What's (NOT) to Like about Whisk(e)y?

We are at that turn of the seasons where the difference between whisky and whiskey become all too apparent. The trouble is that I like both too much . . . well, not too much, in terms of quantity, but too much in terms of having particularly expensive tastes.

That, and I am developing an interest in local boutique beverages. Here is one that I have been enjoying now that it is warmer here in southern New Mexico (yes, it does get cold here, particularly if you have lost all of your cold-hardiness):

It is made in the Taos area by the Rancho de Los Luceros Destilaria; this is their 'top shelf' version: single barrel, aged 6 years. It is VERY good. Unfortunately, you will have to come to New Mexico to enjoy it.

The first local whisky that I tried is made by Santa Fe Spirits:

Note the Americanized  spelling of 'whiskey.' This is really a single-malt, aged, malted barley whisky, in the traditional Highlands sense of the word and work; but they cannot call it 'scotch' because it is NOT made in Scotland. Santa Fe Spirits also bottle some of the malted barley whisky straight from the still. They call it Silver Coyote and, well, unaged whisky is interesting. There is an undeniable sweetness, not unlike silver tequila. I'll bet that it would make a great Margarita once it gets warm enough, say, around May 5th.

As I said above, we are at that seasonal cusp where some nights it is cool enough to warrant the smoky warmth of a good Islay malt whisky (my favorites are Lagavulin, Bruichladdich, Laphroaig, and Ardbeg; Talisker is in there as well, despite being an Isle of Skye spirit). Other nights it is warm enough that you want a good bourbon, on ice. So, depending, this time of year you will find me with a glass of either in one hand and a book in the other, sitting on the patio (because it IS warm enough for that). 

Stop by. Look for the Margarita burning in the window and you'll know you have the right place.

Turning and Spinning . . .

One of the many things that have sucked me in lately is the notion of a turn. Not as in making a left or right turn, or a U-turn (though, by mapping politics onto the notion one could relate it to those). Rather, the notion of a turn as a trope become a terministic screen. Recall that our word trope comes from the Greek τρόπος, which can mean 'turn' and, which, in literature and rhetorical studies refers to 'turns of a phrase,' that is, figurative language, metaphor, and so on. For those familiar with the work of Kenneth Burke, the idea of a terministic screen will be a commonplace; for those not, think of a terministic screen as the conceptual lens through which you look out on the world. It includes all of your personal assumptions and biases, your expectations, your notions of what constitutes reality and whether or not it can be known with any certainty. To steal a word or two from Pierre Bourdieu, it is your habitus, the doxa with which you are ortho- (or hetero-, if feeling contrary). Interestingly, one can have many different terministic screens, depending on what one is doing . . .

So, now to the business of turns and my engagement with them.

It is fashionable in theory (that is, IN the world of THEORY, not 'theoretically) to talk about particular ways of thinking (and writing and talking) about the world and theory as a turn, as in Richard Rorty's 1967 book, The Linguistic Turn. Well, there have been a variety of turns that have cropped up over time and I finally decided someone (me) needed to start a list, if only to have them all in one place. Ideally, though, I would like to expand the list to include origins and adherents and intents.

And here is what I have collected so far, in no particular order other than when they presented themselves to me:

• Linguistic Turn [Rorty]
• Descriptive Turn [an article title in a list of references for an article in PMLA]
• Hermeneutic/Interpretive Turn 
• Pragmatic Turn [someone writing about Rorty]
• Narrative Turn
• Relational Turn [Gunzenhauser (2006) article in Qualitative Inquiry; see also Anne Edwards, HD30.29 .E39 2010]
• Emotive Turn
• Socio-Cultural Turn [Schneider article from ENGL 572, Theory and Pedagogy of Technical Communication]
• Global Turn [RSQ 43.3 article]
• Public Turn [book by F. Farmer, reviewed in RR 33.1]
• Reflective Turn
• Postmodern Turn [Hassan? also an edited volume by Seidman]
• Scientific Turn [from a book title]
• Native Turn
• Performative Turn
• Spatial Turn [Bourdieu-inspired?]
• Cultural Turn [F. Jameson 'reader']
• Speculative Turn [book title]
• Aesthetic Turn [book title regarding Nietzsche]
• Metaphoric/Metonymic Turn ("Turn! Turn! Turn!" or "Turn, turn, turn again . . ."?) [See the work of Thomas Claviez for the latter turn term]
• Ethical Turn
• Affective Turn
• Subjective Turn [from my ENGL 601, Qualitative Methods, class; Clifford & Marcus?]
• Conjunctive Turn [from an interview in OLR of my friend Henrik Skov Nielsen]

