Books, Blogs and Time

So, nothing bores me more than reading articles about whether the printed word is dying, books versus blogs, who reads and doesn't read novels blah blah blah. It is fascinating, though, when you take a step back from these kinds of arguments, just to *notice* how we're transitioning from one literacy to another, with all kinds of exciting possibilities.

And then, your mother ships you 180 pounds of books that had been sitting in her basement, mixed together with notebooks you'd forgot you'd written in, and takes you back in time.

Like a lot of people, I'm superstitious about throwing out books, even when they're damaged beyond readability. I volunteer at a used book store, and people are really upset if they suspect we might throw out their paperback with the torn cover and water damage, even if they know we can't possibly sell it.

So, one of the books in the box was James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. The price on the side is 60 cents and Alfred Kazin has a blurb on the back. The cover is missing as are all the pages up to 15. I remember reading this book more than ten years ago - as it often happens after that period, I don't remember much about the plot but I remember being overwhelmed by its beauty and sadness, and I remember wanting to go to Paris.

On page 16, I read this:

I began, perhaps, to be lonely that summer and began, that summer, the flight which has brought me to this darkening window.

And yet - when one begins to search for that crucial, the definitive moment, the moment which changed all others, one finds oneself pressing, in great pain, through a maze of false signals and abruptly locking doors. My flight may, indeed, have begun that summer - which does not tell me where to find the germ of the dilemma which resolved itself, that summer, into flight. Of course, it was somewhere before me, locked in that reflection I am watching in the window as the night comes down outside. It is trapped in the room with me, always has been, and always will be, and it is yet more foreign to me than those foreign hills outside.

Two new updates

Update 1: Our next issue will be purple.

Update 2: The Purple Issue will be up during the first of May. Our cut-off date for this reading period will by April 15th, so send us your submissions.

End of Updates

The cruelty of students

My original intention of the blog was to talk about publishing and online journal business. (Speaking of which we are now listed on New Pages. Be sure to tell all your friends.) But, every time I sit down I seem to feel the need to talk about my students. I guess I feel or hope that the purpose of this journal is to fight against the mentalities I see in them.

* * *

So, over the weekend I gave my students an assignment to come up with a "dangerous idea". The assignment was given after having them read and discuss several essays off of the Edge Foundations website where scientists, professors, and researchers answered the same question.
We read one about basing government on empathy, another about how we are all genetically inclined to murder, and other's about science, religion, and psychology. I thought it might be interesting to see what the students came up with.

Some students did a really good job. One suggested that we should all walk around naked. Then we couldn't create these false images of what the human body should look like and people wouldn't feel the need to spend so much money on clothes. Another said we should use the tax dollars in place to bulid the border fence and, instead, invest in Mexican companies and support their government's social programs. Some students just had observations, saying we should pay more attention to our telepathic abilities or what if we didn't have a history of violence and racism? But a good number of students, maybe a quarter of the ones who actually did the assignment, were just cruel. Several railed agianst the jail system, saying that prisoners should have no rights or privelges, that prison is just like living in the world except you can't leave. (I teach in a prison. Believe me, that is not the case.) Another said that we should take all the non-violent criminals and make them fight in Iraq. If they can prove themselves as loyal and patriotic then they don't have to finish their sentence.

The worst one, though, was the student who didn't have the guts to bring up the idea in class. During class the student said the dangerous idea was to put normal looking people on TV instead of beautiful people. Her paper was about how all government funding for the poor and homeless was a waist because they didn't appreciate the money enough.

I don't understand how these students can refuse so adamantly to step into another person's shoes. These students who go to a private university while receiving government loans and scholarships talk about how prisoners and the homeless guzzle up all the tax dollars. These students who smoke pot and drink under age consider every person in jail as evil and untrustworthy, and every homeless person lazy and stupid. These students talk about how illegeal immigrants and people on welfare don't appreicate enough the help they are given, yet these students don't show up to class half the time. Plus, a good number are taking the class over again because they failed it last semester. So who is it that doesn't appreciate the opportunities handed to them by the government?

Oh, and did I mention this is a Baptist university? While this won't suprise most people, it makes my job more frustrating. In the same breath that they condemn every person in prison, they discuss how God saved them from a life of sin. During the same half hour we discuss how illegal aliens don't belong in the country and shouldn't be allowed to use our hospitals, they talk about how the love of Christ has changed them forever.

While I may seem bitter at the moment, the fact is I'm actually quite opptimistic. I really believe that with one essay, one story, one moment when these students truely step outside themselves and see from another person's point of view, their whole lives will change. It won't be obvious or immediate, but when you look at the world from someone else's perspetive, just once, you can't help but do it again and again and again. Hopefully, this journal will keep offering up those perspectives.

Vibrant Gray grows!

The Vibrant Gray staff would like to welcome Jennifer Reimer, Javier Huerta, and Hillary Gravendyk, who will be joining Craig Perez on our poetry board.

Also, we would like to remind everyone that we are looking to get our next issue out by May, so get your submissions in by April.

Because 30 Rock is Kind of Smart

I was going to do another post where I do my advice from an editor thing, but I have a different subject on my mind that doesn’t have anything to do with writing or journals.

This semester I am teaching several sections of Rhet. and Comp. on two different campuses in central Texas. While my main objective is to teach these students how to write and communicate more effectively, I also try to include a good amount of discussion about the content of our reading.

During these discussions I come to one strange conclusion over and over again – I wish my students watched more TV. I know this sounds crazy. As an educator I am suppose to bemoan the perils of watching television and encourage my students to do nothing but read James Joyce. But I don’t. More often than not I find myself telling my students they should watch shows like The Office, Arrested Development, Weeds, The Wire (I know that Arrested Development is no longer on television but I love that show and feel it needs mentioning).

