Writer's Craft

A former colleague of mine teaches Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand. After trying several times, I've never finished either it nor Seabiscuit. Hillenbrand's stories are elegant, but for some reason, I can never focus on them as I should. I recognize the compelling nature of the story told and the masterful writing behind the story but I personally always feel distracted by other things.

Hillenbrand's process, given her long illness and general houseboundness, is detailed in this New York Times piece. I was particularly interested in her process and I can see interesting bits, particularly the rhythm of language.

Worth considering if you teach the book.

Panopticon and Elf on the Shelf

Since I was a high school student, I have loved Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. It spoke to me a in a way that was more real, more possible and more terrifying then George Orwell ever was. When I became an AP Lit teacher, it was one of the novels I was moved to teach.

One of the companion pieces I like to excerpt and teach is Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. I have given the whole text before, but what is most compelling is from letter V when Bentham states:

You will please to observe, that though perhaps it is the most important point, that the persons to be inspected should always feel themselves as if under inspection, at least as standing a great chance of being so...

. In other words, for the panopticon to work, a person need not always be watched, but the person should have a sense that they might always be watched.

There are many fascinating aspects of panopticon, but the most important, to me personally is that society is, in many ways, a giant version of one. What keeps most of us in check is not actually being observed, but the idea that we might be observed. (E. Lockheart uses this idea to great effect in her YA novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks).

Imagine my pleasure, then, to discover a fantastic article about how Elf on the Shelf is a twisted holiday/kid version of the panopticon at WaPo. Peter Holley examines Laura Pinto's paper on how Elf on the Shelf prepares kids for a surveillance state.

There is much to disagree with here. This may not be an obvious stretch if you are not a dystopian literature scholar or a reader of Jeremy Bentham. But it is provocative.

My friends with whom I've shared this point out that this is not the first weirdness of surveillance state apparatus in the Santa Industrial Complex..."He knows when you've been sleeping/He knows when you're awake/He knows when you've been bad or good/So be good for goodness sake." (And yes, I just wanted to write Santa Industrial Complex).

Serial

Okay. I absolutely admit it. I'm a Serial addict. I've loved This American Life for years and I'm loving the longer format of Serial. I won't retread all of the ground that the internet has already covered this week about how great this is (see Reddit, Slate, Vox, and pretty much any pop culture blog).

One of the things I am most struck by is that Sarah Koenig's reporting is how her journey maps onto the learning. Without fail, she talks about how she is constantly probing, looking for information that will confirm or debunk what her theories are. She exists in a state of confusion

ETA I originally started this post in November and never finished. Today the last episode of Serial was posted and I am now ready to think about teaching it. Instead of trying to sell you on why you should listen or teach this, I am going to just create a link repository of commentary I want to come back to with my students.

About the Justice System

• Serial's Big Confession My favorite explanation of why this podcast is an indictment of the justice system.
• Matt Thompson weighs in on the Justice System component
• WaPo on how Serial should have gone further in showing what's really wrong with criminal justice

Is Serial Racist?

• The Awl article that started the debate about white privilege and SK's perceived prejudice in journalism.
• The Atlantic pushes back against that claim and addresses is point by point.

Parody

• Sesame Street got into the Serial/Cereal action

Narrative Work

• An opinion piece from the Boston Globe positing why the narrative works so well. In fact, this captures what I was trying to say back in November.
• Linda Holmes on what is really an ending as it pertains to Serial

A benign review NYT Review of the ending.

Slate's podcast about Serial on the ending. Mike Pesca earlier interviewed SK and asked her not to have a lame ending and he weighs in on what he thinks about the ending. I definitely agree that it was a very satisfying ending which is tricky in a serialized nonfiction piece.

Anyhow, if you are so inclined and you have links to think pieces that you think would make good fodder for students, please comment with ideas on other companions to this for my class.