I would have way more time to accomplish school work if I weren't constantly quoting movies...

So after I tried for a super-duper long time (that's an exact amount) to narrow down the choices for my mix-tape of earworms, I discovered that I simply couldn't do it. I had a plethora of songs (jefe, would you say that I have a plethora of pinatas?) and I was way too attached to too many of them so I decided to "pull over" (pull over! no, it's a cardigan but thanks for noticing!) to the theoretical side of the mix-tape road and switch themes with the hope of making it slightly easier on myself. I decided to make a CD for another one of my roommates who loves movies--especially horribly stupid ones (werewolf! werewolf? There wolf, there castle!)--as much as I do.

I had a much easier time with this topic as the pool of songs from which I could choose was considerably smaller. That being said, it was also harder to do transitions because I noticed that most movie songs tended to vary from the painfully saccharine, uber-depressing ballads a la "My Heart Will Go On" to the pump-up themes intended to leave the audience dancing, singing along, or just simply laughing, as in EuroTrip's "Scotty Doesn't Know" (God bless you and your sense of humor Matt Damon). The smaller supply of middle tempo tunes forced me to make some transitions I wasn't completely happy with, but couldn't come up with any other alternatives that I would have preferred.

I still feel like my playlist was a tad on the lengthy side and it would be hard to listen through the entire CD unless you were going on a road trip, but it really made me think about authors and all of the work they have to do to make sure their works are the appropriate length and have the right transitions. I found many parallels between the editing of my mix tape and how I normally go about editing things I write (although the mix tape was significantly more fun due to the fact that I got to sing and dance along). So, if I haven't dropped enough movie quotes for you already (that you SHOULD be able to identify if you have ANY kind of movie taste--according to me, at least) here are a couple more to keep you guessing--see if you can name them all!

"You have clearance, Clarence. Roger, Roger. What's the vector, Victor?"

"Phenomenal COSMIC POWERS....itty bitty living space"

"I do not mean to pry, but do you by any chance have six fingers on your right hand?"

"My advice to you is to start drinking heavily"

Add it to the list...

So add mix tapes, along with plagiarism and ghostwriting to the list of "things that are considerably harder to do than previously thought."  I'm used to making playlists on my iPod, and not really considering the order of the songs at all, due to the ease with which one can change songs.  I just make sure I've got the right genre and don't care as much about the end product because a) it's just for me and b) i can always change it--it's never permanent.  Making a mix CD for someone else, however, changes both.  I have to care what my roommate will think of it, and try to make sure that the transitions are appropriate so that the entire CD will be enjoyable to listen to--I don't have 60 tracks to mess around with (as I do with an iTunes playlist).  

For my roommate, I'm making a CD of earworms (a loan word from the German ohrwurm) which means songs that get stuck in your head and play over and over and over again.  My roommate always gets ridiculous songs stuck in her head that she of course feels the need to sing ad nauseum until the rest of the apartment is singing her horrible 80's tune right along with her.  This way, if we have a CD of all of these songs, we won't have to tolerate her painfully off-tune warbling.  I have a pretty solid idea for the tracklist and order, but there will definitely have to be some trimming come Monday (I think I have 30 songs right now).  As for you guys, any songs that ALWAYS get stuck in your head that you think I would be remiss if they were not included?  Any suggestions?

"Now here's crap"

Here's a selection from my cut-up:

Color information ("parvocellular RGCs") handedly redefined funny as the 007 wasn't bad despite in nonglaucomatous optic neuropaty is usua NBC's hit show the office canh in the all-important and can be tested with Ishihara or Hard-kily, smitten chicks will soon be de Besseges and was approximately 8% of male patients (and less the 28-year old actor is complett ahead of the decisive have congenital X-linked dyschromatopsia, ief Interviews with Hideous Men, the 2007 Tour when condition is not new and patients are usually we'll star opposite heavyweight Cristian Moreni failed in such cases the color deficit should be identifihich he plays--now here's crap.

