Dear Kira,
Thank you for delving deeper into the world of oral and performative texts! I do certainly agree that you can engage deeply with a text while listening to it, and, of course, there are many texts that are not alphabetic. As someone who studied art history, my mind tends to go right to paintings when I think of non-alphabetic texts. However, you make good points about the importance of the oral tradition to various cultures around the world.
Long story short, I no longer feel quite so guilty about listening to audiobooks, but I do think that I need to try to engage more deeply with the texts I'm reading.
Now, I want to address your question about the fundamentals of writing. While no one gets more upset about a misplaced semicolon than I do, I do think that--at its core--good writing means conveying your message to your intended audience, no matter how you do it.
Obviously, this approach simplifies the realities of life. For example, even if a potential employer is able to understand the message of a cover letter, they are unlikely to hire that person if their cover letter is riddled with obvious grammatical mistakes and misspellings. Also, it's often difficult to understand the message of a piece of writing if it contains severe grammatical errors.
Naturally, these problems aren't as relevant to a person making a video essay. (After all, no one is going to miss a semicolon in that format). However, I would argue that grammar is still important to all genres of text that involve written or oral communication. At it's base, grammar is a way of packaging information. The ultimate goal of grammar is to organize information in a way that makes it accessible to other people. Without grammar, writing would be an incomprehensible word soup that no one would be able to interpret. Beyond that, I believe that learning grammar trains your brain to think in a certain way. An internal sense of grammar imposes order on your thoughts and ultimately shapes what and how you think. In that sense, I do believe that things like grammar are an important part of a good education.
But, when it comes to things like capitalization and commas (and, yes, I do care deeply about commas), I do think that educators can lighten up a bit. While it is important for young people to have the ability to appear professional, I do think it's equally important to remember that standardized grammar and spelling are recent developments in the history of written language. Well into the renaissance spelling and punctuation were wildly inconsistent. Yet, everyone seemed to be able to understand each other perfectly well. So, returning to an age of inconsistent spelling and punctuation wouldn't be the worst thing ever.
Now, I want to pose a question to you. I recently read a book called Eaters of the Dead, which is a novel by Michael Crichton. In a postscript to the book, Crichton said that he based the story on Beowulf. Crichton said that he wanted to re-tell Beowulf as if it was an actual, historical event. He wanted to work backwards to write an account of a plausible historical event that could have eventually evolved into the fantastical story of Beowulf. Personally, I thought it was a fantastic and terribly exciting book.
However, when I went to read the reviews on Goodreads, I noticed something strange. A lot of people were saying that they were confused or upset to learn that the book was not an account of an actual, historical event. Because Crichton wanted to write a book that described the actual historical event behind Beowulf (an event that he obviously made up), the book is written in a very un-novelistic style. It reads like a non-fiction book, with footnotes and everything. Even though Crichton's book is fictional and he intended it to be read as a novel, he wrote a book that mimicked non-fiction so well that a lot of people thought that the events described really happened.
Now, that's a little amazing to me because some pretty unbelievable things happen in the book (things that I won't spoil, just in case you want to read it). However, Eaters of the Dead (by the way, how fantastic is that title?) does pose some interesting questions about how readers perceive truth.
Why does a book that contains footnotes seem more "real" or more "accurate" to readers than any given novel? How does genre shape our perception of truth? Why should the way a book is written send a message about the value or usefulness of the information inside?
Until next time,
MC
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Friday, September 28, 2018
Audiobooks, Podcasts, and YouTube, Oh My!: Challenging Notions of What Makes a Text
Dear MC,
I would also like to apologize for our accidental 2 year hiatus. I'm also quite fond of the fact that this blog's tagline is still "letters from a dorm room," as it brings back memories of fro-yo adventures at the dining hall and filming music videos in the hallway at midnight.
You know, normal college things.
Anyway. I'm glad you brought up this question surrounding audiobooks, because while I don't listen to audiobooks per se, a lot of the texts I've read recently have been auditory and visual. So naturally, I have some thoughts on the subject.
