I’m still reading Sirc’s book, and he draws a metaphor between writing and architecture (3-5), which leads him to discuss artists who realize they must work outside the architecture given them:
They practiced an art which interrupted the passivity of the spectator so that, as McLuhan & Fiore put it, “the audience becomes a participant in the total electric drama” (101). It was an art that frustrated conventions in order to allow other meanings to surface. It involved a re-appreciation of everyday material in order to complicated the distinction between art and life. This attempt resulted in new compositional forms: Assemblages, Combines, Neo-Dada works, and, most genre-blurringly, the Happenings. (5)
Sirc cites McLuah, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Meaning is the Message. New York: Random House, 1967.
Sirc’s book is also a reminder to read Jerry Farber’s The Student as Nigger (of which I’ve read a portion) New York: Pocket Books 1970.
Also, Sirc cites an article by a U of Oregon grad student in the 1960s, Charles Deemer, titled “English Composition as a Happening,” College English 29 (November 1967): 121-126. This essay is a collage of various soundbites expressing frustration and espousing the discontent of the 1960s (Sirc 6).
On the fact that English journal articles discuss how biologists write and not the “wonderful stuff—raising and reflecting on key compositional issues—” of Duchamp, Pollock, and others: “Frankly, I don’t care how a biologist writes” (8). Wonderful!!!!
“This is not Freshman English as a Happening, this is Freshan English as a Corporate Seminar” (9).
“I like how the blurring [of genres] messes up a stable reading; it energizes a text or scene, preventing it from becoming fixed” (12).
Hi Michael–
Still enjoying your k-log!
I have one small correction to your book title; the correct title is The Medium is the Massage by McLuhan and Fiore. You might get a kick out of the LP that spun off that book, available at the UBU web site.
Also a comment on “Frankly, I don’t care how a biologist writes” (8). As someone who really admires Sirc, but also teaches WAC, this line has always bothered me. I am developing a course called “Writing in the Health Professions” which, by title, might sound dreadful, but in fact I will be exposing Nurses and Pharmacists etc. to the literature of medice, to k-logging, and getting them to separate the fact and the fiction in health reporting, among other things. I have found it fascinating to research how people in the medical profession use writing (as transaction and therapy), and prepping the course has made me consider a career move: medical writer!
Thanks for correcting the book title, Kevin – I can find it in the library now!
Yes, as someone who is going to be the Writing Intensive Curriculum GTA next year, I too have trouble with it. I also work in the Writing Center, and I do care about how other fields write, because I want to help students improve in the writing in their chosen field. And I’ve enjoyed some of what I’ve read about the language use by geneticist; I haven’t read much else regarding how other disciplines write. I know a faculty member here at OSU is writing on the medical profession as well and the pathologization of certain drugs, and I find what she’s talking about fascinating.
But part of me also gets this tingling of excitement from seeing this in print. It’s like when you see a brother flip off your father. Part of you knows your father doesn’t deserve it, but part of you revels in the transgression and wishes you had done it too. There is something titllating about it.