I recently discovered a journal that the teacher of my fifth grade class at Webster Elementary in Hazel Park asked our class to keep; not unlike this here blog I'm so diligently updating on a regular basis (*smirk*), but more of an arbitrary little manuscripted tome filled with responses to random prompts she would present on the board throughout the year. I would furiously scribble my impassioned epistles, hastily close the precious 1-subject notebook, and rush to the front of the classroom, dropping my entry on the teacher's desktop, grinning from ear to ear in anticipation of how she might receive my "work," pleased with myself that I was the first one done.
The topics we were asked to write about were... well, elementary, if I may. They ranged from diatribes about the exciting things we did (or did not) do over the past summer to semi-professional critical reviews of our favorite scary movies. One in particular has had quite the peculiar effect on me now as I read it again. In a response to a question that asked us what we wished for I wrote,
9-11-95
If I could have one wish it would be to become an author. I love to write stories. I want to be like R.L. Stine [author of the then-popular Goosebumps series for kids]. I have already printed two chapters of one of my stories on the computer.
To this, Mrs. Arden* wrote,
Of all the wishes I have read about, I bet yours comes true. You can be anything you want to be. You certainly are a wonderful writer. I'm sure I'll see your name in the bookstores in the near future.
You can imagine my pleasure upon reading that. I was positively floored. Me? A writer? A real writer, Mom? Do you think that I could be that? Mom, of course, thought that I could be that. Only trouble was: I didn't think I could be that. Only years later would the pressure implicit in such an aggrandizing assertion make itself known to me, applying itself stronger and stronger. So many people to avoid letting down... so little time...
What I'm loosely trying to get at is something on which I was commiserating over at Ian's blog:
As time proceeds and technology advances, the ways individuals can leave an imprint on history has become easier. Once someone posts something on the Internet it will remain there indefinitely, floating in cyber space (view).
My question is: has my wish come true? Have I become an author? Or am I merely adrift in a sea of expectation and potential? This blog has tenuously allowed me to establish my authorial presence, to coalesce the illusory stardust of my ill-defined ideas and musings into celestial bodies of a certain gravity that has attracted at least a few of you extra-terrestrial travelers to my little solar system at the end of the universe. This very post has told you a story, has it not? Hell, that last sentence was at least an anecdote! So, haven’t I fulfilled my objective to some extent? Sure, my name is not (yet?) “in the bookstores,” as Mrs. Arden so faithfully avowed would happen, but am I so unsure that there isn’t a copyright in some form or another for something like this? If not, well, shouldn't there be?
If only it were that simple though, right? Even if I was afforded the honor of being considered an “author” from these very meager offerings I’ve posted throughout the last couple of weeks, the question is still as muddled and convoluted as it was in Shakespeare’s day. Without getting involved in too much of a discourse, I will simply (in an homage to Mrs. Arden) prompt the reader to consider some ideas:
· The controversy over authorship, as we have read, was very much a moot point in the late 16th century, where publishers held the rights to printed works.
· The idea was further complicated in the world of theatre, where playbills were drafts which actors would often alter improvisationally; indeed the whole of the production was a collaborative effort over which a mere script could not claim agency.
· Compare this with today’s primary performance media, film and television: an ensemble of characters, not just on-screen but also behind the scenes, is involved in the creation of a single movie or TV show; none is given primacy over another (not even a director or screenwriter can claim authorship over the finished product: the director being a composer of the constituent elements, never fully usurping their individual accomplishments, merely arranging, instigating, documenting; the writer, a catalyst for plot and characterization and other structural elements to the black and white of which only the subtleties of performance can add shades of gray, color and texture notwithstanding) .
· The internet, with its vast and often unmitigated access to a wealth of intellectual and creative resources, offers interactive websites, the content of which people can add or subtract to with virtually (pun intended) no sense of academic honesty, and literally (again, pun intended) no regard for copyright law, either through piracy, ignorance, incompetence or sheer laziness. Indeed, the very branches of modern science and academia and their respective histories have become narratives in which all human beings have now discovered they have a part; while such a de-centralized view of the authority on knowledge and truth is quite liberating, the universal relativism implied creates many difficulties for the question we originally posed: Who is an author?
Am I an author?
-M.C.
*The teacher's name has been changed for privacy purposes, but for a bit of Shakespeare trivia, can you figure out where this fictional name comes from? (There is more than one right answer)
Is a published author an author? I've been doing some research lately on publishing houses - and once Michael the author brings his book "An English Student's Guide to the Universe" over to be published, a whole slew of copy editors, proofreaders, &c. take it all apart looking for errors and consign your intellectual property into their standard of publishability (yep, made that word up).
ReplyDeleteSo, assuming you don't get sued for royalties by Douglas Adams, you might just end up with your name in print.
Google says that the ex-Mrs. Robert Arden was Shakespeare's grandfather's second wife. There is also a link to 'As You Like It', which I've never read.
Your sarcasm is not unwarranted. But your pretentiousness is.
ReplyDelete"Mary Arden" is the name of Shakespeare's mother. "Arden" is the forest where much of the action of "As You Like It" takes place.
I was hoping you wouldn't have to resort to Google to tell you all the answers.
And my name is spelled "Michal."
-M.C.
You once mentioned in class that the pronunciation "Michael" was alright. I typed without thinking and from someone whose name (family, not first) is often horrifically, even purposefully mangled, I know how annoying it can be. You have my sincere apologies, Michal.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I actually looked up pretentious in the OED. It means "Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed; making an exaggerated outward display; ostentatious, showy."
Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself with the instantaneous knowledge provided by the world wide web. I crave to answer questions, even those I don't know the answer to.
And isn't that part of what we have been discussing in this class - the way Web 2.0 is all but obliterating traditional forms of learning, books in particular? Of course, I never thought I'd fall victim to its sway. It is, after all, such a fickle mistress (I got the questions wrong, for all my ego).
Which leaves me with a bit to think on. How important is the web in our day-to-day development? Have I enmeshed myself too far, now that all these bits and bytes are automatically at my fingertips? It is the old question (and I parody the Bard out of respect, for he asked it best and first): to Web 2.0 or not to Web 2.0?
"Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed."
ReplyDeleteI believe parodying source material with which one is not familiar falls under that category.
I was annoyed with the way you condescendingly mocked my innocent and good-natured attempt at trying to connect on an emotional level, to humanize all of this ineffectual abstraction that, in academia, we are force-fed on a day-to-day basis. You come along and with a few swift keystrokes cut me off at the knees. For what? To give your ego a fix?
No one gives a fuck about how many words we know, or how many books we have read. What matters is that, when we students are finally set free from Plato's cave and emerge into the blinding sunlight, what is ultimately considered will provide a very rude awakening.