From the operative word (italicized) in each phrase, one can see quite clearly how these turns are each and all ways of engaging with, looking at, and/or responding to the world as we encounter it. Each is, in one way or more, a metaphor (turn, trope) through which we read the world. Each is a terministic screen, however thin, however temporary, that affects (and effects) our understanding. 

Or, that is how I am seeing them today . . . 

The Curious Bricoleur

Recently, in a session of my Qualitative Research Methods class, the instructor asked that each of us come up with a metaphor for our particular notion of a 'researcher.' STRUGGLE STRUGGLE STRUGGLE. You could read it on the faces of everyone in the room . . . you could smell the smoking oil and hear the grinding gears:

A METAPHOR?!? For a 'researcher'?!?!

But we did have some minutes to think about it. Thankfully . . .

This exercise was no where near as easy as the impromptu assignment given in a 'Think Outside the Box' seminar I attended. There, all I had to do was come up with a cartoon or comic character with which I identified; there was, though, a caveat: I also had to come up with three reasons why. The answer, at that time, came to me in a flash: Yosemite Sam . . . and the reasons? Well . . .

1. He sort of looks like me (or, I sort of look like him)
2. We are both constantly thwarted by inanimate objects (my favorite enemy being paper towel dispensers)
3. We are both all bluster and no substance

I don't know why--particularly given my work on simile and metaphor (or maybe because of it)--but I found this exercise particularly difficult . . . until, that is, I started to think outside of the box.

A day or two before, Laurie and I had watched a PBS program about Brunelleschi's Dome in the Florence Cathedral. It was (and still is) an engineering marvel, in terms of its size, the techniques by which it was constructed, and the development of special construction tools to raise and lower materials to the work site, 200+ feet above the ground.

But, it was the bricklaying technique that caught my imagination: a self-reinforcing herringbone that interrupted the shear planes and transmitted and shared the structural load. Courses of brick were aligned using 'lines' that passed through one another as they ran from a flower pattern to the exterior face of the dome. In the program, modern bricklayers were (re)learning Brunelleschi's construction techniques by building a smaller, replica dome. Brunelleschi was neither a trained architect nor engineer; he was a master goldsmith. Yet, he became one of the foremost engineers and architects of the Renaissance. And, the dome of the Florence Cathedral is, arguably, his masterpiece.

So . . . getting back to the metaphor. Thinking outside of the box, I reasoned that researchers are curious about the hows, the whys, the wherefores of phenomena; otherwise, why would they pursue learning about those things? And, the results of their research work are built in layers that are interconnected in ways not unlike the courses of brickwork in Brunelleschi's dome. In fact, some theories of qualitative research refer to the process and the researcher in terms of the postmodern notions of bricolage and bricoleurs; for example, while 'writing' this post, I just stumbled upon this looking for some links that might help my notions make more sense. 

Apparently, Claude Lévi-Strauss is credited with coining the term bricoleur. You can find his explanation of the term in The Savage Mind (1962, translated to English in 1966). The book is still in print and, in my opinion, is a good read as well as a good example qualitative research.

And my metaphor? How did it go over? It was well accepted and, apparently, I was not the only one thinking in this way. A fellow student also thought in terms of 'construction' but in relation to Leggos. In both metaphors, the notion of interlocking 'brickwork' played a crucial role.

Education as a Lifelong Endeavor

Well, according the records here, it has been almost 5 years since I last posted any sort of missive. A lot has happened in that period. But it is the most recent event(s) that have my attention today. 