The first thing I'd like to address is the notion of guilt. You mention that you feel guilty for listening to audiobooks, but I don't think this guild-ridden feeling is specific to the mode of text. I think that readers in general are prone to guilt that they're reading the wrong thing in the wrong way. For instance, I've frequently felt guilty for failing to read texts such as Ivanhoe or Tale of Two Cities (actually, I did read the latter, but don't ask me if I remember a damn thing about it). While perceptions are changing, capital-L Literature is still highly esteemed, and intelligent people can feel wrong or foolish for venturing outside of that canon.
Just the other night, I went to an event at the university, and was reading a book called "Fuck Feelings." As more people sat around me, I hid the book in my backpack, pretending I was looking for a copy of The Iliad or something equally intellectual.
But I digress.
I really like your point that listening to texts invites modern understandings of reading while simultaneously nodding at the oral tradition. To go aggressively classic, Shakespearean plays were always meant to be performed by the artist, and watched by the audience (as most plays are. Duh). There's a certain je ne sais quoi to performative texts that alphabetic texts just can't muster. In fact, alphabetic texts have been used to manipulate, exploit, or abuse colonized communities. Not that spoken words can have the same effect, but thinking in the context of legal documents, a lot of laws have been developed through western modes of writing, ultimately hurting minority cultures and communities. Forcing Native American students to learn and write in English is along that same vein.
Although then by enacting oral traditions of storytelling, there's always that risk of accidental appropriation of other cultures. But that's for another post.
Unlike hundreds of years ago, we are in the age of multitasking, which makes things like audiobooks and podcasts well suited for the "modern era." I almost find listening to a podcast more excusable while I'm doing my makeup, and I deem myself more productive and involved in the world than if I were to simply listen to music (although music is its own form of text, as we have discussed before). However, despite audiobooks and podcasts being more akin to "background noise," I'm not entirely sure it's more passive than traditional forms of reading.
I've been reading a book called "Soldiers of Peace" by Paul Chappell, and while most of the book is a not-so-cleverly disguised sales pitch, the author makes some interesting points about active listening. To actually listen well (as opposed to hearing), we have to maintain qualities of empathy, compassion, and being present. That can be exceptionally difficult to accomplish, and even more so when we aren't annotating, highlighting, or making marginal comments on a physical page. Because of all this, at least in my case, I find myself needing to be even more actively engaged when listening, as opposed to reading (but I'm the most actively engaged when writing a response to something I've read, so I don't quite know what to do with that).
So again, I find that engagement with reading is less about modality, and more about intent. A lot of people don't know how to (or want to) get past the summary--or that "what"--part of a text. The whys and the hows are a lot more interesting, but analyzing those can be accomplished through any kind of text, be it visual, auditory, or alphabetic.
To me, any text that forces me to challenge my preconceived notions of myself or the world is worth interacting with. Lately I've been listening to a podcast called "The Guilty Feminist," and while feminist thought isn't hugely outside of my sphere of influence, hearing other people's stories forces me to interrogate my own brand of sparkly, cisgender white-person feminism. This is, in its purest state, a form of active listening.
I also appreciate how expansive notions of a text rejects ableism (somehow my posts seem to always come back to ableism). I've been following a blind YouTuber named Molly Burke, and she rejects a lot of stereotypes about blind people. More interesting still, she's very into makeup and fashion, as she discusses returning to hobbies that she enjoyed before losing her sight.
Another tangent. My apologies.
Burke also discusses many topics that are blind-specific, one of which is the idea of reading. While she knows how to read braile, most of the books that she reads are audiobooks. And while sighted people may change up the very "reading" and "listening" to identify what form the book took, Burke doesn't make that distinction. When listening to a book, she is reading it. I find that fascinating.
Even the verb "to read" can be used with so many non-alphabetic things. Reading people. Reading minds. Performing analysis on any given context can be a very difficult, very engaging form of reading. And I would argue that just as reading books is a necessary skill, so is reading people.
