Roxanne

My final project is a combination of two essays that I previously wrote during my freshman English 101 course. I expanded upon the concept of childhood reading associations and its direct correlation for reading preferences. Below both original essays and the final project I have also written a self evalutation about my work.

The quotes I used in my essay title “The Psychology of Reading” were from the book “The Gutenberg Elegies” written by Sven Birkerts and the source is sited under the category Personal experiences/ Compost. This work was completed within accordance of the honor code at Washington College.

Autobiographical literature reveals deep insights into an author’s character. While reading The Gutenberg Elegies, I began to ponder whether one’s childhood experiences shape future behavior and attitudes. Birkerts, the author, expresses his deep emotional attachment towards reading in many of his excerpts. He is a troubled individual I theorize his conflicts evolved from experiences during adolescence. My childhood memories with my mother have indeed shaped my adoration for reading. Therefore, I strongly believe childhood experiences shape one’s attitude towards reading.

Birkerts spent much of his youth reading for “pleasure” (35). He read in “isolation” describing the reading as “a private resonance, a daydream,” and more descriptively “a moveable feast” (35). This deep attachment to reading evolved from his need for “a refuge” (35). The overbearing personality and “strictness” of Birkerts’s father created Birkerts’s complex attitude towards reading. Birkerts’s father’s opinion was that “doing [was] prized over thinking” and reading was considered a “feminine” act (38). Birkerts’s mother, on the other hand, praised reading. Like Birkerts’s “she read for pleasure, company, for escape,” and “there was never a time when she did not have one book going” (38). Birkerts’s attitude towards literature is now disjointed, due to the conflicting attitudes from both guardians.

Birkerts passion for reading grew as he aged. Reading was a “dreamy sensuousness” and the pages he viewed were “tantalizing” (35). His urge to consume every book was a “direct outgrowth of a love of reading” (34). Birkerts uses strong emotional diction to convey his desire to read; this view of literature seems very straightforward. You may not think this man has a conflicted attitude towards reading. I disagree. As I read The Gutenberg Elegies I observed many oddities in Birkerts statements about literature. When Birkerts describes his occupation as “a book reviewer” he describes the job as “that thing [he] so confidently scorned” (33). This is a very strange statement for a literature lover to say; I hypothesize, though Birkerts loves literature, he feels embarrassed to have a literary occupation. Birkerts has an unconscious view that a career in literature is insufficient or even “feminine,” as Birkerts father would put (35).

Birkerts’s troubles with the written word were not rarities. When Birkerts was a young adult he decided to move to Maine with his girlfriend; the plan was for them to live in isolation and become excellent writers. A good idea in theory, but the plan was flawed. Birkerts could not write. Though Birkerts had no trouble “finding joy” in solitude while reading; writing was very challenging (39). Birkerts wrote some “terse openings for what [he] hoped might, with some coaxing, become stories,” but the attempt was futile (54). As Birkerts puts “the soothing futurity at the core of the fantasy was gone” (54). So what happened? It is my belief that Birkerts’s disturbed view of literature affected the way he wrote. Birkerts loved literature but could not have his dream profession; his parents raised him to have conflicting views of literature. Literature cannot fully consume Birkerts’s life because his subconscious replays his father’s voice every time he begins to write; reading and writing are what one does when “all other options have been exhausted” (38).

Like Birkerts, I believe that my personal attitude towards reading was shaped by my childhood experiences with my family. During my formative years, I spent the long summers reading with my mother. On warm days, my mother and I would sunbathe for hours while we consumed literature. We would lay a soft blanket over the crisp grass and lay out all day reading. The environment was soothing and pleasurable. The memories I have of reading are images of warm wonderful sunrays, velvety blankets, cool lemonade, and closeness to my mother. This detailed moment left me with an undeniable passion for reading. The gratifying experience left me with a strong association of literature with nurturing and comfort. An incident from my childhood shaped my attitude towards reading for the rest of my life.

As I grew older my mother constantly pushed books into my view. She believed much the opposite of Birkerts’s father; her opinion was that books were a treasure trove to be discovered. Inside books is the knowledge one needs to grow, survive, and thrive. In today’s technological world literature is pushed to the background, while television, computers, and ipods are cherished. The reason I stuck to literature was the strong positive association I experienced while reading, and my mother forbade most electronic entertainment in the house. Thinking and reading was valued over observing a computer or television screen.