The main pieces of writing I cut-up included an article from Cosmo about John Krasinski (better known as "Jim" from The Office), an article from VeloNews (a cycling magazine) about an up-and-coming cycling star from Belgium, and a scientific article the P.I. from my lab wrote entitled "Neuroprotection for Glaucoma." As a result of these extremely varying topics, my cut-up doesn't make much sense at all (althought this paragraph I used as an excerpt is the most intelligible). I really enjoyed finding a few humorous sentences when these all combined, because alone, most of these articles aren't very funny--the "now here's crap" came from two completely different sources and that's just how they happened to line up.

Overall, I didn't find the cut-up a very effective method for the kind of writing I would ever be doing. I can see that if you're a creative or fiction writer and need a new idea or word or even just a new way of thinking, how cut-ups would be an incredibly helpful and fast method of inspiration, but otherwise, I think it mostly just produces a lot of gibberish. Another positive note for cut-ups: ripping paper and pretending like you're making a collage in elementary school again is a VERY good stress relief :)

Mix Tape Mayhem

Freshman year, me, my roommate and two of our best friends had a Friday and Saturday night ritual in the dorm. We'd all get home from school/class or just wake up from our third nap of the day (Courtney) around five and grab some dinner at Frank's. After a delicious meal where our dirty dishes magically disappeared and became clean (how I miss those days), it was off to get ready to go out, which meant (insert trumpet fanfare here) SHOWER TIME! We lived in Kronshage and each bathroom had four shower stalls and one exceedingly loud CD player. We'd hop in the showers and blare the latest shower mix CD we made and turn up the music loud enough so we couldn't hear Courtney's tone-deaf, one-note singing. There is a definite art to the "Going out shower mix CD" and over the two years we lived in the dorms we perfected it. So here are my rules for the perfect mix CD in this scenario:

1. Everyone must know all of the words to all of the songs (i.e. REM's "It's the End of the World" works for NO ONE).

2. There must be at least one raunchy song that would be embarrassing to sing in front of your parental units (i.e. Tenacious D's F*** Her Gently)

3. The CD must contain no less than one old school Britney Spears (pre-shaving her head) or *NSYNC song that not only do you know the lyrics to, you can pretty much re-enact the entire music video frame by frame (you all know that you can mentally replay the whole "Oops, I Did it Again" video in your mind--it's okay, there's a lot of us).

4. There must be at least one song that one member of your group HATES but the rest of you love and due to the fact that it's on the middle of the track list and she has shampoo in her hair, she can't escape it (for us it was "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter--my roommate Kristen hated it to the core and we all loved how much she hated it).

5. Last but certainly not least, it should contain at least one rap song that sounds absolutely ridiculous coming out of your mouths and that you have to go on urbandictionary.com to understand half of the words that you're saying (this list of possibilities is astounding).

That's it--follow the rules and you'll not only have a great time getting ready to go out, but you'll also embarrass yourselves and annoy your dormmates--all in all, a great success.

Apparently I'm the only one...

I have read some pretty horrible books in my life--from one about a child whose telekinetic powers allow him to defeat an entire civilization of ants in outerspace to simply awful, cheesy romance novels that induce my gag reflex my roommates tell me I just have to read. I've always been able to finish them. I'm the kind of person that once I start a book, I finish it, no matter how horrifically craptastic, just so I know how it ends and that I persevered and finished it. Rhythm science is a first for me. I wasn't able to finish the assigned reading for Wednesday. Not because I didn't have time, or because I didn't try, but simply because the text was extremely off-putting and unpleasant to read. I found myself feeling like I do when I read aloud--going through the motions and "reading" but I'm not focusing on the actual words and thinking something else completely in my mind.