Recently, I received word that my application to the New Mexico State University (NMSU) English Department PhD Program in Rhetoric and Professional Communication was accepted. I will become an 'official' PhD student in the Fall term (August). I have, though, been attending classes at NMSU as a non-declared graduate student. For the most part, courses I have taken will be transferable to the PhD program.

Courses taken/in progress, thus far, include: 

• Rhetoric and Professional Communication Proseminar
• Modern Rhetorical Theory
• Theory and Pedagogy of Technical Communication
• Qualitative Research Methods

There was also a graduate course last term on World War I; a fun class, taken for personal pleasure and edification, but not relevant to my goal at the time: get accepted to the PhD program.

Here is one of the places I spend a great deal of my time on campus: Zuhl Library. Power outlets are at a premium in the Quiet Study Area, so one has to get there early.

I usually stop for a breakfast burrito and watch the 'traffic' on campus. It is astonishing how students get to and from class these days; there is an odd mix of bicycles, skateboards, scooters (yes, the little two-wheeled scooters of childhood), and I have seen at least one unicycle. 

My plan going forward is to add this blog to my home page tabs and then, on a more frequent basis than has been the norm so far, add a little something every now and again as I move through this newest adventure.

Marginalia

In getting my books, I have been always solicitous of an ample margin ; this not so much through any love of the thing itself, however agreeble, as for the facility it affords me of pencilling suggested thoughts, agreements, and differences of opinion, or brief critical comments in general. Where what I have to note is too much to be included within the narrow limits of a margin, I commit it to a slip of paper, and deposit it between the leaves ; taking care to secure it by an imperceptible portion of gum tragacanth paste.

E.A. Poe, Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 175 ("Marginalia")

I am an inveterate marker of books. In my unschooled youth I used highlighters of a variety of colors: hot pink, blaze orange, psychedelic green, brilliant blue, and---most often---florescent yellow. There are still a few books in my collection which bear these marks of early abuse. Today, I use only pencil---and light pencil marks at that. But I still mark up MY books. I am, after all, an engaged and interactive reader along the lines of Adler and Van Doren (How to Read a Book). And Ann Fadiman is a reader after my own heart (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader). She was a marker of books; her husband was not. Like her, I hold books in high esteem, but they are NOT sacred objects unless LIVED in.

All of this is leading up to a discussion of my love of marginalia. I thoroughly enjoy reading the considered notes of prior readers of a text. I enjoy buying used books which bear the marks of their prior owners, flagging interesting and important sections, commenting on or taking issue with points made. I can even tolerate carefully made indelible entries, provided they are in a legible hand and are germane to the text.

But, I must admit that the inept, destructive, puerile marginalia one usually finds in many university library books irritates and often angers me. I have been know to spend hours pouring through books I have taken from the library carefully erasing the heavy handed pencil marks of readers whose only apparent thought was to gouge through as many layers of paper as they could with a pencil that could only have been sharpened with an axe.

But, I digress and---perhaps---I exaggerate.

The point I wanted to take up has to do with margins in texts and the role of marginalia. I believe it was in H.J. Jackson's book, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books, that I first read about the depth of margins and their purpose: ample room for continuous annotation of the text. The idea intrigued me. And I was only too familiar with the grossly insufficient margins one finds in modern books and most academic journals. Having some experience at calligraphy and the copying of texts onto leaves of parchment by hand, I understood at a visceral and aesthetic level what I thought was the role of the margins: set off the "work of art" in a space of its own. But most manuscripts, while considered works of art today, were really utilitarian works designed to promulgate ideas. The margins set nothing off; they provided space for commentary and annotation.

I understood this intellectually after reading parts of Jackson's book and weighing his observations and research against my own practices of annotation and engagement and argument while reading. Of course most of the arguments were (and remain) one-sided. But it was not until Laurie and I went to the Scriptorium in Avranche, which holds the manuscript collection from Mont St. Michel, that I actually SAW layers of annotation and commentary filling the margins around a handwritten text. The specific leaves were from a book of legal precepts. The annotations and commentary reflected the subsequent interpretations and clarifications that accrued over time, in some cases over hundreds of years.

