Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter was kind enough to agree to an interview about criticism and art. We communicated by email.
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Noah: Your site seems to work to promote a sense of comics as a community —pointing out events and birthdays and doing collective memory projects like the one involving Frank Frazetta. So I guess the first question is, do you see what you’re doing as encouraging, or serving a comics community? And does criticism work against that sense of community, or is it one way of building it?
Tom Spurgeon: No, I’m not really interested in a comics community in that way. I just write pieces I’d want to read. I can see how you’d think that. For instance, I don’t really care about people’s birthdays, I just think it’s interesting to know how old certain industry players and important artists are, and it’s a handy structure for routinely exposing people to art they might not be aware of. You’ll note I don’t run the birthdays without a birth date, although people frequently ask me to.
I have no idea what role criticism might play towards any sense of community. I would assume any community would want to embrace a self-critical aspect and would ideally value the people that challenge conventional wisdom on a routine basis. At least that’s what my pet unicorn Daughtry tells me.
More generally, what do you think the point of criticism is?
Writing about comics for me is about as deep as that I like writing about comics. As someone who reads some criticism, I know that I appreciate it most when I get some insight into the work being examined and that I encounter effective prose. I know when I was a kid and lacked the tools to find things on my own, criticism was a way to learn about stuff I wouldn’t see otherwise. I wouldn’t be able to speak to your question generally, nor would I presume I could.
If you just like writing about comics, what is it about comics as a medium that particularly engages you?
I do like the medium, although I’m a theater guy first, preference-wise. Just in really basic ways. I like visual metaphors. I like that I don’t understand comics all that well — my big book would be called “Failing To Understand Comics.” I think that having an emotional attachment to comics from my youth is helpful in sustaining interest. I think I’m lucky in that it’s the most intriguing art form in terms of the number of artists over the last ten years making compelling work. Although it’s not a motivation, I think I’m lucky to write about comics because I don’t think I write well enough or am effective enough as a critic to have anyone pay attention to anything at all I’d say about prose or film or theater.
One thing I like about comics as a medium is that you can choose to engage comics while holding a variety of competing notions in mind at the same time. You can read a panel progression but also consider bigger and smaller elements of design. You consider what’s right in front of you but also project fundamental circumstances on things that aren’t portrayed. You can look at an object portrayed as the object it portrays but also as an object itself. I never get tired of that kind of thing. We live in an increasingly literal world, where people don’t like movies because they think the actress is too ugly, rather than being able to see her as attractive because you’re being asked to see her in the story that way. Comics is like the advanced class of the opposite of that.
Do you still follow theater?
I try to see as much live theater as I can, although it’s difficult given where I live. I still read a few dozen plays a year. My favorite playwrights are Stoppard, Pinter and Saroyan, although there are certainly individual plays that I admire, from a lot of playwrights. I like everything that Rebecca Gilman has written except for her hit, Spinning Into Butter. I really liked her play Crime Of The Century, about the Richard Speck murders. I liked reading Paul Peditto’s play Essanay.
I think live performance can be thrilling, and live performance unpacking a sophisticated worldview even more so. That’s the majority of it.
There’s a review of Comic Art Magazine from a while back in which you said approvingly, “Comic Art Magazine is a comics publication that rather than engaging with the good and bad of the medium right now has chosen to investigate the good and interesting no matter when it’s been done.” Do you think that criticism is more useful or worthwhile when it focuses on the good and interesting from all time rather than the shitty from yesterday? And, if so, on what grounds would you defend Tucker Stone’s writing, (which I know you’ve praised in the past)?
I apologize in advance if my memory is faulty here. As I recall, it’s more that I thought that was a particular strength of Comic Art, not that I was making a general principle known with CA as the example. It wasn’t really intended to be a grand theory of criticism in other words. Comic Art helped claim a bunch of works as good ones at a point where it was difficult — for me at least — to track the number of potentially good works coming out. It also gave voice to this curatorial impulse that a lot of interesting writers seem to have. It’s very foreign to my own. I’m sure I was back to trashing some poor guy’s life’s work and making Vinko Bogataj jokes within hours after writing that about Comic Art.
I’m not sure exactly what I’ve written about Tucker’s work. I like how engaged he is; I get the sense it’s important to him. He’s kind of the current paragon of youthful enthusiasm for writing about comics – this generation’s Jeff Levine. He’s one of those critics I find useful because his reading habits are very different than my own. I’m entertained by him, which is a bigger deal than you might imagine when you’re reading like 40-50 people on a regular basis.
As long as I’ve mentioned Tucker, I wondered if you could maybe comment further on this quote of his from your interview with him. This is where he said:
There’s a temptation to label mainstream fans as being lazy for not caring about Swallow Me Whole or Blankets, to call them “bone-ignorant” — that’s just a bunch of horseshit. It’s an attempt by boring assholes to assign an overall meaning to a bunch of personal choices made by a group of people that those boring assholes don’t know anything about. On an individual level, I’ve heard a couple of people say they don’t want to read comics that focus on the mundanities of regular life, but I’m more often exposed to people who just like what they like because it’s what they fucking like….
I read a lot of different comics because I like comics, because I like to see as much contemporary stuff as possible. But I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve a prize for that, the same way I’m pretty sure that nobody else deserves a prize for only liking one type of thing in the first place. The world isn’t going to become a better place if everybody starts reading a wider variety of comics. Not going to happen. It might make the conventions more interesting, that’s about it.
I know you said you disagreed with Tucker there — I’m wondering if you could flesh out why a little. Do you think it is ignorant to refuse to try different kinds of comics? Is the point of criticism to some extent to tell people when they’re being bone-ignorant?