I know I'm in the minority of people who feel like this (I might even be the only one after listening to our discussion on Wednesday), but I feel like DJ Spooky is just trying way too hard to be different and loses a lot people who would be interested in his overall thesis simply by the way in which he presents his ideas. I don't find the hole in the book meaningful, as discussed in class. I find it irritating, and there simply so people will pick up his book in a bookstore and give it the "shock and awe" factor that might encourage people to buy it ("Cool, a hole in the book! Never seen this before--gotta buy it!"). Also, the way the text is presented on the page is extremely distracting. Reading the two inch width of text right by the crease is simply not necessary--nor are the random "illustrations" which interrupt his sentences with pictures of ghosts and playboy bunnies.

After class on Wednesday, with the interpretive ideas everyone had brought to the table, I sat down to attempt to read the book for the fifth time. Again, it was a no go. I know others love this book and it's an allegedly quick read, but honestly, I strongly disliked it (well, that that I could get through). I'll keep on trying, and hopefully I'll be able to finish it and derive some meaning from it, but as of right now, Rhythm Science looks to be the first book I've started and never finished.

Photoshop, Shmotoshop

I am technologically challenged. Simple as that. I struggle getting Microsoft Word to do what I want (anyone else have issues with the tab button?!?) let alone a complex image manipulation software. Needless to say, my attempts at visual sampling took MUCH longer than necessary and caused me to really think about what I wanted to add to/say in my project as it took me eons to actually visually portray my ideas. For my project I wanted to emphasize that copyright prevents creativity, the sharing of ideas, and the sampling of projects. The images I chose represent many areas of the arts (painting, writing, movies, TV shows, cartoons, and music). Some of the images I used represent works in the public domain (Shakespeare, Mozart) and some represent newer copyrighted works (Harry Potter, the Simpsons). Regardless of the free use clause or the fact that they're in the public domain, copyright is preventing reproductions and derivations. Congress keeps extending the boundaries of these copyrights and their length irreparably harming American culture simply because the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists (among many) use their incredible capital to pay off senators and representatives (as represented by the "blank check" in the center of the image).

This perpetual copyright and the lack of funding for free culture (or the creative commons started by Lessig) is also apparent in Kait's first sampling project. To "remix" her sample, I decided to modify it from cartoon form to real life. It is now Lawrence Lessig begging for money (and legislation and overall support) for his creative commons/free culture movement, but he is being ignored by most of the general public (as most homeless people/beggars are). I decided to only use the central image in her work to focus the attention on his plight and the condition of creativity in America (well, that and it took me over an hour to just figure out how to trace out Lessig's head and put it on a different picture).

Overall, I found this sampling project to be one of the most difficult ones for me--mostly due to my technological ineptitude (although the scathing comments from my ghostwritee during the ghostwriting experience place a close second). I also am not a very visual learner or thinker. I tend to like to use language (and rather wordy language at that) to express my feelings or thoughts on certain topics. For those reasons, I found that once again, this experience was more difficult and time-consuming than I originally anticipated. On a positive sidenote, it has given me a new appreciation for any person working with graphic arts or computers on a daily basis--if it were my job, I know computers would be getting smashed on a daily basis from sheer frustration.

Get some common sense!

The more and more I read of Free Culture the more I get frustrated with the extreme lack of common sense of so many parties involved. The beliefs of the warring sides are becoming so polarized and rigid (rather like some of our politicians right now) that they couldn’t care less about the immense collateral damage (the hindering of culture and creativity). There’s definitely many logical, reasonable solutions to many copyright problems, especially in regards to music downloading. It costs virtually nothing for record companies to post music online, yet on iTUNES and other servers it can cost as much as $1.99 to download. If the music companies would change the price to say, a quarter(ish), many more people would buy music legally instead of turning to illegal alternatives—I know I would be one of them. But instead, I think, companies keep boosting prices of online music when they think their profits are down due to filesharing, which then causes fewer people to buy their product, fileshare, and start the vicious cycle over and over again.

In regards to filesharing itself, I think the used bookstore rule should be applied to downloaded music—once it’s bought, you can do pretty much anything with it as long as it’s not reproduced and SOLD for money. Granted, every time you file share, some claim it’s a “copy,” but in reality it’s not much different than what most people do with their books and more importantly, you’re NOT making money off of it.