While the common of books today are not likely to survive as long as some of the manuscripts that have been preserved, it would be pleasing to know that one's marginalia inspired others to comment on one's comments, some of which might be commenting on those of others, misé en abyme.

So . . . When you are through with your books, donate them to libraries, pass them on to others, trade them in at used bookstores, or release them to the wild; but do so always with your own thoughts recorded, neatly and in pencil, in the hopes others might engage with you down the way.

Awright . . . now MY head hurts

Where do I start?

I once started reading Heidegger's Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) some time ago, but from somewhere in the middle (like all good mathematicians: start in the middle and work toward each end). It was appropriate at the time as I was working with hermeneutics and "the Uncanny" (Das Unheimliche) in relation to literary texts and the section of Being and Time associated with notions of uncanny-ness is toward the middle of the text. But I always (already) knew that sooner or later I would have to read Heidegger's text from beginning to end, given adequate time.

Well, today I stumbled over a re-release of what was once THE translation. I hate going into a Barnes & Noble with no particular text on my mind. And I bought the book (even though I have a hard cover of the original on my shelf at home; or, perhaps, because I have an original hardcover on my shelf at home and I am an interactive reader who freely marks up his books). And I have started to read AT it by reading the "front matter."

In the foreword, it is suggested that the idea of "being" is about both everything and nothing. And, it is a notion unlike many of the others which occupy a similar grammatical position. The example used is associated with water: we can say "water exists" and we can say "water boils" and at the grammatical level they seem quite similar statements. But, and here is what makes my head hurt (today): we know both what boiling and non-boiling water is; but just WHAT is non-existing water?

What does it mean for some thing that is to not "be"?

My head hurts . . .

Inertia

Some miscellaneous, not fully connected thoughts at the moment . . . but, considering the Semiotic Square in relation to narrative I started to consider the notion of INERTIA which, within its definition/description contains/envelopes its own opposite: motion and stasis. but also stasis in motion, that is, unchanging motion (unless, of course, acted upon by some outside force -- which could be a stationary object . . . and so on). This led to considerations of the role (roll?) of inertia in affecting/effecting (I won't say here "promoting") narrative progression. Which then led to considerations of the relation to a recent topic of discussion among some narratologists: narrative "speed."

Like I said: miscellaneous and certainly not fully connected nor fully thought out. But, that said, there IS something there, something worth considering and perhaps there might even be a paper or article hidden in there.

If only I could overcome my intertia!

Feelin' folksy . . .

I am listenin' to our local NPR station (Las Cruces, KRWG) and feelin' a bit nostalgic. Or is that maudlin (without a 'g')? The "show" or "program" that is on this time of night is called The Back Porch. And the host, Benji Rivas, plays a lot of folk, country, bluegrass, and COWBOY music. There are few things in this world like a pedal-steel guitar and some Hank Williams-style cryin' in yer beer music. Does the heart and mind good. It calls up dim recollections of playin' bar billiards on dollar beer nights and listenin' to Jimmy Buffet on the jukebox. Or, evenings at The Sugared Mule, in Colorado Springs. Or, Cafe Lena in Saratoga, NY. Or, Red Rocks outside of Denver. Or . . . the list could go on forever. Large parts of my past, including friend's living rooms and patios, are filled with this kind of music. It was on a night like this that I tracked down an old roommate from my pre-Navy days (daze?); and . . . he was still out there and still listening to this sort of music. It is on nights like this that I prowl the amazon.com mp3 music lists and spend money that I know I should not.

Ain't life grand . . . now Benji's playin' some sort of big band/country mix. Yow!

Life (as a frugal consultant) in an Apartment Complex

Whether the windows are open or closed makes no difference. The barbarians are at the gates and their behavior makes one regret being of the same species. Or, is that my curmudgeonly nature showing? (go to the dictionary and you should find, in support of its definition, my picture next to the word CURMUDGEON)

Why do people have to pull up in the parking lot and HONK-HONK-HONK their horns? Why do they have to stand outside in the middle of the lot and yell (usually obscenities) at the windows of all the apartments before them when, in fact, their target lives in one of the apartments facing the BACK of the building?