No, I don’t think it’s ignorant to refuse to try different kinds of comics. I think that’s healthy. I’ve always been a proponent of read what you like or read for the purposes you think important. The fact that anyone would NOT be a proponent of that seems pretty crazy to me. I have a brother who’s as smart as they come and every comic in his collection has either Namor, Black Bolt or the Badger in it. I’m not kidding for effect. That is his actual collection. It fits into a couple of beer cases and I think it’s a pretty perfect thing. Comics for him provide a certain kind of entertainment and he knows exactly what he wants out of them. Similarly, I like a certain kind of jazz more than others and prefer early 20th Century novels.
Two things, though.
First, where Tucker kind of irritated me there is that the question of ignorance was asked by me, not presumed by me, and I think he got some points there kind of beating me up on a position I don’t really have. It’s one that I recognize, especially as a first reaction, but not one I share.
Second, I think the ignorance isn’t in limiting one’s reading but in not recognizing that one’s reading is limited, in strongly dismissing things out of hand because they’re not your cup of tea.
I guess that could be the point of criticism to some extent, to call people names or to advocate for the expanding of horizons. It’s not really for me, not most days, but those seem like fine goals all said.
I know you’ve said at some points that in criticism you look especially for writers who deal specifically with the work at hand. I wonder if you could talk about what you mean by that.
One of my favorite writers about comics is Bob Levin, who is kind of a classic case of a guy who’s not always interested in dealing with the work in front of him. I’m very interested in a lot of different kinds of writing about comics. I do find useful writers that are engaged with the text, where it doesn’t seem like you could swap out any number of books and get roughly the same piece. Mostly that’s because I’m not a very strong reader, I don’t think I pick up on the nuances and complexities of a lot of works. So I admire that in others.
I don’t have the time to provide examples of works that are less engaged with the subject matter in front of them, but I think we know them when we see them: reviews that spend the majority of their time repeating general principles about a genre or creator, reviews where the reviewer speaks about themselves more than the work in question.
Could you point to a recent critical article you really disliked and talk briefly about why?
I didn’t like the Savage Critics roundtable on Wilson. I thought most of the opinions were inarticulately expressed, I didn’t understand at all some of the lines of reasoning like when Abhay Khosla brought up Art School Confidential like it should disqualify Clowes from speaking on – having a character speak on, even! – the movie business, and I was left with the overall impression that some of those guys really were just deep-down pissed about that Dark Knight crack.
I basically agree that saying, “Well, Clowes’ character shouldn’t talk about Dark Knight because Clowes was involved in a lousy movie,” seems ridiculous. I do have some sympathy with the irritation Abhay expresses. Which is, there’s a default stance in certain regions of lit comics land which is basically: “life sucks and people are awful.” Which I think is glib and overdone and tedious, a, and which, b, can be made even more irritating by the fact that the people promulgating it are, you know, fairly successful, and (what with various autobiographical elements thrown in) the result often looks like a lot of self-pity over not very much.
So…I’m wondering how strongly you would push back against that characterization of lit comics in general…and also whether you feel it is or is not ever appropriate to think about a creator’s biography in relation to his or her work in that way.
At this point I wouldn’t push back at all against the stance that says the default mode in lit comics land is basically “life sucks and people are awful” because it’s no longer an argument I take seriously. I don’t think it’s true by any reasonable measure and I’m done with entertaining the notion until someone presents the argument in a much more effective or compelling fashion than what always sounds to me like some angry, lonely, re-written Usenet post from 1997.
As for creator’s biographies, I don’t know that I’m the arbiter of what’s appropriate or not, and I’m not sure I understand the use of that word here. I think it’s fine to consider biography when looking at a work. Why not?
Could you talk about a recent critical article you liked?
I liked Jesse Hamm’s short piece on Frank Frazetta. I’m like most comics critics in that I’m poorly prepared to talk about art in that way, and I thought his piece had an admirably clean and straightforward quality to it.
And finally; your enthusiasm for the Jesse Hamm review has a lot to do it seems with the professional knowledge he brings to the discussion as an artist. Do you think that criticism by comics creators is especially worthwhile or useful in general? Do creators bring more insight to their criticism than most critics do?
First, I wouldn’t say “enthusiasm.” I liked the piece, Noah, but I don’t recall getting enthusiastic about it. I didn’t even bring it up until you asked. Also, I clearly stated I liked things in Jesse’s piece like the presentation and tone, which are just as important as the exercise of Jesse’s artistic knowledge in building that piece. You seem a bit over-concerned with pinpointing my passionate endorsements of these things that I like, and extrapolating some principle or set of principles to which I must logically adhere as a result of liking A, B or C. It really doesn’t work like that. I wish I were that disciplined and consistent.
As for the questions: I like criticism from comics creators when it’s good criticism. I don’t think criticism from comics creators has any special quality that makes it any better or worse than criticism generally. One thing that might get underestimated is that the average cartoonist spends way more time than the average writer-about-comics thinking about comics. I get to spend three hours a day with comics; someone like Seth may spend 8-10 hours a day working on them. So I think there’s an advantage that cartoonists have just from time sunk into thinking about the art form.
[On second thought Tom noted that Seth should probably be changed to “a working cartoonist.” He noted:”Seth probably spends most of his time on his illustration work, and I can’t really speak to anyone’s individual schedule.”]
There are trade-offs, too. I think a lot of creators have a hard time not letting their personal outlook on making art bleed into their critical perception of art. I think artists build pantheons for themselves in terms of making art and then are tempted to argue a bigger place for their idols in history because of that rooting interest. Things like that.