Also, I see this entire issue as a direct attack on technology. Years ago, people would loan each other records, or make mix tapes, or copy tapes and CDs and give them to their friends. Now, it is simply a more efficient and larger scale process, but the underlying concept has not changed since its original onset. When factories changed from using mostly people to produce their product to almost complete mechanization, there was certainly outrage at this new technology (oh,no! robots will take over the world—and that myriad people lost their jobs). Eventually, however, our society adapted to this new type of production and is the better and more advanced for it. The same can be said for music downloading. The government needs to stop intervening and allowing the RIAA’s frivolous lawsuits and allow technical evolution to occur.

RIAA should go MIA

I’ll admit it—I’m an ex-filesharer. In middle school I was all about Napster, I rocked Kazaa in high school, and in the dorms OurTunes allowed me to fileshare with everyone in the lakeshore area. I am a person who is a complete stickler for rules—I never even speed or jaywalk, yet I feel absolutely no remorse about any of the alleged “stealing” I’ve done over the years. Why? Simple—the RIAA. With millions upon millions of dollars in revenue, they feel the need to prosecute students and new technologies in an attempt to lose their monopoly on the music industry. Instead of investing in these new technologies and new ways to regulate them legally, they do their best to ban them and monetarily enforce compliance. I see it as a form of civil disobedience to fileshare and thus lack any remorse. Unfortunately, as much as I would love to continue, I’ve had to stop for fear of losing my life savings (my budget doesn’t really have room for a lawsuit) when the RIAA started prosecuting students here at Madison. I refuse, however, to buy any CDs or music on iTunes due to their outrageous cost, and the fact that I would be supporting the awful institution that is the RIAA.

The anecdotes told by Lawrence Lessig in Free Culture only support my previously held beliefs. The fact that the RIAA prosecuted a college student for modifying a search engine that inadvertently allowed students to fileshare and in essence robbed him blind angers me even more than just the few stories I’ve heard about UW-Madison students who were prosecuted. Just like Fast Food Nation has stopped me from eating at McDonalds, I think Free Culture has cemented my “boycott” of CDs and the music business in general. I’m not quite ready to give up on movies yet due to ovguide.com and all of the free movies I can stream—if that ever gets shut down, however, it might be a completely different story…

And the plagiarism award goes to...

The plagiarism assignment surprised me. I had thought that plagiarizing would make writing considerably easier and that it wouldn’t take more than an hour for me to write my essay. I was very, very wrong. I suppose if one plagiarizes poorly, that’s only how long it will take, but plagiarizing “well” I found difficult—especially combining the styles of the three articles from which I plagiarized.

As to my “good” plagiarizing technique, I actually used articles that I found on the library’s website—very scholarly, academic articles that I thought would be easier to find than it turns out they were (my group only found one statistic plagiarized in my paper). I also wrote my own intro, conclusion, and all of my transition sentences. I had to conjugate some verbs differently so the entire article flowed, and often times I moved whole clauses around in sentences so they would be more difficult to find. All of this editing and rearranging, however, took a significant amount of time. It got to the point where I was sick of trying to express myself through other people’s words and would’ve rather just written the paper myself and finished it in a shorter amount of time.

One thing I learned is that it is easier to get away with plagiarism than I thought—especially if you use more obscure sources that are available in print only and not online (that’s what Kait did in our group and she handedly won). As long as you take the time and effort to mix the plagiarized bits around, try to keep your overall style/voice, and cite a few things to throw people off track, I would say that it would be very difficult to catch most people. All those things, however, take a significant amount of time and in the end, I think most people who would be prone to plagiarism or not have any problems with it, would not be willing to expend the effort to blend in the copied bits. As for me, my plagiarism days are over—I would be way more stressed plagiarizing and waiting for people to catch me, than I would ever be if I just did the work myself (regardless of the quality). What about the rest of you? Do you think you could get away with plagiarism in another class? Would you ever consider doing it?