Ah . . . life among the horseless and unshod, among the great unwashed masses. I can see how easily one develops elitist tendencies (in the current sense of the word). And what, by the way, is wrong with being elitist? I remember a time when that word decidedly did NOT have the less than savory connotations it now has.

Liminal/Liminality

One day someone drops a word in your path. You recognize it but you want to make sure you really understand it, its denotation and connotations. You poke at it from a variety of angles: Google, Wikipedia, the OED. You form a pretty reasonable notion of what it is, where it came from, and what it "means" ("signifies" might not yet be appropriate here). The next thing you know, it is everywhere around you, as though it was always already there just waiting for you to notice. But it is not always the word that is physically manifest before your eyes; it is more often an exemplar of one of the many connotations around which you managed to wrap your mind.

Is it cropping up because you are now more attuned to it, to its presence? Or, is it one of those serendipitous confluences of events which seem to hammer home a point you've been missing all along?

Consider, for example, "liminal" and "liminality." The root, "limen," originated in psychology in the late 19th Century in relation to response to stimulus. It referred to the threshold below which "a given stimulus ceases to be perceptible" (OED). It has been appropriated and fetishized by a variety of disciplines and turned into an adjective describing (as in unwriting?) the threshold or initial stages of a process. And that process could be read to be any in which the actant undergoes some sort of transformation, for example a change in character or attitude or state of being. "Liminality," while not yet having made its way into the OED, has meaning for certain critics of culture: (as Wikipedia says)

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold") is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective, conscious state of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology (a "liminal state") and in the anthropological theories of ritual by such writers as Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, and others. In the anthropological theories, a ritual, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially their social status.

The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives.

People, places, or things may not complete a transition, or a transition between two states may not be fully possible. Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal.

Those of you familiar with any text that manifests itself as a Bildungsroman or a "quest" story (e.g., Siddhartha (or for that matter most all of Hesse's works), "The Secret Sharer," Great Expectations, "The Man Who Would Be King") will recognize liminal moments in those texts. A friend is working with one such text, in terms of its structure and how that structure reinforces the the "quest" motif in terms of helpers and heros and obstructions which must be overcome to achieve the desired goal. He is the one who whispered the word to me in an email. One can see how liminality figures in this space as a juggling of opportunities and consequences at some threshold.

Think about the thresholds, tangible or not, you cross each day, the decisions you make before doing so--whether conscious or not. What does crossing that threshold say about you? What did the Rubicon mean for Caesar as a liminal moment? Where/when is your Rubicon?

Tomorrow, Laurie is attending a special celebration at the museum in Las Cruces where she volunteers: they are celebrating Lincoln's birthday with a special cake, not simply because it IS his birthday but also because the museum will be hosting the traveling Lincoln exhibit--a real coup for them.

But . . . it is also Darwin's birthday. And you do not hear about anyone celebrating HIS birthday. So we started brain-storming about what sort of food she could take to (in a friendly way) subvert the celebration and call attention to the fact that it IS also Darwin's birthday. And, Darwin is--arguably--at least as important a person (if not more so) than Lincoln in terms of his affect on life as we know it today.

Laurie even went so far as to post a thread to RecipeZaar soliciting ideas, but not ideology. Finch Pie, (Galapagos) Turtle Soup, and Monkey Brains (the dessert pastry, not the real thing) were among the items discussed. But we settled on a low level of effort solution: Chunky Monkey Ice Cream, to be brought out at the last minute as a surprise addition to the festivities.

I am waiting to hear how it goes . . .

I am waiting because I am in the middle of the Great American Corn Desert and cannot attend the festivities.

Happy Birthday! Charles and Abe.

10 - 20 Random Things

Okay . . . believe it or not, I have a Facebook page.