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Update: In a somewhat heated back and forth in comments, Tom expands on some of his remarks and questions my integrity, so scroll down if that sounds appealing.
I don’t think being a creator necessarily guarantees you’ll be a better critic (the two are pretty different disciplines and require different skill sets), but personally I found that writing, composing, penciling, inking and lettering my own 24-page comic made me a better critic, in the sense that it made me appreciate how hard it is, how much time it takes, and how many hundreds of little decisions an artist has to make on each page which are, at best, perceived by the reader on a subconscious level. I also think it gave me a different perspective on how to look at and evaluate art. I now read comics differently, spending much more time lingering inside the panels, absorbing details that would have otherwise bounced right off me. It helped me notice, understand and appreciate subtle stylistic techniques better and how they are used effectively or otherwise.
It also motivated me to want to really understand all aspects of a work before writing about it, rather than just dash off a half-informed opinion. So, in those respects, I do think critics could benefit from creating their own comics, but it’s by no means a guarantee of superior criticism.
I’ve done some work on the writing end of comics, up to and including some thumb-nailing. I spent three years writing a syndicated strip for King Features:
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/commentary/1861/
I’m not sure what I learned while doing it beyond that I owed a lot of people an apology.
Creators as critics bring a different set of eyes to to to the table, but I wouldn’t say their opinion is better than john/jane academic.
Otherwise, it sounds like the old “if you didn’t play the game” made by athletes toward sportswriters.
My biggest problem these days is the lack of civility often found in discussions, which end up in argumtns or name calling way too often.
I’ve done a number of comics and zine projects. Can’t say it’s made me a kinder and gentler critic. On the contrary, it worked more like that Ambrose Bierce anecdote about the pirate. “Took my minicomics to sell at Quimby’s. Greeted with general indifference. War with the whole world!”
…and here is the Ambrose Bierce anecdote in question. I love google.
“An English sea-captain being asked if he had read “The Exile of Erin,” replied: “No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it.” Years afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship’s log that he had kept at the time of his reply:
Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!”
Great tip about “Jesse Hamm’s short piece on Frank Frazetta.”
Absolutely outstanding; the kind of critical analysis that some working artists are particularly well-equipped to deliver.
I will always cop to “inarticulately expressed”. In my limited defense, since I was the one asking questions, I couldn’t tweak the questions too much after people started answering them. I enjoy tweaking.
Also, again in my limited defense: Clowes’s biography in the last 10 years impacted how I read that page, maybe unfairly– but again, in my limited defense, I did say “I know what I’m saying is probably too hyperbolic”, and described my issue as “my own weird class resentment”.
One bad movie doesn’t “disqualify” Clowes– but I’d be lying if I pretended it wasn’t something that page made me think about, or that colored how I received Wilson’s ‘critique.’
Well, to balance things out, I think Tom was probably about as unfair to you as you were to Clowes when he said that you were just pissed by the Dark Knight crack. But, you know, a little unfairness adds spice to life either way….
Any critical edge an artist wields is more due to the general deficiency of criticism than anything else. There’s nothing in Jesse’s piece that a perceptive critic, if they cared enough, couldn’t suss out themselves. It’s actually a shame for the reader when artists are left to do the heavy lifting, because for all their advantages of study they’re also more frequently flat out wrong or just have their own deranged agendas. Which I guess is just what Tom said, so nevermind!
But I didn’t say that about Abhay.
Seriously, Noah, are you capable of NOT distorting what people say? You tried in the interview to get me to contrast HU with Comics Comics, and I declined, but I can tell you that thinking about it right now one thing I never have to worry about when I deal with Comics Comics is that what I’m saying will routinely be ignored for some warped-mirror version of what I’m saying that — I’m guessing with this part — makes for juicier wordplay.
I’m keen on your comment, Alixopulos: it’s worth a thought or two about how “criticism” actually differs from “sussing stuff out”, if just sussing out the good stuff is sufficient for criticism, or if we should have a slightly higher bar for that critical edge.
I have a tendency to think of writing by creators about the art form in general — the Jesse Hamm piece (especially the section on female bodies) or the kind of stuff that you see Chris Ware doing — as closer to “literary essays” than “critical analysis” for precisely the reason that Tom S. identifies: they’re obviously critical essays but that perspective of “letting their personal outlook on making art bleed in” gives those pieces of writing a quality that I don’t think most good criticism requires. But it is a quality that great literary essays have.
Criticism by comics creators tends to be in a hybrid genre that curbs the “edge” of criticism with the “pleasure” of the literary essay. I think that’s great — but I don’t think criticism is exactly the right word for it. The “essay-ness” is too dominant. The essay-ness is terrific, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a very rare breed of writer who can pull off the pleasure without losing any of the edge: in literature usually only our very, very finest writers can do it successfully, Delany and Rushdie are the examples we’ve beaten to death here but Virginia Woolf’s essays for the Times Literary Supplement are another example, or Le Guin’s Dancing at the Edge of the World. Those are “critical essays by creators” where the creators are self-aware enough and analytical enough about their own perspective as well as skilled enough at pure criticism that they can hybridize without any meaningful lossy effects. But the skills of writing literary essays and writing critical analysis are so very different and so very hard, that finding people who are first-rate at doing both is very rare.
Oh, come on Tom. You said:
“I was left with the overall impression that some of those guys really were just deep-down pissed about that Dark Knight crack.”
I said:
“I think Tom was probably about as unfair to you as you were to Clowes when he said that you were just pissed by the Dark Knight crack.”
How is that a fun-house distortion of your words? You say they were just pissed by the dark knight crack; I say “Tom says you were just pissed by the dark knight crack.”