And, as you already know, a lot of my reading takes place on YouTube because I'm an obsessed person who can't live outside the Internet.
While my understandings of reading and texts are pretty expansive, I find myself having trouble maintaining that same mode of thinking with writing. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a delightful video called "The Death of the YouTuber." Most of the argument structure was similar to a traditionally-written essay, and it was clearly at least loosely scripted. But I found myself questioning the YouTuber's choice to call her post a "video essay."
I get that this is an emerging genre, and it would be interesting to introduce this kind of project to my composition students, but not at the expense of the fundamentals of writing. But, at this point, with so many kinds of texts being at the forefront of society, I find myself wondering, what even are the fundamentals of writing in this day and age? Obviously learning critical thinking and audience analysis are going to be priorities, but how much are things like grammar and book reports really going to serve future generations? With these constant shifts in how communication manifests itself, it's difficult to keep up in an educational context.
So, I ask you, what are the fundamentals or writing? Should we be learning new genres like the video essay? And what is the end goal in learning these foundational parts of writing?
Kira
I would also like to apologize for our accidental 2 year hiatus. I'm also quite fond of the fact that this blog's tagline is still "letters from a dorm room," as it brings back memories of fro-yo adventures at the dining hall and filming music videos in the hallway at midnight.
You know, normal college things.
Anyway. I'm glad you brought up this question surrounding audiobooks, because while I don't listen to audiobooks per se, a lot of the texts I've read recently have been auditory and visual. So naturally, I have some thoughts on the subject.
The first thing I'd like to address is the notion of guilt. You mention that you feel guilty for listening to audiobooks, but I don't think this guild-ridden feeling is specific to the mode of text. I think that readers in general are prone to guilt that they're reading the wrong thing in the wrong way. For instance, I've frequently felt guilty for failing to read texts such as Ivanhoe or Tale of Two Cities (actually, I did read the latter, but don't ask me if I remember a damn thing about it). While perceptions are changing, capital-L Literature is still highly esteemed, and intelligent people can feel wrong or foolish for venturing outside of that canon.
Just the other night, I went to an event at the university, and was reading a book called "Fuck Feelings." As more people sat around me, I hid the book in my backpack, pretending I was looking for a copy of The Iliad or something equally intellectual.
But I digress.
I really like your point that listening to texts invites modern understandings of reading while simultaneously nodding at the oral tradition. To go aggressively classic, Shakespearean plays were always meant to be performed by the artist, and watched by the audience (as most plays are. Duh). There's a certain je ne sais quoi to performative texts that alphabetic texts just can't muster. In fact, alphabetic texts have been used to manipulate, exploit, or abuse colonized communities. Not that spoken words can have the same effect, but thinking in the context of legal documents, a lot of laws have been developed through western modes of writing, ultimately hurting minority cultures and communities. Forcing Native American students to learn and write in English is along that same vein.
Although then by enacting oral traditions of storytelling, there's always that risk of accidental appropriation of other cultures. But that's for another post.
Unlike hundreds of years ago, we are in the age of multitasking, which makes things like audiobooks and podcasts well suited for the "modern era." I almost find listening to a podcast more excusable while I'm doing my makeup, and I deem myself more productive and involved in the world than if I were to simply listen to music (although music is its own form of text, as we have discussed before). However, despite audiobooks and podcasts being more akin to "background noise," I'm not entirely sure it's more passive than traditional forms of reading.
I've been reading a book called "Soldiers of Peace" by Paul Chappell, and while most of the book is a not-so-cleverly disguised sales pitch, the author makes some interesting points about active listening. To actually listen well (as opposed to hearing), we have to maintain qualities of empathy, compassion, and being present. That can be exceptionally difficult to accomplish, and even more so when we aren't annotating, highlighting, or making marginal comments on a physical page. Because of all this, at least in my case, I find myself needing to be even more actively engaged when listening, as opposed to reading (but I'm the most actively engaged when writing a response to something I've read, so I don't quite know what to do with that).
