double-entry journal

I just finished writing my double-entry journal for Kenneth Bruffee’s article, “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind,’” one of the readings we’re doing tomorrow in Writing Pedagogy. I asked everybody to do a double-entry journal for one of the Cross-Talk articles and then to do one-paragraph reactions to the remaining three articles we’re discussing.

And it took me probably three times as long to read the article doing the double-entry journal as it would if I just highlighted and penciled in marginal comments. Agh. Of course it takes longer. That’s important information! And I don’t use that information effectively. That is, I’ve taken to using  double-entry journals to ensure that students do the reading in my 102 classes, but I think I’m really wasting their potential to build that community of knowledge-makers that Bruffee’s article discusses.

Strange to read Bruffee AND write a double-entry journal AND be aware that double-entry journals can be a hugely effective tool in the Bruffeeian enterprise — and I need to think how to do that. Give enough time. Use journals as part of class conversation. Use journals as springboards for writing. More conversation.

Tasting the Sky by Ibtisam Barakat

Just finished this memoir by Palestinian American author (born in Ramallah). Story is framed by 17-year-old narrator’s letters and then goes back to begin the story with three-year old Ibtisam’s memory of the Six Day War. By the end, I was ready for the next volume (we stop with Ibtisam at about age 6 or 7, I think), so it’s a good thing Barakat is already at work on her next book. Prose is simple, elegant.

Ryan’s magazine advice

If you want to laugh hard and also check your own magazine-browsing habits, go read Ryan’s “Dear Magazine Consumer…” on his blog. There are 7 sins — avoid them!

introversy

the serendipity of the web blows my mind…i love how hyperlinks take me places i could never imagine. so, for instance. i’ve just finished reading edmundo paz soldán’s Turing’s Delirium cuz Paz Soldán is giving a talk at UAH this thursday, and i’ve got two of his novels in english translation. and after i finished Turing’s Delirium, i kept thinking of neal stephenson and mostly of cryptonomicon, which i haven’t read but was pretty sure would be relevant…especially since paz soldán includes an epigraph from stephenson’s snow crash, which i have read. so i went to the novel’s website and read a good portion of the prologue and there’s a great section that includes alan turing as a character. but i also went to stephenson’s website (which has a well address…very cool [The WELL started as one of the earliest online internet communities -- almost a decade before the world wide web]) where he links to “Why I am a Bad Correspondent,” a piece that explains why he doesn’t answer readers’ email or usually accept speaking engagments:

The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.

sage advice for writers — and on his website, stephenson also points to an article by jonathan rauch in The Atlantic Monthly Online that explains stephenson’s personality, that is, as an introvert. “Caring for Your Introvert: The Habits and Needs of a Little-understood Group” was published in march 2003 and still receives more hits than any other article. there’s a follow-up in a feb. 2006 issue (“Introverts of the World, Unite!“) that’s also worth reading. rauch suggests that internet could be re-coined intronet, since it’s such a perfect medium for introverts.

introversy is the term the atlantic monthly online uses for rauch’s article and the ensuing discussion (see the april 2006 piece “The Introversy Continues“).

Two Girls by Perihan Magden

Two Girls by Perihan Magden (first published in Turkish in 2002 by Everest Yayinlari; translated into English by Brendan Freely and published in 2005 by Serpent’s Tail, London) has been made into a movie directed by Kutlug Ataman, screenplay by Magden and Ataman. The character of Behiye, the young woman who falls in love with Handan, daughter of a prostitute, offers a strong narrative of a troubled mind — creative and violent. The translation indicates that Magden’s novel accomplishes a psychological virtuoso of a character bereft of love, a character who becomes chained to the first object of her love, whom she calls her “The Feeling You’ll Be Rescued,” a state of peace she experiences even before she meets Handan. Juxtaposed to this love-obsession story are scenes of discovered corpses, men and young boys who have been murdered. The two strands never cross, overtly. I’m still not sure what I think of the book. But I couldn’t put it down.