Quote from Walter Benjamin Essay

Walter Benjamin quotes Georges Duhamel's spirited rejection of the format of the film:

"a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries...a spectacle which requires no concentration and pre-supposes no intelligence...which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a 'star' in Los Angeles."

Precisely my thoughts all this time. Wonderful expression.

From The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age by Walter Benjamin

"During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well."

"The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception."

Small stuff.

I'm writing this blog to record a specific quote from a lecture on reading by the same professor that I keep quoting over and over because his points are so magnificent.

"Each of us can go more deeply into the work and enrich it for ourselves. In this course, we begin by reading that way to make the experience of reading ever richer. What we do with it depends on what we write."

The requirements of the writing portion of the course:
Your Audience-and-Purpose is to enrich the reading of the intelligent and attentive student in this course. (270-320 words)

More from the Professor

"Because attention is limited, to understand works more deeply we need to slow down and take note of aspects of the reading that we find significant. Then, using those notes and reviewing the work, we can come to a hypothesis about what that significance might be. "

Between the advice that this professor has offered even before the course has begun, the intro courses I've been taking on writing, and the book I've recently been reading, I've really learned a lot about slowing down and reading more closely and deeply, as I touched upon in a previous entry. I hope to continue putting this knowledge to use in my own reading and writing so that, if I am admitted, by the time I reach graduate school, I will be caught up to where I ought to be.  

Henry James Imitation

I'm reading this book called How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish and the idea is that in order to write and read sentences well, you must not only become familiar with some of the multitudes of forms of sentences, but you must also practice explicating them in order to get a good idea of how the forms work and how you can use them to your advantage. If you can carefully consider a sentence and explain what relationship each word plays in it, you will better appreciate that sentence and be better able to create one like it yourself.

So. He quotes Henry James's story "The Real Thing:"
"When the porter's wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced "A gentleman--with a lady, sir," I had, as I often had in those days, for the wish was father to the thought, an immediate vision of sitters."

Fish explains, "The force of James's sentence depends on just such an interruption [of verbs and objects], which puts a screen between the reader and the immediacy that might be the goal of another writer who was trying to impart information succinctly or issue orders with the force of a command or pass down a recipe."

So, here is my attempt at writing a sentence like James's as instructed by Fish:

Kernel assertion: "the cat drank."
Back up in time to prior action or event presented in dependent clause: "Because she had come from an abusive household and was never before ensured victuals,"
Reflection: "it felt to her like they were withheld as punishment,"
Slow down concluding assertion: "savoring every drop of the proof of her new owner's love and generosity,"

All together now: "Because she had come from an abusive household and was never before ensured victuals -- it felt to her like they were withheld as punishment -- the cat, savoring every drop of her new owner's love and generosity, drank."