So again, I find that engagement with reading is less about modality, and more about intent. A lot of people don't know how to (or want to) get past the summary--or that "what"--part of a text. The whys and the hows are a lot more interesting, but analyzing those can be accomplished through any kind of text, be it visual, auditory, or alphabetic.
To me, any text that forces me to challenge my preconceived notions of myself or the world is worth interacting with. Lately I've been listening to a podcast called "The Guilty Feminist," and while feminist thought isn't hugely outside of my sphere of influence, hearing other people's stories forces me to interrogate my own brand of sparkly, cisgender white-person feminism. This is, in its purest state, a form of active listening.
I also appreciate how expansive notions of a text rejects ableism (somehow my posts seem to always come back to ableism). I've been following a blind YouTuber named Molly Burke, and she rejects a lot of stereotypes about blind people. More interesting still, she's very into makeup and fashion, as she discusses returning to hobbies that she enjoyed before losing her sight.
Another tangent. My apologies.
Burke also discusses many topics that are blind-specific, one of which is the idea of reading. While she knows how to read braile, most of the books that she reads are audiobooks. And while sighted people may change up the very "reading" and "listening" to identify what form the book took, Burke doesn't make that distinction. When listening to a book, she is reading it. I find that fascinating.
Even the verb "to read" can be used with so many non-alphabetic things. Reading people. Reading minds. Performing analysis on any given context can be a very difficult, very engaging form of reading. And I would argue that just as reading books is a necessary skill, so is reading people.
And, as you already know, a lot of my reading takes place on YouTube because I'm an obsessed person who can't live outside the Internet.
While my understandings of reading and texts are pretty expansive, I find myself having trouble maintaining that same mode of thinking with writing. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a delightful video called "The Death of the YouTuber." Most of the argument structure was similar to a traditionally-written essay, and it was clearly at least loosely scripted. But I found myself questioning the YouTuber's choice to call her post a "video essay."
I get that this is an emerging genre, and it would be interesting to introduce this kind of project to my composition students, but not at the expense of the fundamentals of writing. But, at this point, with so many kinds of texts being at the forefront of society, I find myself wondering, what even are the fundamentals of writing in this day and age? Obviously learning critical thinking and audience analysis are going to be priorities, but how much are things like grammar and book reports really going to serve future generations? With these constant shifts in how communication manifests itself, it's difficult to keep up in an educational context.
So, I ask you, what are the fundamentals or writing? Should we be learning new genres like the video essay? And what is the end goal in learning these foundational parts of writing?
Kira
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Is Listening to Audiobooks Cheating at Reading?
Dear Kira,
I can't believe it's been two years since either of us has written anything on this blog. I'd like to apologize for taking so long to respond to you; apparently several new jobs, moving out of state and then back to Pennsylvania, and living in four different apartments over the past two years really kept me busy.
First of all, I'd like to address the question you posed in your last post: How can we be astute and critical readers of texts while also enjoying the text (or film or whatever) in the spirit in which it was offered. You point out, rightly so, that many texts that are intended to be cute or fun are deeply problematic and reinforce problematic ideas.
Twilight--the book everyone loves to hate--is a case and point. It has been criticized for (among other things) seeming to suggest that Bella needs to be in a romantic relationship to be happy and for normalizing a deeply unhealthy relationship. However, 13 year-old me loved Twilight, and I was perfectly aware that Bella was a flawed character that behaved stupidly. So, was I wrong to like Twilight at the time? Embarrassing as it is to admit that I read and enjoyed Twilight, I have to say that I don't think I was wrong to enjoy it. While I was reading the Twilight series, I was also discovering and reading books like Ivanhoe, Vanity Fair, Emma, and Pride and Prejudice. My point is that it's okay to indulge in guilty pleasure books like Twilight, but it's important to recognize that those books to have limitations and to balance them out with more thoughtful works.
That being said, I think it's time to move on to a new topic: Audiobooks.
I have been SUPER into audiobooks for about two years, and, in that time, I've probably listened to at least 100 audiobooks.