Who ya gonna call? Ghost(writing)busters!

Before this class, I hadn’t written an English paper since my junior year of high school (an extremely long four years ago). The papers I have written of late have been mainly scientific in nature and thus not focused on style, but rather on concise, accurate research and reporting. If not scientific papers, then they were Spanish papers being written with an emphasis on correct grammar and expression, style never being considered. This ghostwriting experience made me really think about my style and voice as a writer and what I really like about my writing.

I wrote a History paper for my roommate Anna who stylistically writes very different from me. She is very concise and to-the-point and strongly dislikes sentences with more than one comma and most adjectives and adverbs. She likes to put her “howevers” at the beginning of sentences and not use any flashy vocab. I’ve picked up on these patterns to her writing through editing some papers for her other classes and the samples she gave me. When I tried to emulate these patterns, however, I found it extremely difficult and more challenging than I had anticipated (see how my “howevers” always go in the middle?)

I really struggled to write as her and after awhile I just focused on finishing the paper and then went back and changed a few things to sound more like her. I threw in parts of me (my favorite words and a few complex sentences) but tried to keep my flowery voice to a minimum. After writing a respectable first draft (at least, according to my standards), I showed it to her and asked her what she thought and if it sounded like her at all. She attacked my paper with her red pen and with her words. Previously when she had edited my papers, she made minor changes, fixing my inevitable comma and punctuation errors and trying to curb my penchant for run-on sentences. I never felt like my style was attacked, however, just the English grammar I have never learned correctly and am pretty confident I never will. This time, however, was different. While talking to me, she denounced the organization of my writing, my thesis statements, and my “superfluous” vocabulary. My style and voice was the center of the criticism and not just my paper. This made it extremely personal and left me questioning myself as a writer.

After the initial shock, I started to look over the paper I’d written and began making the “Anna-like” corrections. I had a really hard time cutting down some of the sentences into shorter, choppy (at least according to me), concise phrases. Upon completion of these changes, I reread my paper and really disliked it. It didn’t sound like Anna or me and just ended up like a really bad combination of the two. So I went back and changed some of the things back to the way I had originally wrote them. I still kept most of the vocabulary changes and some of the structural changes, but I felt much better about the paper as a whole. So the paper I turned in, while I’m not 100% proud of it, I still feel much better about than the first edited draft I made.

Overall, ghostwriting has helped me find pride in my writing and make me think about what exactly defines my work and voice as a writer. I don’t think I would have an issue if Anna were to turn in my paper as her own, but I highly doubt she would. This experience made me realize that I could ghostwrite an emotionless, quasi-styleless scientific paper quite easily for someone (and I have), but when ghostwriting something that needs a definite voice and style, I would much prefer to use my own than emulate someone else’s. I had thought that ghostwriting was an impersonal un-credited act, but in reality it is much more personal than I ever could have thought.

Mark it down on your calendar: I agree with Bill O'Reilly

Right now, the presidential primaries are providing our English class with perfect plagiarism fodder. Barack Obama has been accused of plagiarizing his friend, and the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick. Upon first listen, yes, the two speeches are startlingly similar. To me, however, this is not a case of plagiarism, due to two main factors: intent and common knowledge.

As a student living in fear of plagiarism, intent is one of the most important qualifiers to me in defining plagiarism. There are numerous, university-defined ways in which one can be accused of plagiarism without even being aware of it. For example, I could independently come up with an idea that someone in my class has already thought of. If I write my paper and they come across as too similar, no matter how independently written, it can be deemed plagiarism. The fact that I did not intend to plagiarize holds no importance. We are students and we’re bound to make mistakes in citation—whether simply forgetting, accidentally removing, or incorrectly formatting our citations. These should be teaching and learning opportunities, not failures or expulsions. This same principle can be applied to Barack Obama. He has told the media that he did not mean to plagiarize and knowing what a big deal the media has made of this, he would have cited Patrick in his speech. I think that Obama only acquiesced to “apologize” and say he should have cited Patrick to quiet the ridiculous media coverage. I argue that what Barack Obama said is not plagiarism, simply common knowledge that does not need to be cited.