Wait a minute; you’re saying you didn’t say it about Abhay? You were thinking about some of the other guys on the roundtable? But it was Abhay who brought up the Dark Knight incident in the first place! If you were talking about anyone, it sounds like you’re talking about him, surely. You really think that misunderstanding (presuming I’ve identified it correctly) is so unlikely that I must have been deliberately mischaracterizing you for effect? You don’t think that’s an uncharitable imputation on your part — perhaps even a “warped-mirror version” of what I’m doing?
I don’t think it’s a bad thing for you to have said what you did about the Dark Knight thing, even, whoever it’s directed at! I thought it was funny! A bit unfair, but as I said, I don’t have a problem with that in most cases.
“You tried in the interview to get me to contrast HU with Comics Comics,”
So I did. I didn’t include the question and your non-response since it seemed like you didn’t want the issue raised. But since you have somewhat passive-aggressively brought it back up, I should note that I asked you about it because you’ve said in print on several occasions that you don’t like HU very much. Since you’d talked about it publicly already, I thought it would be interesting to have you explain why. I didn’t have any intention of contesting you, incidentally. I wish you’d been willing to respond, even if the answer in HU’s case was just (as it appears to be) “Noah Berlatsky is untrustworthy” (unless you feel that that’s an unfair paraphrase of your position.)
Also, as I said, I think it would have been great to have you talk about your oft-expressed admiration for Comics Comics.
Surely you like them for reasons other than that I don’t happen to be blogging there! (Or, to paraphrase more precisely, because they can be trusted not to mischaracterize you.)
In the end, it’s maybe a shame that I was the one to do this interview rather than someone from a different site. I thought you seemed guarded, and perhaps this explains why to some extent. It’s certainly too bad for me, since I like and respect you a great deal — and remain eternally grateful for your support of the gay utopia project, and of this blog as well. In any case, thank you again for agreeing to do it. It was very generous of you, especially considering your reservations about me.
Caro, Shaw and James Baldwin are other examples….
1) You’re exactly right: I wasn’t thinking of Abhay when I wrote that.
2) I don’t think I’ve ever had anything in print attributed to me about HU or Comics Comics.
3) I also can’t find anything on-line where I disparage HU, let alone several instances. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but I’d love to see these several instances. I think I may have said once in a Comics Comics thread that you had an absolutely ridiculous exchange with Tim Hodler where he wrote, basically, “I’m not saying this” and you wrote, basically, “he’s clearly saying this,” but that’s the only thing I can think of. Maybe we e-mailed after that?
4) I don’t think I was being somewhat passive-aggressive. I guess it might have been passive-aggressive in the popular sense to demand you not run something and then sort of bring it back up myself in a sideways fashion, but that didn’t happen here.
So #s 1-2 are clear distortions, #3 probably is and #4 might be if I knew what the heck you were talking about. Noah, it’s tough talking to you, man.
Heck, I’m not even sure why you think I think Comics Comics is the Gallant to HU’s Goofus. I think they do some stuff well, do other stuff not-as-well and by far my most memorable and involved exchange with them in recent memory was a somewhat nasty fight I had with Dan Nadel over his criticism of Craig Yoe’s work. If I had had that same fight with you, I shudder to think how it would be described.
Tom — would you mind sharing the link to the Yoe discussion with Nadel over at Comics Comics? I have had Google fail, even limiting the search to the site.
It always adds so much to have an interviewee take the time to follow up in comments, so thank you very much for dropping by. I have to admit I thought Abhay was included in your comment as well, so I am very glad for the clarification.
Abhay, I know how you feel on the tweaking. And I’d love to hear more about your weird class resentment. I thought the folks on the roundtable didn’t do as much with the challenge to punk sensibilities or the question about the position of bourgeois values in Clowes’ work as I wanted them to; that was a really great question that seemed to derailed. (I’m glad you didn’t tweak it away to match more closely to what they actually said…) That said, I also wasn’t entirely satisfied with the contrast being between middle-class values and “honest comedy about a misanthrope”, since “honest comedy” for some reason rings as very bourgeois to me…
I can’t share a link; I don’t have it.
I think I need to make clear a distinction that it’s the presumption that I was talking about Abhay that’s wrong to my mind, not the fact that you both happened to be wrong. I shouldn’t have to come on here and unpack things I chose not to unpack the first time around just because you or Noah believe — or choose to believe — I’ve said something I didn’t. That’s what I mean by distortion. Seriously, what is up with that?
It’s called having a conversation Tom. People sometimes misinterpret things you say — especially when you are deliberately trying not to unpack them (if that’s what you’re saying you were doing.) If you try to keep things obscure, you can’t seriously be all that pissed off when people don’t understand you. (Or, I mean, you can be as pissed off as you’d like to be obviously. But it seems like a recipe for frustration.)
You don’t think it’s a distortion to call a mistake a distortion? You’re saying, or strongly implying, I did it deliberately. I didn’t. I could get all pissed off and say that you’re flagrantly twisting my words — but, you know, I assume it’s an honest error on your part. But I probably think you’re more trustworthy than you think I am (perhaps even because you are more trustworthy!)
Here’s the post where you say (in a very diffident fashion) that you don’t like my writing very much, and therefore don’t link to HU very often.
I suppose you’ll argue that you didn’t say you didn’t “like” it. But saying you don’t understand it and don’t want to read it seem to add up to “don’t like” to me. I don’t feel that that’s a mischaracterization of the spirit or letter of what you say there. Indeed, above in this thread you make a fairly sweeping indictment of my writing, which strongly suggests that my interpretation of your words as “don’t like” is correct. You say I’m systematically dishonest, and imply that the reason I’m systematically dishonest is that I’m trying to gin up interest or be flamboyant or some such. You’re going to say after that that you do in fact like my writing and want to come over here to read it on HU every day?