If you're a busy person in the world (as most of us are), it's really hard to find the time to pick up a physical book, sit down and actually read it. The problem is that you can't really do much of anything else while you're reading. On the other hand, you can do almost anything while listening to an audiobook. I listen to audiobooks while I do my makeup, prepare food, fold my laundry, and clean my apartment. It makes reading incredibly efficient.
In fact, this year I set myself the ambitious goal of reading 125 books, and probably 80% of that number is going to be made up of audiobooks. This is because, as I said, audiobooks are an efficient way to read. It's very easy to sit down and listen to someone read a book to you while you do something else. A ten hour audiobook usually takes me no more than three days to finish, which is really fast turn around time for reading a book.
So audiobooks are great because they're quick and easy and make reading more accessible to busy people, but do audiobooks make reading too easy? Sometimes, when I'm recording reading my second or third book of the week on my Goodreads account, I feel a little guilty, as if I'm taking credit for something I didn't do.
Listening to a book is passive; when you listen to a book, you're along the for the ride. Physically picking up a book and reading it is another story. A physical book demands your attention while you're reading it. You can't tune out while reading; you have to be actively engaged in the process. Although I love audiobooks, I do feel that you get far more out of reading a physical book. Reading a book gives you an intimate understanding of the text that listening to it can't replicate.
For example, while you're listening to a book, it's very easy to glide past a confusing passage or a point that you don't fully understand. Reading a physical book challenges you to revisit the passage and read it again and again until you feel you understand it.
For example, while I was listening to the audiobook of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, I kept thinking to myself "man, this is really interesting, I have to read this book" (even though I was "reading" the book at that moment). I instinctively felt that I needed to have the words in front of my face to really understand the book. To me, the audiobook was a teaser version, allowing me to preview the text without having a chance to examine the book in detail.
Also, physically reading a book represents a huge investment of time and mental energy. So, in some ways, it is a bigger accomplishment to finish reading a book than it is to finish listening to an audiobook. You could say that listening to audiobooks is lazy reading, and I have often thought that myself.
So, the answer is clear, right? Listening to an audiobook is not as good as reading an actual book.
I don't think that's the case either. An audiobook is a performance, and listening a performative version of a text often causes you to interpret a book differently than you might have if you read it to yourself. It's also worthwhile to remember that, while reading books might be the traditional way of consuming texts now, it wasn't always so.
For example, I read and then listened to a book called Blood and Beauty: The Borgias. I liked both versions a lot, but I thought the physical book was slow going and sometimes a little boring. On the other hand, the narrator of the audiobook brought a sense of urgency to the plot and an emotional depth that I didn't pick up on when reading it.
Physical books are a relatively new development in the course of human history, and average people have had only had easy access to books for even less time. For most of human history, ideas and stories were conveyed verbally. Reciting stories out loud is a time-honored human tradition, and audiobooks can be seen as just a newer version of this age-old practice. You could argue that the human brain is naturally far better attuned to picking up information from spoken words as opposed to random scribbles on pieces of paper. After all, it's tremendously difficult to teach a child to read, while most children pick naturally and unconsciously pick up the knack of turning noises into words and words into meaning.
So, what do you think? Is listening to audiobooks cheating? Is listening the same thing as reading? Or, is reading inherently different? Which do you prefer?
Until next time,
Maria
I can't believe it's been two years since either of us has written anything on this blog. I'd like to apologize for taking so long to respond to you; apparently several new jobs, moving out of state and then back to Pennsylvania, and living in four different apartments over the past two years really kept me busy.
First of all, I'd like to address the question you posed in your last post: How can we be astute and critical readers of texts while also enjoying the text (or film or whatever) in the spirit in which it was offered. You point out, rightly so, that many texts that are intended to be cute or fun are deeply problematic and reinforce problematic ideas.