Another moment in my childhood that greatly shaped my attitude towards reading was in kindergarten. I still have the memory clear in my mind. It was any other day at my kindergarten center, Great Expectations; all the kids were sitting on the floor. In the classroom I had noticed very few books in the class, something I was not used to at home. I was sitting reading a Berenstein Bears book, when a classmate came over to tell me the lesson for the day was starting. Our lesson that day was supposed to be about reading; I was excited, considering there were few books in the classroom. We were learning the alphabet. I realized at that moment that I was much farther ahead in my reading abilities than many of the other students. I was proud of my aptitudes and I wanted to greater expand my knowledge that moment on. This was a very significant instant in time because I realized that I was the only one who enjoyed reading; most of the other children struggled to learn just the alphabet. I attributed my abilities to hours spent with my parents reading.

Your childhood molds your attitude toward reading. Birkerts’s passion for reading changed due to the contradictory attitudes of his guardians, while my fervor for reading derived from the time spent bonding with my mother. Parental influence can significantly change a person’s passion for a subject.

Hypertext and technologically influenced literature has a schizophrenic style making the message of the work incoherent and unaccomplished. The work is unaccomplished because it lacks a theme, plot, and a narrator. Particular aspects of the work, such as the storymap layout, the disjointed sentences and boxes, are obscure and incomprehensible. The material aspect of the story overwhelms the work.

Schizophrenia “is a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements.” Patchwork Girl is a schizophrenic work, as described by Shelley Jackson in Stitch Bitch. The work is schizophrenic because the organization of the story is inconsistent. The web mapping is difficult to navigate and challenging to understand. The links are continuous, but the cyclical layout is frustrating to use. Traversing through the layout was difficult in addition to the overall challenge of the new medium; these components distract the reader from the actual content in the novel. I was unable to find a plot, a narrator, or a main character in the story due to the constant interruptions of clicking on links, getting lost in the web work, and rereading the same material that appears as I pass through the material.

Navigating through the work is complicated and time consuming. The first image the reader sees is the story map of the work. In the story map there is a picture of various boxes with several different topics. One can click on the boxes and several links will appear for the reader to choose from; the reader decides what pathway to take when reading the story. The links that appear are connected to the previous box or link in some way, but there isn’t always a coherent and logical pattern that the appearing links follow.

Reading in this manner seems uneven and jagged. The only logical way I found to read Patchwork Girl was through the outline view, where the different links are presented in a list.

Even this method became confusing and difficult, for the links under each category, such as the bad dream section, were unsound and illogical. I feel that the work is insubstantial and its reputation as a measurable work is derived from its innovative material but the overall focus of the work is absent. As Birkerts says “we are taken most by the look of it all-the compact, crisp, high-resolution design that inspires confidence.” The flashy materiality of the work overwhelms the reader, preventing her from grasping the deeper meaning of the novel.

A specific part in Patchwork Girl that I find particularly taxing to read is the bad dream section under designs, where the author lists random thoughts. The writing in this section is a list of random phrases or words, such as “peek a boo” and “puss in the corner,” that have no relation to one another. This section was written as if the main character was dreaming disjointed thoughts. I understand why the author listed the bad dreams in choppy syntax; the writing is metaphoric for the literal scarring of the female monster and the monster’s coarse destroyed body. I feel that the metaphor overwhelms the work, distracting the reader from ever comprehending the deeper aspects of the story, like an overall theme or message.