You’ve mentioned on at least one other occasion that you don’t read HU (can’t find the link, my apologies.) Since you read lots of blogs, and since you obviously have read it on occasion, it seems reasonable to conclude that you don’t read it regularly because you don’t like it.
I hasten to add that I’m not offended by your dislike, nor do I have any desire to convince you that you’re wrong. (I mean, obviously I’d prefer that you think better of me, but it looks like that ship has probably sailed.)
I thought you were such a fan of Comics Comics in part because you had the entire crew over for interviews in your end of year extravaganza. And you link there all the time. But it would have been interesting to hear you talk about what you like and don’t like! (It still would be if you were willing to go into it here, for that matter.)
You’ll get to see how I characterize our fights, since we’re having one, I suppose. I certainly don’t bear you any ill will, for what that’s worth.
I’m not a good person to talk about what I like and don’t like about CC, as I’m a competitor and this tends to limit one’s perspective. Plus I’ve never thought about it in a systematic fashion. So I’ll pass. I will say the fact that I link to or talk to people isn’t an endorsement as you’ve characterized it, and there are all sorts of reasons why those things happen.
I don’t get the rest of it, Noah. I agree there’s room for a bit of misinterpretation in having a conversation, but all the time? Every time? To a severe degree? Even the example you’ve brought up quoting me — a single example, btw, when you said several, which I think is the important distinction; I even remembered this one, although I thought it was Hodler, not Heer — just brings up more examples when you’ve seemed to make whopping mistakes in interpretation.
I’ll withdraw the point ascribing motives if you’re stating for the record that you’re not doing this to have fun or even willfully. When someone smart does something that seems not smart ALL THE TIME, one is left scrambling for an explanation. But following the withdrawal and apology, I’m not sure what to tell you. I guess we don’t enough of the same conception of reality to have a fruitful conversation, and it’s too much work for me to go through this to try and understand your reviews. You obviously have an audience that loves to have conversations with you and understands your writing; I’m just not in that audience. I’m not arrogant enough to think that if I don’t understand something it must be bad. I’m too old and tired and busy to have some rankings in my head.
To be honest, I’m beginning to think that the entire interview was all about one question: “Why don’t you link to Hooded Utilitarian more than you do?”
I started by saying, no, absolutely not — but thinking it through, it’s probably one thing that was in my mind to some extent. I mean, I would like you to link more because, hey, who doesn’t want traffic — but we’re doing okay, and, as I mentioned, you were a big help when I really needed help, and you don’t need to ever do a thing again to retain my gratitude, as far as I’m concerned.
But overall, the interview was about the fact that I’m interested in how people approach criticism. My questions weren’t all that different from the ones I asked Daphne Carr, for example. I brought up HU in particular with you because (a) I was curious, and (b) I figured it would be one thing where I could get you to talk in specifics, since you weren’t going to offend me. But clearly you didn’t see it that way.
As for the misinterpretations — I think we’re clearly just in general not on the same wavelength. I’ve noticed this before to some extent, and since I’m interested in why and in what ways people disagree with me, I had thought it would be fun in the interview to try to clear them up, or at least explore them. Obviously that didn’t work. But I’m glad that you’re at least entertaining the possibility that I’m not willfully duplicitous.
And in terms of the discussion of HU on your site: I noted two examples, one I linked to, and one I read recently but don’t have the link for. I guess “several” is supposed to be three, and on thinking through it again I’m not sure that I’ve seen another instance. If you think two rather than three is a serious distortion I don’t really know what to say except that we’ll just have to chalk it up to the aforementioned cognitive disconnect. I can certainly say that I don’t willfully mischaracterize anyone, and that when I do make a misstep, as certainly happens, I try to own up to it. I do try to write entertainingly as well…but I hope I can do that without lying about people. If I fail, either in entertainingness or truthfulness, it’s because of a lack of capacity, not lack of will.
Link to Tom Spurgeon and Dan Nadel conversation
Many thanks, Suat!
“by far my most memorable and involved exchange with them in recent memory was a somewhat nasty fight I had with Dan Nadel over his criticism of Craig Yoe’s work. If I had had that same fight with you, I shudder to think how it would be described.”
Tom, that exchange with Comics Comics couldn’t have been much more loving. It’s clear from the get go that you’re all having fun, and any insults are hyperbolic goofiness (though obviously there is a real disagreement at the core.)
Characterizing it as “nasty” seems bizarre, since everyone clearly seems to respect everyone else, and no one even ever seems angry (it’s possible someone was angry or hurt, I guess, but I have trouble believing it from reading the comments.)
I don’t know — perhaps just a sign of our differing wavelengths. But I can say that if you’d had that discussion with me, I would have characterized it as “vigorous friendly disagreement.” I guess that may make you shudder, but it’s what I’ve got.
Suat, that’s not the one. The one you want is the one where Gary Groth gets into it and it’s generally uglier all around. The one you’re linking to is its jokier cousin.
Noah, it’s clear we’re not on the same wavelength, but yes, I do think saying I’ve said something several times when all you can think of is two and all you can find is one makes your original statement a distortion. Is it a big deal in the overall scheme of the world? Of course not. It’s not even a big deal to me except to show you — when presented with all the other examples now on this thread, and examples of follow-up questions in the interview itself — that you seem to have made a habit of relating an inaccurate picture of what people say. For what reason? I do not know. Since it’s not on purpose or effect, I guess that’s just the way you do things.
I don’t chalk that up to different strokes, although we do have different attitudes about it.