Twilight--the book everyone loves to hate--is a case and point. It has been criticized for (among other things) seeming to suggest that Bella needs to be in a romantic relationship to be happy and for normalizing a deeply unhealthy relationship. However, 13 year-old me loved Twilight, and I was perfectly aware that Bella was a flawed character that behaved stupidly. So, was I wrong to like Twilight at the time? Embarrassing as it is to admit that I read and enjoyed Twilight, I have to say that I don't think I was wrong to enjoy it. While I was reading the Twilight series, I was also discovering and reading books like Ivanhoe, Vanity Fair, Emma, and Pride and Prejudice. My point is that it's okay to indulge in guilty pleasure books like Twilight, but it's important to recognize that those books to have limitations and to balance them out with more thoughtful works.
That being said, I think it's time to move on to a new topic: Audiobooks.
I have been SUPER into audiobooks for about two years, and, in that time, I've probably listened to at least 100 audiobooks.
If you're a busy person in the world (as most of us are), it's really hard to find the time to pick up a physical book, sit down and actually read it. The problem is that you can't really do much of anything else while you're reading. On the other hand, you can do almost anything while listening to an audiobook. I listen to audiobooks while I do my makeup, prepare food, fold my laundry, and clean my apartment. It makes reading incredibly efficient.
In fact, this year I set myself the ambitious goal of reading 125 books, and probably 80% of that number is going to be made up of audiobooks. This is because, as I said, audiobooks are an efficient way to read. It's very easy to sit down and listen to someone read a book to you while you do something else. A ten hour audiobook usually takes me no more than three days to finish, which is really fast turn around time for reading a book.
So audiobooks are great because they're quick and easy and make reading more accessible to busy people, but do audiobooks make reading too easy? Sometimes, when I'm recording reading my second or third book of the week on my Goodreads account, I feel a little guilty, as if I'm taking credit for something I didn't do.
Listening to a book is passive; when you listen to a book, you're along the for the ride. Physically picking up a book and reading it is another story. A physical book demands your attention while you're reading it. You can't tune out while reading; you have to be actively engaged in the process. Although I love audiobooks, I do feel that you get far more out of reading a physical book. Reading a book gives you an intimate understanding of the text that listening to it can't replicate.
For example, while you're listening to a book, it's very easy to glide past a confusing passage or a point that you don't fully understand. Reading a physical book challenges you to revisit the passage and read it again and again until you feel you understand it.
For example, while I was listening to the audiobook of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, I kept thinking to myself "man, this is really interesting, I have to read this book" (even though I was "reading" the book at that moment). I instinctively felt that I needed to have the words in front of my face to really understand the book. To me, the audiobook was a teaser version, allowing me to preview the text without having a chance to examine the book in detail.
Also, physically reading a book represents a huge investment of time and mental energy. So, in some ways, it is a bigger accomplishment to finish reading a book than it is to finish listening to an audiobook. You could say that listening to audiobooks is lazy reading, and I have often thought that myself.
So, the answer is clear, right? Listening to an audiobook is not as good as reading an actual book.
I don't think that's the case either. An audiobook is a performance, and listening a performative version of a text often causes you to interpret a book differently than you might have if you read it to yourself. It's also worthwhile to remember that, while reading books might be the traditional way of consuming texts now, it wasn't always so.
For example, I read and then listened to a book called Blood and Beauty: The Borgias. I liked both versions a lot, but I thought the physical book was slow going and sometimes a little boring. On the other hand, the narrator of the audiobook brought a sense of urgency to the plot and an emotional depth that I didn't pick up on when reading it.
Physical books are a relatively new development in the course of human history, and average people have had only had easy access to books for even less time. For most of human history, ideas and stories were conveyed verbally. Reciting stories out loud is a time-honored human tradition, and audiobooks can be seen as just a newer version of this age-old practice. You could argue that the human brain is naturally far better attuned to picking up information from spoken words as opposed to random scribbles on pieces of paper. After all, it's tremendously difficult to teach a child to read, while most children pick naturally and unconsciously pick up the knack of turning noises into words and words into meaning.
So, what do you think? Is listening to audiobooks cheating? Is listening the same thing as reading? Or, is reading inherently different? Which do you prefer?
Until next time,
Maria
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