In my opinion the most important parts of reading are the overall message, theme, and plot of the work. When I read I want to be carried by the story, whereas the point of Patchwork Girl is keep the reader aware of reality. Birkerts view of literature is similar to mine, where Jackson specifically wrote Patchwork Girl to contradict the normal perception of the reading experience. Jackson’s view of reading is that one should lose themselves in the work to think beyond self image. Jackson wants to “invent a new kind of self” that “changes directions easily, sheds parts and assimilate new ones.” This relates to the schizophrenic manner of the work. Jackson wants inconsistency in people’s selves; she expresses that view in Patchwork Girl. She wants to go against the life advice received to “focus, choose, specialize,” so she writes a work that opposes all of these things. Birkerts believes that losing individuality while reading is damaging to the person and degrades the work as a whole. Birkerts believes “the soul is that part of us that smelts meaning and tries to derive a sense of purpose from experience.” So if a work doesn’t have a meaning and can’t nourish the soul with purpose, it is a failure. I agree with Birkerts in that a work of literature should send a message to the reader and make her think about life and what the message of that work means to her. In Patchwork Girl, I could not find a message and so I believe the work was not accomplished.

The work, in my opinion, was not accomplished based on my perceptions of what a novel is supposed to accomplish. The way a novel is read is in a linear manner with a clear narrator, plot, and theme. Patchwork Girl does not clearly present any of these key components in the story. Some may call this work bad writing, but maybe it calls for a bad reading. What I mean by bad reading is that when a person reads the work they should think in incoherent terms; they should think of each box as an individual story with an individual message. A person should think of the work as a networking system, where each different box is communicating a different message. The work should be read in spatial terms and the work shouldn’t be read in traditional linear terms, but in a sporadic method. Reading the book in traditional terms, the work fails as a whole with the lack of organization, plot, theme, and narration.

Autobiographical literature reveals deep insights into an author’s character. While reading The Gutenberg Elegies, I began to ponder whether one’s childhood experiences shape future behavior and attitudes. Birkerts, the author, expresses his deep emotional attachment towards reading in many of his excerpts. He is a troubled individual; I theorize that his conflicts evolved from experiences during adolescence. My childhood memories with my mother have indeed created my adoration for reading; therefore, I strongly believe childhood experiences shape one’s attitude towards reading. The childhood experiences that decide one’s prevalence for reading can also change what style of reading one might prefer. Patchwork Girl is a work that accentuates technology interface and reader communication; her disjointed and spatial stylistic approach to writing directly correlates with childhood attitudes towards reading.

Birkerts spent much of his youth reading for “pleasure” (35).  He read in “isolation” describing the reading as “a private resonance, a daydream,” and more descriptively “a moveable feast” (35). This deep attachment to reading evolved from his need for “a refuge” (35). The overbearing personality and “strictness” of Birkerts’s father created Birkerts’s complex attitude towards reading. Birkerts’s father’s opinion was that “doing [was] prized over thinking” and reading was considered a “feminine” act (38). Birkerts’s mother, on the other hand, praised reading. Like Birkerts, “she read for pleasure, company, for escape,” and “there was never a time when she did not have one book going” (38). Birkerts’s attitude towards literature is now disjointed, due to the conflicting attitudes from both guardians.

Birkerts’s passion for reading grew as he aged. Reading was a “dreamy sensuousness” and the pages he viewed were “tantalizing” (35). His urge to consume every book was a “direct outgrowth of a love of reading” (34). Birkerts uses strong emotional diction to convey his desire to read; this view of literature seems very straightforward. You may not think this man has a conflicted attitude towards reading. I disagree. As I read The Gutenberg Elegies I observed many oddities in Birkerts statements about literature. When Birkerts describes his occupation as “a book reviewer” he describes the job as “that thing [he] so confidently scorned” (33). This is a very strange statement for a literature lover to say; I hypothesize that, though Birkerts loves literature, he feels embarrassed to have a literary occupation. Birkerts has an unconscious view that a career in literature is insufficient or even “feminine,” as Birkerts’s father would put it (35).

Birkerts’s troubles with the written word were not rarities. When Birkerts was a young adult he decided to move to Maine with his girlfriend; the plan was for them to live in isolation and become excellent writers. A good idea in theory, but the plan was flawed. Birkerts could not write. Though Birkerts had no trouble “finding joy” in solitude while reading; writing was very challenging (39). Birkerts wrote some “terse openings for what [he] hoped might, with some coaxing, become stories,” but the attempt was futile (54). As Birkerts puts “the soothing futurity at the core of the fantasy was gone” (54). So what happened? It is my belief that Birkerts’s disturbed view of literature affected the way he wrote. Birkerts loved literature but could not have his dream profession; his parents raised him to have conflicting views of literature. Literature cannot fully consume Birkerts’s life because his subconscious replays his father’s voice every time he begins to write; reading and writing are what one does when “all other options have been exhausted” (38).