I wish you the best of luck in all future endeavors, and look forward to seeing what you do. Please don’t hesitate to write if I can do something for you. Thanks again for asking me to interview. I was flattered.
Here it is:
http://comicscomicsmag.com/2009/06/dan-mans-lifeboats.html
You may not find this suitably nasty, but it set my teeth on edge and there were a lot of e-mails flying around dancing in and around the public argument. I didn’t speak to Dan for a while after it. I spoke to Gary for the first time since this after Frazetta died.
That’s it, I’m out.
“I don’t chalk that up to different strokes, although we do have different attitudes about it.”
I don’t know what to think of this, except that you more or less chalk it up to moral turpitude on my part. No doubt you’ll feel that that’s a distortion as well. In any case, it depresses me, but I guess that’s where we’re leaving it.
Good luck to you as well, Tom. Take care.
No, I honestly have no idea at this point, and am comfortable with never knowing. Chalk-less, dude.
That was somewhat nasty, yes — though I can imagine the emails were nastier.
Thanks for providing the link.
Hm. Well, that’s good to hear. Thanks Tom.
Should probably leave it alone…but I guess I’ll say that, to me, the exchange on comics comics seems to include a lot of the sort of confusions and distortions that Tom is attributing to me. Somebody says something, the interlocutor says no, that’s not what I meant — and the first person says, well, it sure looked like what you meant for this reason and that reason, and around it goes. Folks even try to pin Tom down to a set of critical principles — and he resists as vigorously as he does in the interview.
It seems to me like that’s what happens in conversation — and even like it’s a fruitful part of conversation. You say what you have to say, and then you see how other people take it, and that affects what you think, and back and forth. It can be frustrating, but also entertaining and even inspiring.
It’s of course possible that my version of conversation is more distorted than the norm, or than is proper. It doesn’t feel like that to me, but I suppose it wouldn’t. In any case, it was interesting (though not especially pleasurable in this instance, alas) to hear how my words sounded in Tom’s mouth. So thanks for that Tom, and for the interview as a whole.
Caro, I can tell that you’re presuming this automatic distinction between literary essay and criticism, but to my mind it is not so automatic.
Do you mean the artist would tend to write something subjective, descriptive and (perhaps?) appreciative, while the critic would tend toward the objective, prescriptive, and critical?
I think a lot of artists are capable of writing that kind of objective, canonical criticism, but they choose not to, because it’s awkward, impolitic, “yucky” to paraphrase from the above CC link. I would half-seriously suggest that they’re probably doing the right thing from the wrong reasons.
I guess I’d rather the criticism was more literary, because what I see in a lot of criticism is a self-referentialism, a trivial placing of the work within the weedy half-acre of todays comics instead of the wider world, a hermetic “objectivity” that’s really just provincialism.
Hey Alix. I think there are various ways to go in criticism without the kind of self-reference you’re talking about. For instance, academic criticism and theory —which may be self-referential in its own way, but which can also link to different issues or ideas. It would be weird to see, say, Salman Rushdie do a Freudian analysis of a novel, or Chris Ware use queer theory to interpret a comic.
No doubt many people say “thank goodness!”
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Alixopulos says:
Any critical edge an artist wields is more due to the general deficiency of criticism than anything else. There’s nothing in Jesse’s piece that a perceptive critic, if they cared enough, couldn’t suss out themselves. It’s actually a shame for the reader when artists are left to do the heavy lifting, because for all their advantages of study they’re also more frequently flat out wrong or just have their own deranged agendas…
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I certainly expect more from the better critics, but those factors Jesse praised in Frazetta’s approach were more something a full-time working pro would focus on.
For instance, having worked a few years as a waiter, I’m more aware of details of “bad service” that no restaurant critic I’ve read – when complaining about the same – has ever pointed out.
Would book criticism be deficient in general if “perceptive critics, if they cared enough, couldn’t suss out themselves” something that would immediately strike a graphic designer in the eye: that the kerning was too tight; that the usage of sans-serif, justified type worked against the freewheeling, baroquely inventive mood of the author’s tale?
That Jesse Hamm piece I find illuminating the way a master furniture-maker’s essay about, say, a Chippendale chair would be; focusing incisively on details of how it was constructed which a “looking at the larger picture” critic would likely miss.
Just in case anyone’s curious; the second link where Tom says he doesn’t read HU is here. It’s not at all confrontational, but I took it as a (very polite) expression of disinterest in the site (with some justice, I think, given the back and forth here!)
I also think Tom at a couple of points may have been confusedly remembering this post, in which I did in fact misunderstand Tim Hodler. I think I owned up to the mistake, though I’m not sure if Tom would feel I went far enough.
Mischaracterizing other’s statements in order to position one’s own argument isn’t exactly uncommon practice… but it does tend to happen here with some regularity. Sometimes this leads to interesting conversations—and sometimes it pisses people off.
I recall the Hodler “incident” (or “Hodlergate” as it may henceforth be called).
Sigh. Et tu, hermano?
I read Comics Comics and Comics Reporter and enjoy them very much. HU is hit and miss for sure, but I thought the essay contrasting Ware and Cocteau that was on HU was easily the best writing on comics I’ve read in ages…it brought up a feeling about Ware that I had but couldn’t quite articulate myself and explored it in an exhaustive way that most comics blogs never do. That’s not to say that comic blogs aren’t frequently thorough…but they’re rarely thorough when expressing a complex idea. HU on Ware v. Cocteau was lengthy writing about something very complicated.
That was Caro’s essay on Ware and Cocteau. And I agree; it was a highlight.
