The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media by Jeff Rice
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Rice’s The Rhetoric of Cool is like a less antagonistic, less carnivalesque version of Geoffrey Sirc’s English Composition as a Happening, but like Sirc, he argues that Composition has missed something. In particular, Rice focuses on 1963 and compositions outside of the academy that composition studies ignored — compositions that provide models for digital media compositions. By focusing on these compositions (by Burroughs, McLuhan, Kerouac, and Kenneth Anger, among many others), Rice points to various rhetorical moves made by these compositions that are useful for digital media, but often ignored when composition studies focuses on student writing. Each move is dedicated a chapter: Chora, Appropriation, Juxtaposition, Commutation, Nonlinearity, and Imagery. Implementing as much of these techniques as he can in the medium of the book, Rice’s argument is fairly compelling. He implements Chora quite well, riffing off various definitions and uses of ‘cool,’ though being clear that he doesn’t mean ‘cool’ to be ‘trendy’ or ‘hip.’
As someone who agrees with a lot of what Rice has to say, I thought he belabored a few of his points for a bit too long, but perhaps this is necessary for more resistant readers. His book is (obviously) well researched, easy to follow, and enlightening. His suggestions might be hard to implement, given the institutional and material constraints of some composition programs, but the field should definitely be moving in the ways Rice suggests.