Like Birkerts, I believe that my personal attitude towards reading was shaped by my childhood experiences with my family. During my formative years, I spent the long summers reading with my mother. On warm days, my mother and I would sunbathe for hours while we consumed literature. We would lay a soft blanket over the crisp grass and lay out all day reading. The environment was soothing and pleasurable. The memories I have of reading are images of warm wonderful sunrays, velvety blankets, cool lemonade, and closeness to my mother. This detailed moment left me with an undeniable passion for reading. The gratifying experience left me with a strong association of literature with nurturing and comfort. These incidents from my childhood shaped my attitude towards reading for the rest of my life.

As I grew older, my mother constantly pushed books into my view. She believed much the opposite of Birkerts’s father: her opinion was that books were a treasure trove to be discovered. Inside books is the knowledge a person needs to grow, survive, and thrive. In today’s technological world literature is pushed to the background, while television, computers, and iPods are cherished. The reason I stuck to literature was the strong positive association I experienced while reading and my mother forbade most electronic entertainment in the house. Thinking and reading was valued over observing a computer or television screen.

Another moment in my childhood that greatly shaped my attitude towards reading was in kindergarten. I still have the memory clear in my mind. It was any other day at my kindergarten center, Great Expectations; all the kids were sitting on the floor. In the classroom I had noticed very few books in the class, something I was not used to at home. I was sitting reading a Berenstein Bears book, when a classmate came over to tell me the lesson for the day was starting. Our lesson that day was supposed to be about reading; I was excited, considering there were few books in the classroom. We were learning the alphabet. I realized at that moment that I was much farther ahead in my reading abilities than many of the other students. I was proud of my aptitudes and I wanted to greater expand my knowledge that moment on. This was a very significant instant in time because I realized that I was the only one who enjoyed reading; most of the other children struggled to learn just the alphabet. I attributed my abilities to hours spent with my parents reading.

Your childhood molds your attitude toward reading and thereby your preference for traditional books or computer interfaces. Birkerts’s passion for reading changed due to the contradictory attitudes of his guardians, while my fervor for reading derived from the time spent bonding with my mother. Strong positive associations for reading that were formed during childhood can remain with an individual throughout their lifetime and determine their preference for technological literature or more traditional books.

Birkerts constantly degrades technological literature in society today. He believes that technological literature today is quick and many people today find print “too slow, too hard” and even “irrelevant to the excitements of the present” (20). These perceptions Birkerts has towards technology are because of his deep attachment to the traditional form of a literature: books. The smell of a book and material form of a book are strong positive associations Birkerts has formed in his childhood. This strong association has remained with Birkerts and holds fast when he is confronted with technology. Birkerts describes his experience with reading: “I tipped up and back in my chair, clicked and clicked again, waiting patiently for the empowering rush that ought to come when worlds open upon other worlds and old limits collapse” (151). Birkerts did not enjoy his experience with the hypertext and computer interface because when he reads he wants to be transported to another place. This experience is not possible when reading work on a computer because of the constant interaction with the computer’s interface (the constant clicking with the mouse).

When I read I want to be carried by the story, what Birkerts calls “the empowering rush that ought to come when worlds open upon other worlds” (151). I believe in technological work, some elements, such as setting and detailed diction, do not hold the same importance. The constant interaction with the computer interface prevents the reader from getting caught up in the story, so setting and detail aren’t needed because the reader can’t fully imagine the scene anyway. I think the quality of the work is lessened due to the distracting interface. The reader can’t fully appreciate the work of the writer and the choice to use a computer interface with different web pages can be considered “stylistically uninspired” (151).

Patchwork Girl is a schizophrenic work, as described by Shelley Jackson in Stitch Bitch. The work is schizophrenic because the organization of the story is inconsistent. The web mapping is difficult to navigate and challenging to understand. The links are continuous, but the cyclical layout is frustrating to use. Traversing through the layout was difficult in addition to the overall challenge of the new medium; these components distract the reader from the actual content in the novel. I was unable to find a plot, a narrator, or a main character in the story due to the constant interruptions of clicking on links, getting lost in the web work, and rereading the same material that appears as I pass through the material.