I’m not sure if it was clear form the discussion — but when I asked Tom to discuss Comics Comics, I really anticipated him saying good things and generally talking them up. I really wasn’t looking for a fight.
In regards to the misunderstandings…. I think one aspect of different cultures (including internet cultures) is a comfort level with mistakes.
To me, the conversation culture is a circle of mis-understand, correct, understand better, correct, mis-understand, correct, and so on. I think true learning happens during the correct/understand better portion. To me, that’s often the best part–the refining and new understandings. YMMV.
It doesn’t help when people have a whole frickin’ subconscious pulling strings behind the scenes.
When someone attacks the failings of Bush II’s regime, and a right-wing propagandist says that shows how much the liberal in question “hates America,” it’s easy to assume that conscious distortion of the original statement is at work.
But when Tom Spurgeon told Noah, “You tried in the interview to get me to contrast HU with Comics Comics, and I declined,” he apparently was of the impression that an attempt was being made to pull him into a “let’s CC and HU fight” controversy.
Mebbe so (whether or not Noah was consciously aware of it). But, would it not be more likely that he – not exactly the Machiavelli type – was simply interested in a comparison, one of the most basic tools for critical analysis?
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vommarlowe says:
In regards to the misunderstandings…. I think one aspect of different cultures (including internet cultures) is a comfort level with mistakes.
To me, the conversation culture is a circle of mis-understand, correct, understand better, correct, mis-understand, correct, and so on…
—————–
That’d be awfully nice! Maybe the TCJ message board is anomalous in this respect, but what we can sometimes see there is a circle of mis-understand, correct, mis-understand again, correct, mis-understand some more, correct…
(Consider the “Talent is Bull@*%$!” and “Captain America = tool of creeping socialism!” threads.)
But, good grief; how often in real life do explanations and clarifications lead to the “misunderstander” actually changing their mind? Being able to see things from another’s perspective?
Grizzled old VFW Member: “Why, now that you explain it, I understand that your criticism of the Iraq War isn’t unpatriotic, but actually follows the great American tradition of freedom of speech and dissent!”
Hey Mike. No, I did actually ask Tom for a compare and contrast. I thought he could talk about what he liked in comics comics and beat up on HU, and that the comparison might illuminate his ideas about criticism and comics. As I said, Tom is often unwilling to talk about specifics in terms of peers, and I thought inviting him to beat up on me would maybe allow him to do so.
I didn’t intend it to be a fight, in that I wasn’t planning to contest him, though.
I picked comics comics in particular because I think their style contrasts with HU’s in a number of ways; because I thought Tom had an appreciation for their work…and because they’re kind of the site you’d talk about, in general, I guess. They and Tom’s site are arguably the two most respected criticism sites. It was kind of presumptuous to lump HU in with Comics Comics, I guess — but as I said, I hoped that being invited to whale away at me would get around some of (what seems to me to be) Tom’s habitual reticence.
And it sort of did in a roundabout way, I suppose.
I think there are reasons other than just convincing others to have conversations or air disagreements. In this case — Tom’s an influential critic and writer about comics, so for people interested in comics, it seems worthwhile/interesting to figure out where he’s coming from and why. I sort of fear I ended up with more heat than light, but light was the initial goal, in any case.
Mike says: But, good grief; how often in real life do explanations and clarifications lead to the “misunderstander” actually changing their mind? Being able to see things from another’s perspective?
This is why I like certain corners of LiveJournal. It happens, not always, but often enough that I can think of several people on social issues or criticism issues who have changed their minds and will say so in arguments about the topics. I used to think blah blah, but then I was convinced (sometimes painfully) to admit that I was wrong.
Mike, I should maybe add that my online culture is highly gendered to the female, and that may come into play, I think.
Eh, people do change their minds in discussions; even men. It happens.
Thanks, Austin and Noah. :)
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Alix and Mike and Noah: I’m going to do that thing again where I call attention to differences between closely related things: It never occurred to me to think of The Comics Reporter as “criticism.” I think both CR and CC are mostly comics history and reviews, with some news announcements.
I don’t see all that much at either site that is parallel to what literature calls “literary criticism” and certainly not to the more theoretical categories of criticism. I don’t mean that as a value judgment in any way; I just think the sites start from different places and ask different questions.
I guess I’m steeped in a tradition that recognizes genre categories for writing about writing, like:
— book reviews
— literary history
— literary criticism
— literary essays/non-fiction
Is there a reason why you guys think all these different categories should be lumped into one giant category called “criticism” when the subject is comics rather than literature?
With the possible exception of the review, which is usually solicited by a publication and pretty expectation-rich, I think of these categories as shorthands for characteristic sets of questions and assumptions that inform the different types of writing, rather than as rigid genres. Most journals will lump the last three together into “articles” and the article-categories often blur, but I do read these types of writing differently and have preferences among them, even when I see aspects of each appearing in the same article.
Alix makes a fine point about triviality and provincialism that I agree with. I think those problems are more a matter of quality within any genre than in a genre itself, though. The “approach” an author takes to thinking and writing is certainly implicated in both quality and genre, I’d say, but I don’t think that you necessarily always end up in trivialities just because you pick criticism over history or essay.
================
To Vom’s point: I once read a very good book with a very awful title, called “They’re Not Dumb They’re Different”, by Sheila Tobias, about why certain talented and smart undergraduates who are interested in the hard sciences end up getting degrees in the humanities instead. The failure of the sciences to embrace exactly the “conversational” model for their pedagogy was the big conclusion: asking a bright student with a lot of conversational and linguistic dexterity to take someone’s words at face value generally just makes those bright students feel either confused, bored or insulted/dismissed — especially if the face value isn’t crystal clear to them. Since they can’t fight back against a teacher who can’t engage conversationally, they just leave the discipline.