But haven’t we, as educators, won the fight if our students are no longer watching the dreaded boob tube? Not at all. From what I can tell the students have traded general TV watching for two things: videogames and reality television. Both males and females admit to playing a couple of hours worth of videogames a day, especially those that live in the dorms. My males generally watch ESPN and the girls watch Next Top Model (so do some of my males they just won’t admit it in the classroom).

Granted my main annoyance is that when I quote Scrubs or Friends or say: There a-loo-sions, Michael, my students have no idea what I am talking about. But beyond that, most of NBC’s shows throw in references to politics and current events, CSI had an episode about dog fighting when that scandal arose, and who knows how much they could learn by watching even one or two episodes of The Daily Show every week. I think we’ve entered into a culture where watching some amount of television is as important as reading the newspaper was twenty years ago. And I’m not talking about just news shows, but watching sitcoms and dramas to help us a gain a cultural context to the world we’re interacting with.

It just amazes me how much information is at my students’ finger tips, yet they have no clue what is going on outside of their own world. Sure, they’ve all seen the video of the kid in Japan get hit in the head with a skateboard, but they have no idea why we’re fighting in Iraq or even who the presidential candidates are. Maybe these are the typical ravings of a new teacher or maybe I just feel that I should be able to relate to my students a little better, but either way, I’m seriously thinking about assigning two hours of TV watching before class on Wednesday.

Fun at Chain Bookstores

So, I was in a certain chain bookstore to day. (I ain't naming names!) The universe must really be playing with me, because I did about five double-takes before confirming that, yes, I was looking at a Valentine's Day display that contained the following items:

1) The latest issue of a magazine that promised to make me "the sexiest brand on the market." Umm, no thanks - it's hard enough work just to be as sexy as I already am.

2) Lindt's chocolate. No problem there.

3) Sex Tips for Straight Women from Gay Men. Ok on this one too.

4) Why Men Love Bitches/Why Men Marry Bitches (guess they're a set) Interesting - they love *and* marry them, but for, like totally different reasons that demand two books!

5) The Feminine Mystique.

Yes, you knew this was headed somewhere: in between the chocolate and sex tips is a new edition of the feminist classic which helped catalyze one of the most important social movements of our century. I amused myself for the rest of the day trying to figure out if the higher-ups at said unnamed chain store were so clueless as to not recognize the hilarity of the pairing (feminine mystique . .. must be about how to be more feminine, right? to catch a man, duh) or if, as I liked to imagine, some mole was working on the inside, doing a kind of guerilla shelving. I'm in a good mood today, so I'm going with the later.

What does this have to do with Vibrant Gray? Well, not a lot. Except this: I was thinking about our mission statement in relation to conversations I've had with students over the years who don't understand what are wrong with cliches and generalizations. After all, if someone's said it a million times, it must be right, no? If some fancy pants weren't trying to make the world difficult, or make me see it as complex, or as gray, I could just live happily. And I tell them: I wish it were that way. I really wish you could tell people: do x, and you'll lose five pounds, and never age, and find true love. Self-help books thrive by telling people this, and people buy them, and then buy them again when they don't deliver, thinking this time it'll work. Even though, not being stupid, people know better, but desire is a powerful thing.

So, while a lot of teachers and writers do fetishize something called "complexity," and look for distinctions with out a difference, the real shades of gray, the real, simple fundamental questions like 'how can we be equal' are still out there. That means good writing is still out there too, no matter how many styles come and go, waiting to be written and read.

Potrait of an Editor as an Artist: We're all in it together

I do feel like this title is somewhat pretentious but I also feel like it’s better than some of my other ideas: Confessions of a Literary Journal Editor, What Journal Editors Laugh about but Never Tell. Those seem played out and cheesy so I went with pretentious and snoody.

Anyway, the idea behind this entry (and more to come after) is to give writers and editors a forum to discuss getting published and publishing in small journals. I’ll start off by telling stories and giving advice that I have gathered during the last three years I have worked with literary journals.

Now, those of you who have submitted to this journal, or are thinking about submitting, don’t worry I am not going to talk about Vibrant Gray. For the last two years I worked with a small journal in New York. I won’t give out the name directly since the current editorial staff (most of who I worked with) tends to be more tactful and discreet than I. A Google search will tell which journal this is, but since I have two last names it takes some searching.

My first piece of advice is that we are all in this together. I know that’s pretty cheesy but I feel like the larger community of writers tends to forget this. I don’t know that I have ever met an editor for a small literary journal or press who is not a writer themselves. I am sure there are some out there, but I haven’t met them.

My story to illustrate this point: while working on this print journal we receive a letter from an angry poet. The letter included two rejection letters we had sent him and note he had written. The poet was angry because the first rejection letter included a note that said we appreciated his work and would like to see more. The second rejection letter had nothing. The poet gripped about getting his hopes up and accused us of pulling a poor Southern boy’s leg.

As I said, this journal was small, we had a print run of just over a thousand, but yet we got over a thousand submissions for every bi-annual issue. It’s possible the poem was weeded out by other readers and editors before the first appreciative editor saw it. Another possibility is the original editor was gone. The journal was sponsored by our university which meant the whole staff changed every two or three years.

But, if the editors of Vibrant Gray were in this situation I feel that we would be just as disappointed as the poet. Since we are a new journal and receive maybe a hundred submissions per issue, we would definitely notice the poet and be just as upset that we still didn’t feel that his work fit in our journal.

My point is that publishing is a tough and tedious process. So is working as an editor. Remember most editors are writers too. They feel your pain.