPG. A number of movies follow the idea, as well, and not only the Indiana Jones films or Tomb Raider. In a sense, the Christian resurrection narrative partakes of it, as well. Surely, then, those of us who root around among pages seeking our own treasures and looking to use them to make yet others can be forgiven for doing so. We but enact in practice what others fantasize; are we to be blamed because others do not themselves seek where we seek and find what we find?

20140622.0715

The porch does not often call to me
It did today
And so I sat outside
In the air
In the breeze
In the sunlight shaded by the trees
And listened to the birds sing

Their lyrics escape me
But their melodies do not
And the cats want the birds not to escape them

While the morning is yet cool
While the air is nice
And the breeze makes bearable the damp
It is good to sit outside
With a cup or two of coffee

20140621.0816

It is summertime
Today
And the lyricist writes
The livin's easy
Even though I see no jumping catfish or high cotton
(And I wonder at the metaphor of cotton
If there is one)

I have seen the summers
I have felt the sun beat upon my back
Beading sweat upon it
That runs thence down the crack of my ass
And down the backs of my legs.
I have watched as the air shimmers
The rolling limestone of the Texas Hill Country
Clad in oak and cedar as another lyricist writes
Giving back what Helios has offered
I have felt the febrile air
And I have to wonder if the world perceives itself
As infected
For where I have pus, I there have fever

Are we the dead white blood cells
Or that which they seek to drive away?