There are a few famous presidential quotes that almost every citizen of the United States of America knows. FDR’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream,” and even lines from the Declaration of Independence. I believe that everyone has heard these lines so frequently over the course of there lives that many would not even know to whom to attribute them. When anyone thinks of famous American quotes, these are always the first on the list. The fact that Barack Obama used these exact same quotes as another man in a speech is coincidental but not very unlikely considering the subject matter. Politics uses the same rhetoric ad nauseum, and I doubt this will be the first or the last “plagiarism” issue the media brings up in the coming months. To me, Obama didn’t plagiarize and thus does not need to apologize for his lack of citation. Granted, I am an Obama supporter, but even Fox News’ conservative anchor, Bill O’Reilly agrees with me —what do you think? Did Obama plagiarize? What’s the “punishment” in high profile cases?

Ultimate Misery

After watching Misery, the creepy story of Annie Wilkes who kidnaps and brutally tortures an author after he kills off one of her favorite characters, I got to thinking about what books I have read that left with such dissatisfaction that I would be tempted to write a very strongly worded letter to the author (I doubt I would ever reach Annie’s insanity in real life). I decided that one of those books would be the latest in the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. J.K. Rowling pulled the ultimate cop-out in her most recent novel. The epilogue is cheesy, corny, and ultimately unnecessary and left me with such a lingering saccharine aftertaste in my mouth that had not been present in her previous six novels that I had to pretend I had never read the ending. I know numerous people enjoyed the epilogue because they felt it completely wrapped up Harry’s story and left them with a definite sense of conclusion. I, on the other hand, prefer open endings where I can determine for myself what happens and change the story as I see fit. Gone With the Wind, for that very reason, is one of my favorite books. I can decide if Scarlett and Rhett get back together and on what terms, and one day if my mood is different while reading, I can change what happens to them.

Lately, however, it hasn’t been books that have left me dissatisfied, but rather wonderful books that have been brutally murdered in their conversion to film. Love in the Time of Cholera, a wonderful book by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, is magical realism at its finest and lost all of its power, mystery, and romance in adaptation to a film. Slaughtered, would be a NICE way to put it.

However, the prize for worst film adaptation would have to go to my absolute favorite childhood novel, Ella Enchanted. This book takes the classic Cinderella story and alters it so the heroine is no longer a weeping Princess, but rather a strong, witty girl who can save her entire kingdom. Upon watching it in the theater, however, the serious novel was adapted into a horrendous comedy with the satire, moral and joy gone, and replaced with horrible coverings of Queen’s “Somebody to Love” and Elton John’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” complete with tacky dancing. It was enough to make me want to break every DVD ever produced of that film. What about all of you? Any horrible endings to books that make you want to gouge your eyes out (or the authors)? Any book-to film conversions that make you want to pull an Annie Wilkes?

The E-mail Mailman

I got an accusatory phone call from my grandma about two weeks ago. I answered the phone with a simple “Hello?” and was greeted with the shrill response, “Why haven’t you answered your Granny Annie’s five e-mails?” I knew I hadn’t received any of her e-mails, but she was insistent upon the fact that she sent them exactly the way I had taught her when she got her first computer a few months ago. After reviewing the exact steps she took, I finally realized she had been adding a letter to the end of my e-mail address. I explained that that was why I hadn’t been getting her e-mails and she scoffed on the phone, “Well, that’s close enough—the mailman should’ve been able to catch that!”

All of these new technologies, iPhones, PDAS, and their subsequent power, as shown in the reading about smart mobs, is overwhelming and surprising at times, even to astute technological navigators, let alone those of an older generation. E-mail is just about as far as I’ll push my grandma technologically—I fear explaining Facebook, MySpace, podcasts, or simply texting and the accompanying new definitions of “communities” and “friends” would, to her, just seem implausible and more importantly, unnecessary.