Navigating through the work is complicated and time consuming. The first image the reader sees is the story map of the work. In the story map there is a picture of various boxes with several different topics. One can click on the boxes and several links will appear for the reader to choose from; the reader decides what pathway to take when reading the story. The links that appear are connected to the previous box or link in some way, but there isn’t always a coherent and logical pattern that the appearing links follow. Reading in this manner seems uneven and jagged. The only logical way I found to read Patchwork Girl was through the outline view, where the different links are presented in a list.

Even this method became confusing and difficult, for the links under each category, such as the bad dream section, were unsound and illogical. I feel that the work is insubstantial and its reputation as a measurable work is derived from its innovative material but the overall focus of the work is absent. As Birkerts says “we are taken most by the look of it all-the compact, crisp, high-resolution design that inspires confidence.” The flashy materiality of the work overwhelms the reader, preventing her from grasping the deeper meaning of the novel.

A specific part in Patchwork Girl that I find particularly taxing to read is the bad dream section under designs, where the author lists random thoughts. The writing in this section is a list of random phrases or words, such as “peek a boo” and “puss in the corner,” that have no relation to one another. This section was written as if the main character was dreaming disjointed thoughts. I understand why the author listed the bad dreams in choppy syntax: the writing is metaphoric for the literal scarring of the female monster and the monster’s coarse, destroyed body. However, I feel that the metaphor overwhelms the work, distracting the reader from ever comprehending the deeper aspects of the story, like an overall theme or message.

I believe that the challenges I had reading Patchwork Girl evolved from my strong positive childhood associations with reading. I have grown attached to a specific form of literature, the materiality of books. I am accustomed to a certain type of reading, linear, organized, and descriptive. When I am exposed to technological literature all of my deep attachments for reading are shattered because of the drastic difference between the computer screen and the pages of a book. I can’t enjoy the reading experience because my partiality towards books hinders my ability to judge the work objectively. I am emotionally connected to books because every time I read a book I associate the experience with the comforting feelings I felt while reading with my mother. Similar emotions must emit from Birkerts when he reads and I assume these attachments towards reading prevent Birkerts from taking in the technology as a written work. As Birkerts would say there are “those of us who live by the word, who are still embedded in the ancient and formerly stable reader-writer relationship” those who are “habit-bound, unable to grasp the scope of the transformation” (152). We are the readers who cannot get past the shock of the computer screen to fully appreciate the work’s integrity. We are the readers who won’t be able to wholly embrace the technology wave throughout literature because of the memorable and heartening reading experiences we encountered during childhood.

Self Evaluation:

I combined the work of my first and last essays in class to create my final project. My original idea was to combine the two and address the relationship between childhood associations and reading preferences, between books and computers. When I first began this project I wanted to expand on several different key ideas, including the one mentioned above. I wanted to talk about my idea of bad reading and I also wanted to find more evidence to prove my theory that childhood associations and reading preferences are directly related. While combining the two essays I wanted to include more of Birkerts ideas about computers and his reading experience with them, for they support my own perceptions and are similar to my own experiences with reading on a computer screen. I soon found out that I would not be able to include all of these ideas in my essay or I would have written too lengthy of a paper. These ideas I will keep in mind for future projects or even just for my own enjoyment. I would like to expand more on these ideas. I enjoyed this assignment because I had a second chance to go back and rework my original papers. I thought it was interesting that my first and last essay could relate so easily to one another. I think my thesis in this essay is very clear and that my ideas were concise and original. I also think my use of quotes and my comparisons to Birkerts were relevant and effective. An aspect of the paper I am concerned about are my opinions coming through too strongly in the work and that having a negative effect on the reader (like Birkerts being too opinionated in his work and scaring away readers). I am also concerned about the informal nature of the paper. I used sentences that were a bit personal and talked directly to the reader; I used words like “you” and “we.” I wanted the reader to feel personally connected to the work and form an opinion about the subject as they read, but I don’t want the paper to seem informal and thereby not objective.