It was something I got into not but a few months ago as a consequence of my wife's Best Man (an old friend from as far back as the 2nd grade) starting his own Facebook page and inviting us to be "friends."

Well, low and behold, but don't I find that there are people on Facebook I actually know. And one of them recently initiated (or continued?) an interesting twist on the chain letters from the days when letters were actually written and mailed with stamps: 10 or 20 Random Things About Yourself forwarded to 20 random people on Facebook that you know. I suspect this is something dreamt up by someone with thousands of Facebook connections, some of whom about which they know absolutely nothing.

The concept is intriguing . . . tell a bunch of people things about yourself that you might never have told anyone else (ever!) in an effort to get to know them better. Because, in a perfect game, they are supposed to respond in kind.

I must admit that I was not sure where to start. Or even whether I should start. Or if I could start, and then finish. But once I got going, I really got into it. So, at the risk of repeating myself over multiple platforms, here are the 20 Random Things about myself:

1. My cat hates me; but then she hates everyone but my wife . . . and the cable guy . . . and . . .
2. I am the only person I know who has turned a $30 home tune-up into a $300+ radiator job; I am no longer allowed to work on cars.
3. I wanted to be a fireman when I was little; now I am a consultant.
4. I had a fringed fire-engine red nap rug in kindergarten; now I wish I could take naps at work. What ever happened to that rug?
5. I used to eat library paste and pour my pineapple-grapefruit juice down the drain when I thought the teacher wasn't looking. I remember the taste of both: one with some small delight and one with shudders of disgust. You guess . . .
6. I cut class once in summer school; I sneaked out the bathroom window at Mesa Elementary School in Los Alamos. I think I was between the 4th and 5th grade. I never did it again, until I first got to university; then I never even bothered to go to class.
7. I am a sucker for back-scratches . . . my "wings" itch all the time, but they itch most when someone touches them. Then, no amount of scratching satisfies me . . .
8. I would retire right now if I thought we could get me through a PhD program without going BUST.
9. I love to cook . . . I hate doing dishes . . . I am legendary for my ability to TOTAL a kitchen (and everything in it). Ask Lois Maggenti, my high school English teacher. Or our friends Glen and Linda.
10. I read lots of books, but my secret pleasure is reading PULPS. I loved reading Doc Savage books in high school; the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard still thrill me. H. Rider Haggard taught me that adventure stories could be cerebrally challenging. But, it took Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling and Ernest Hemingway to convince me that they could be great literature. Even Shakespeare has his pulpy moments.
11. I suffer from "imposter's syndrome" whenever I attend and present papers at conferences, particularly literary conferences. I've been told that everyone does, even the experts. That is no comfort.
12. I have been teaching for the last 30 years and I still get somewhat anxious before walking into a classroom; even one full of students I know.
13. I like my coffee fresh ground, made in a French press, and served black. On weekends, I use a mug that used to belong to my father; it makes it even more special than it usually is.
14. While I love travel, I have come to truly hate being on the road and away from Laurie and home. But that is the lot of a consultant. I probably would not have been home any more often had I become a fireman, right?
15. Iowa really isn't such a bad place . . . if you like corn, and pork, and bitter cold winters, and hot humid summers. They are even considering making it illegal to use cell phones while driving (FINALLY!!), except for the police.
16. I am a Democrat, but then aren't we all in the literal sense of the word? I am also a Republican, in the literal sense of the word. The two are not mutually exclusive, except in the minds of certain inveterate fools. We all need to keep that in mind.
17. I am unbelieveably lucky! Inanimate objects continually conspire among themselves to do me in, yet I manage to get along with them. But, why can't I get along with my cat? Laurie would say it is because I can't stop "poking the bear." She's undoubtedly right.
18. I frequently use Google Maps to look at my childhood home town (Los Alamos, NM). I am able to pick out our house because my father did some landscaping which is unmistakably visible in the images.
19. I would love to leave a meaningful footprint that "visible."
20. I have no regrets . . . at least, none that I let keep me awake at night.

Feel free to respond with your own 10 or 20 Random things, here.