These new communities have definitely altered the average teen/college student’s daily life. I think one of the areas most affected by these communities is the emergence of students who are antisocial in physical, real-world communities, but very social in online communities. They know the profiles of everybody in their World of Warcraft network and all of their MySpace friends, yet remain secluded from real communities because of all of their time devoted to online activities. This irony of being antisocial in order to become social online, is a common phenomenon in dorm rooms. Everybody knew those few kids in their dorms who holed up in their rooms on their computers or Xbox’s practically all day. The problem I think this is creating for many of our “technologically advanced” generation is a lack of real physical interactions. Dumping a girlfriend or boyfriend by text or IM, while not socially respectable is becoming more and more common. People can listen to all of their lectures online via podcasts without ever showing up to class and interacting with their classmates. The ways these new communities and technologies manifest to our detriment in our daily lives is astounding. Don’t get me wrong--I don’t think we should just ignore all of these new developments, that would be, as cliché as it sounds, “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” I do think, however, that as students, and technological junkies, we need to be more discerning in our uses for these new developments and emphasize more personal, face-to-face interactions so we can continue to interact with different generations and be seen as socially astute in all media.

The Da Vinci Code vs. War and Peace

While we were discussing originality and the concept of high versus low literacy in class on Wednesday, I was continuously reminded of an article I had recently read in the New York Times. The article is about Dan Brown and how his success with the Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and the like has spawned myriad copycats hoping to make millions ripping off his “formula.” Dan Brown is rarely applauded for his writing style but rather his catchy, easy-to-read, rather formulaic novels. No one would ever consider putting any of his works in the same category as those of Dickens, Hemingway, or even Carl Hiaasen. Yet, his books remain some of the bestselling of recent years and millions of people are eagerly anticipating the arrival of his next work. This irony, that the bestselling books aren’t the ones deemed the “best” books, causes one to think about what or who determines what is considered great or even good literature.

I think that the general public's opinion should have more sway in this determination. Granted, I’m not saying that classes at universities should be taught about trashy romance novels or choose your own adventure books, but something has to be said for novels and writings that appeal to the general public, or the “Great Unwashed.” There is a reason that millions upon millions of people have read The Da Vinci Code, and the people have only read War and Peace are those who were forced to read it in school. The fact that War and Peace is considered a great, classic book, and The Da Vinci Code is literature for the lower masses proves that this low vs. high dichotomy in literature still exists in today’s society.

An interesting manifestation of the low vs. high literacy dichotomy is in regards to originality. Originality, according to Rebecca Moore Howard, is one of the four main characteristics of a modern author. Yet, as evident by the many successful of Dan Brown “copycat” novels discussed in the New York Times, the general public doesn’t necessarily want or demand originality, but rather more is content with the same, amusing writing. This phenomenon can be seen in all media, including TV, film, and radio, not just books.

I have a hard time dismissing the opinion of millions of people in regards to what’s good entertainment and writing, and accepting the opinions of only literary scholars, but at the same time, I have a very difficult time with the general public’s acceptance of a lack of originality in writings. I guess I’m still undecided as to what exactly determines “good” writing and whether or not I should agree with the general public, literary scholars, or simply ignore both.

About Me

I'm a junior majoring in Spanish and biology (that is, if I'd every get around to actually declaring them...). I studied abroad last spring in Sevilla, Spain and really enjoyed having 60 and 70 degree weather in January and this Wisconsin winter is coming as a brutal shock to my system. I am cycling fanatic and have a countdown going every year until July when the Tour de France starts and I get to cheer on my favorites that are left after the inevitable doping scandal and subsequent purge of riders and/or teams. As of right now (and this is bound to change on a weekly basis) I am planning on going to med school after taking a year off to teach English in southern Spain. I really hate camels, love the TV show Lost, and am still heartbroken after the Green Bay Packers' loss.