Imaginary Places
For some of your five page papers, you might want to consider the process and act of reading--how reading effects the writing of the paper, the thinking through of larger ideas, etc. Here's a quote to consider and respond to:
Reading, we are allowed to follow someone else’s train of thought as it starts off for an imaginary place. This train has been produced for usÑor rather materialized and extended until it is almost nothing like the ephemeral realizations with which we’re familiar. To see words pulled one by one into existence is to intrude on a privacy of sorts. But we are familiar with the contract between spectator and performer. Now the text isn’t a train but an actress/ model who takes off her school uniform piece by piece alone with the cameraman. She’s a good girl playing at being bad, all the time knowing better. She invites us to join her in that knowledge. But this is getting us nowhere.
—Rae Armantrout
What does this quote mean?
What does it say about both the reader and writer? About the act of reading?
Relate this to reading in this class.
this is exactly how i feel when i read a book i become completely enveloped with the story and can actually see everything as its happening.i try to incorparte that into my writing as well i want people to feel the same thing that i feel and see what im trying to describe when tthere reading. is it normal for me to be so involved with the text or does anyone else do that ?
ReplyDeleteI think this is excactly how i see it. It is amazing when you read you have access to someones exact train of thought. I believe that if you want to really get to know someone you should read some of their writings.
ReplyDeleteMy guestion is, is what getting us anywhere. people needs these imagionary places to excape, there does not have to be justification for us to why she is doing what she is doing. and i dont understand readers and the writer privacy thing in reading there should be no privacy or else it is not clear what is actually being talked about and you can not go to that same place that they are trign to get you to because of lac of information
ReplyDeletethis quote to me describes the flow reading. like the things you already know when your reading, like we know when read we are allowed to follow someone else’s train of thought.
ReplyDeleteI think the quote is talking about how as readers we get this peek into the private workings of the mind of a writer. Like performing on stage an intense emotion or singing a song about your broken heart.
ReplyDeleteI can relate it to Sranger Than FIction because all the stories are intimate of both the people that were interviewed and the author himself, we go tthis little glimps of other peoples lives.
Martin- i do the exact same thing, i can tottally forget the world around me when i read!
Martin, that's great! Sometimes I get really emotionally invovled in characters lives and worry that that's not normal.
ReplyDeleteBlake, why is writing a clearer form of communication?
What do you guys think about the issue of privacy Armantruot is bringing up?
Robert,
I think she is questioning the possibility of reading and whether or not it can get us anywhere--closer to the writers mind? closer to "truth"? I don't know.
Why does this uncertainty make you uncomfortable?
ok i really dont understand this question. but im going to try and answer it to the best of my ability. for the first question this qoute means to me that shes kind of confused like me. she dosent no rather if she wants to be good or bad. so shes starting to imagion somthing she excapes her world in goes into something different were she can find her self. shes writing to tell use a story i guess. but its unfinished. she dosent know what shes doing
ReplyDeleteI can't really, understand this quote. For some reason i just, don't really get it. From what everyone else is saying, i pretty much agree on what their talking about.
ReplyDeleteMartin - I agree with what you're saying, i get really caught up in the moment and then i think i'm the character in the book. I get so attached and don't think about anything else going on around me.
J'Nissi, good effort. I like what you are getting at with there being an element of confusion in this quote. Armantrout wants to know more about her own act of reading, that's a good way to look at it.
ReplyDeleteMonica, what is it that confuses you?
yea Kristen i totally get you like i guess its because im an actor i get so involved with the character to the point that i become them do you get what? mostly because i took a class in high school were i had to study peoples attributes and personalities and i was so involved with tit that now I'm always analyzing people even when i dont know it sometimes i think that im not really me that im just a combination of what i see others doing and i really do catch myself doing that sometimes.
ReplyDeletei think i understand, they want you to think one thing but it means another. she want you to think shes a good school girl but yet shes taking her cloths off, to make you think what there hiding?am i right cause i think i just confused myself.lol
ReplyDeletehmm, I'm going to try to catch up to what this quote means to everybody thus far.
ReplyDeletethis plethora of words come out from ones mind to create, and this can mean that within the process of this the meaning can totally change from said mind to the words, from here the words that the readers find can mean something totally different. we don't obtain necessarily exactly what the writer creates.
I like how this can keep your imagination going. With her clothes taken off one at a time, you can take your imagination to think of good things of bad. By taking her clothes off, the reader is trying to keep your interest. The model seems to control your train of thoughts just like how a text can lead you to another text. But takes us to the point of what we are familiar with. Back to our imagination. The writer only gives you information that they want you to know and with that, you can use your imagination.
ReplyDeletelike what is being said...wear clothes that covers you that keeps the guys imagination going..but if its something i wear that is too showy or bare then leads us to nowhere...which we already know what the female body is like...
ReplyDeleteand the verse with the camera man...he's looking at it from an audience point of view..and with every picture is worth a million words...just how it correlates to your imagination which can go on for days but the model controls what she wants to take off for the audience to see...im done..
ReplyDeleteI think we are reading this very literally--this is a metaphoric piece of writing. The she is the writer--the act of writing is a striptease, revealing the world slowly.
ReplyDeleteDoes the use of symbolism and metaphor feel out of date? Is it something we aren't familiar with anymore? I've been wondering if it's still around and discussed or if, because of our current media environment, everything is taken more literally.