NARRATIVE 2009

Received this evening: "Your proposal to the Narrative Conference 2009 has been accepted. Congratulations!" The conference is in Birmingham, UK, the first week of June; essentially it is a 57th birthday present for me.

For the record, here is what I proposed (long form):

Reading Polyaesthetically: Extending Observed Pictorial Boundary Extension Effects to Engagement with Narrative Texts

Recent experimental work by psychologist Helen Intraub and her research teams have confirmed a phenomenon which may be extensible to the reading of narrative texts. Experimental evidence suggests boundary extension of visual memory occurs in the time period between briefly viewing images and a subsequent request to recall and draw those images. That is, the viewer reproduces an image which includes peripheral information not in the originally viewed image. This phenomenon is more pronounced for images with a narrower field of view than for those with a wide-angle view. It also appears to be time dependent in that the amount of extension decays with time after viewing. Yet, it always manifests as extension, never compression. Intraub suggests boundary extension is grounded more in the perceptual schemata of the viewers than in other memory-related functions. Working from the idea that readers’ representations of texts are not unlike viewed images, I map Intraub’s notion of boundary extension onto the mental images constructed from the text(s) as we read—visual images being the most prevalent, but aural, tactile, and olfactory images occur as well. This notion is supported by Sven Birkerts’ writing on the concept of depth of field in reading where he raises the idea that as we read we “hear” but do so without aural stimulation. From this point it is a logical and not unreasonable extension to suggest that we also “see” without visual stimulation (that is, the eyes are not seeing anything but words on a sheet of paper yet the mind “sees” the images evoked by the text), “smell” without olfactory stimulation, and so on. Consequently, it is not uncommon that recollections of texts are somehow greater than the texts themselves. In this paper, I suggest that—just as with viewed physical images—a created mental image produced as a consequence of engaging with a narrative text is also grounded in and enlarged by our perceptual schemata. I also suggest that the more senses engaged by a text the greater the opportunity for boundary extension: this is what I mean by “reading polyaesthetically.” Perceptual schemata are not merely visual; they involve all of the senses such that from a single stimulus—e.g., the act of reading—textual depth is developed by the consequent response of manifold senses. This paper extends earlier work on my project on Depth of Field in Narrative, as presented at the Narrative Conferences in 2005, 2007, and 2008. Examples from the works of Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Virginia Woolf support the discussion. Critical foils will include aspects of Emma Kafalenos’ recent book on causality in narrative and H. Porter Abbott’s discussion of under- and over-reading of texts.

Gustatory Rhinitis

A-a-a-a . . . A-a-a-a-a . . . A-a-a-a-a-chooooooo!!
A-a-achoo . . . A-a-achoo . . . A-a-achooooooooo!!

Appaloosa

There are elements of story that will always point to one specific genre into which the story fits, despite most stories fitting into multiple genres. Consider, for example, a little known Sean Connery film: Outland. Despite its obvious Sci-Fi surface story, it is also a "western" in the sense that Connery plays a "marshall" in a "frontier town" who has to run off or kill the "bad guys." Another example: The Man Who Would Be King, which fits nicely into period colonial piece not unlike Zulu, while still meeting all of the requirements for an adventure story.

In contrast, Appaloosa is purely a western, a REAL western--if one can use that term with impugnity. There are clearly BAD guys and GOOD guys. One of the good guys appears to see things with just that sort of clarity of distinction, while the other has too much "feeling" to be truly, unequivocally good (in fact, he admits at one point to having killed outside the law); and we suspect that side of him from the beginning. The bad guys are indeed truly bad, from their bad fashion through their bad behavior and bad speech all the way to their bad teeth. The environment is dusty, windy, dry . . . unforgiving. Interestingly, the two most prominent women in the story--a widow from St. Louis and a local whore--end with character that is the opposite of their characters.

This is my immediate (in the literal sense of the word: little or no mediation, meditative reflection) reaction to the movie. I will see it again. It is one of those kinds of films.

Just how cold is COLD?

At a weather station located at a local High School, not 4 miles from my apartment here in the middle of the Great American Corn Desert, the temperature is MINUS 19. It also records that there is an 8 mph wind out of the WSW. At some point, the temperature numbers become purely academic . . . don't they? At some point, it just doesn't get any "colder" in terms of sensation. I have to remind myself on mornings like this that temperature is nothing more than a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules of a substance. As temperature goes down, molecular energy is dropping; things just become more rigid. Things like the water molecules in your fingers and toes . . .

The value of intuition

A recent thread on the listserv for the International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN) concerned the power and effects of visual metaphor in determining how viewers respond to film adaptations of novels. Implicit in the question was the notion that one had read (or was familiar with) the paper "text" before viewing the film and that somehow the film was unable to fully "capture" (even with the aid of visual metaphor) some of the more subtle points of the originating text. But one respondent poked at the notion that there are visual metaphors that are--to use my own words--canonical in themselves; that they can be used to evoke and invoke subtexts found in the originating text without the use of long-winded passages. A respondent to this speculated that one still had to have read the originating text in order to "get" the visual metaphors. This led me to respond that--for instance--while not having read Jane Eyre before having seen the Welles' version of the story in film, I formed an image of Jane consistent with the originating text (discovered later when I read it) as a consequence of the ways in which Welles evoked her character using what I refered to as stock/canonical metaphors. In the end, I speculated that perhaps there is an analog to mirror neurons which affects our processing of visual metaphors in a manner not dissimilar to the way mirror neurons affect our reading of the body language of others.

Okay, so now you have the prologue and are probably asking just what the hell this has to do with the value of intuition. Well . . . a respondent to my post pointed me in the direction of the work of one Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., professor in Cognitive Linguistics at UCSC. I used my college computer account to access the article databases and found quite a number of articles by Gibbs dealing with metaphor, irony, and other rhetorical tropes in relation to our sense of meaning. This evening, I read one of them: "Psycholinguistics and Mental Representations," from Cognitive Linguistics, volume 10.3, 1999. In the article, Gibbs argues against a complete dismissal of intuition in the field of epistemology. While it cannot be used wholly as proof of a point, particularly in the realm of linguistics, he argues quite convincingly that intuition has value insofar as it serves as a seed bed for hypotheses, (dis)proof of which can then be undertaken using sound scientific methods.

Think of the ways in which you use your own intuition. Does it spur you to know more, more certainly? Or, do you gobble it blindly to feed empty calories to your ideology?

Comfort Foods . . .

Foods that--no matter how miserable you are--will always warm you and put a smile on your face:

• Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast - which I happen to be having right now. It is -6F outside (here in the middle of the Great American Corn Desert) and I needed not only cheering but warming. Also known as S.O.S., which my father once told me meant "Shit on a Shingle." This particular incarnation is the Stouffer's frozen S.O.S. It is as good as any homemade I ever had.
• Kraft Macaroni and Cheese - I cannot remember the last time I had it. I do remember, though, that Laurie and I lived on it and baloney when we were first married. It was not that we were miserable--or needed warming, Charleston being a relatively toasty place to live--it was that we were broke, living on a 2nd Class Petty Officer's "salary." It was all we could afford.
• Fast becoming a favorite: my own homemade Tortilla Soup, the recipe for which varies with the wind. I honestly do not think I have made it the same way twice. It does, though, always make me feel better not only eating it but making it, as well.
• Then, there is Clam Sauce on Linguini . . . one would not think something as "classic" as this has the potential to be not only a comfort food but one of those "everything but the kitchen sink"-type recipes. You really have to work to hose this one up; and if you are judicious about additions everything you add improves it. It always brings a smile to my face.

Things one should NEVER do . . .

NEVER pick up a bottle of wine, once opened--particularly an organic Syrah--by the cork. Never do it, that is, unless you are willing to accept the consequences. Note to self: Harvest Gold shag carpet and organic, full-bodied red wines do not go well together.

Resuming after being away from this for some time . . . I set this up originally in 2006, when I was still calling upstate NY home. Many things have changed, all for the better. Now if I can just get over my motivational malaise . . .