The idea was that the sciences “select” for a different learning personality than the humanities and that this limits both the demographics in the sciences (since the face-value learning model is less common in women than in men) and the available creativity for solving problems in the sciences, to science’s detriment.
I think Vom’s described the conversational way of learning and thinking just right and I really wish it were more understood and embraced and appreciated, both in schools and in our culture at large.
I often find Comics Comics to be “jocular” and not a terribly pleasurable place to hang out; I guess that may be a more gendered reaction than I thought, although I reject the idea that this is “essentially” gendered in any way.
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I should say, ’cause I’m afraid that last bit’ll be taken as a criticism that I don’t mean, that CC’s jocularity feels cliquish rather than like hazing or anything intentionally mean. It’s just not my clubhouse.
I would never have posted casual curious comments over there, whereas I felt completely comfortable doing it here. I’m guessing there are plenty of people over there who feel the same way about HU…that’s my compare/contrast, for you, Noah, not that it’s what you were after. LOL.
Comics Comics drives me nuts, personally, though I respect those guys individually and have had pleasant interactions with I think all of them (at least, Frank, Tim, Jeet, Jog — maybe not Dan? I guess I haven’t had any significant contact with him.)
Anway; my being put off by Comics Comics. I think it’s partly a function of me having a different canon, partly a function of being less invested in comics as a medium than they are, and partly maybe a little of the clubbishness you’re plugging into — which in turn may be because they’ve known each other for a long time, and the site is kind of an outgrowth of their friendship (as I understand it — I could be wrong about that.) But I’m always impressed with their professionalism, they obviously have a ton of knowledge, and they certainly deserve their position at the top of the blogosphere.
I actually thought that back and forth with Dan, Gary, and Tom was really interesting; one of the thing’s I’ve most enjoyed looking at on their site; many thoughtful points made on all sides.
So there; I have done the thing Tom would not. I don’t exactly see them as competitors, I have to say, but that’s probably because I don’t really make any money from blogging (I mean, a little big, but not enough to make it feel like it’s actually a job, or even exactly a gig. It’s a hobby.)
CR is a lot of news, but Tom is a perceptive critic too, I think; his take on Frazetta recently was mostly history, for example, but the summation had some interesting and provocative critical points (which I think I may disagree with in an upcoming post, possibly making him mad at me again if he reads it, alas.)
In general I think your characterization of CC and CR are valid, though, and the distinctions you make reasonable. The reason that stuff all gets lumped together with comics is probably just a case of there being a limited amount of the stuff out there, period…and it’s being more mixed together in general, since there’s not a very firmly defined place for comics crit in the academia as yet (it’s coming perhaps, but not quite there yet.)
Wow Caro, that book sounds fascinating! I will have to get a copy.
Just to clarify: I don’t think it’s *essentially* a gender dynamic by any means. But I do notice it more in primarily female online groups (er, besides LJ, I’m thinking of a lot of pet boards).
My undergraduate school specifically taught people how to argue–both in person and in papers, which I wish was a more prevalent skill.
Caro, with this line of inquiry it becomes very easy to define comics criticism completely out of existence. The field of writing about comics is very small, and the people you would expect to come in with critical standards, mainstream academics, mysteriously forget those standards when confronted with a comic book.
To speak to your original point, and maybe to Hunter’s, I don’t think “sussing it out” is *sufficient* for criticism, but I think that it’s a nice place to start? I would like to read criticism that engages the visuals of a visual artform on their own terms, it is in fact more important to understanding than the kerning of type in a novel.
I’m not dismissing Jesse’s piece, I’m holding it up as (incomplete) standard. There are fine insights there that a layman would not have, there’s also things that seem glaringly wrong to me. I think there’s a danger in the presumed authority that an artist has when writing such a piece. I’d like to see criticism that engages the work in the same way, but rise or falls on its own. This digression is a bit apples-to-oranges because Frazetta is not comics.
Alix, this is a really interesting comment: “the people you would expect to come in with critical standards, mainstream academics, mysteriously forget those standards when confronted with a comic book.”
I haven’t noticed this, but I’m not particularly well-read in academic comics criticism. Do you think this is because they’re either trained in prose or art and it’s hard to maintain the same level of rigor on a text that requires them to do both? Or is it deeper than that?
I agree that engaging the visuals is more important than engaging kerning…but I think that to some extent the critic needs to connect observations about technique to something meaningful — even if the meaningful thing is just atmosphere rather than something more directly semiotic like metaphor. Although…I guess what that means is that comics might need an additional genre of “technical critique.”
Or maybe I don’t want to say that…maybe I want to say that the issue is that literature has a very stable and consistent technical vocabulary, starting with grammar, but also like in the M.H.Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms that every undergraduate learns. So whereas “technical critique” is almost a “science” for literary scholars — linguistics is actually considered a social science isn’t it? — art is more flexible, technique more a part of the artist’s imprint, and there is consequently more value in the exercise of analyzing the technique. Or is there?
I guess most academics in literature know both grammar and Abrams’ terms really well and draw on them almost subconsciously, so that this idea of “technical critique” underlies everything we do without necessarily being explicit. Although I did have a colleague in my PhD program who didn’t know what a participle was, so that’s probably wrong too.
I’m assuming grammar and literary devices are the prose parallels to the “fine insights that a layman might not have,” but the difference seems to be that art doesn’t have a grammar, or at least not the same kind of grammar as language. (Or does it?)
Of course that raises the question of the different “fine insights” that you get from an “art brut” cartoonist as opposed to an “academic” cartoonist, insofar as those terms apply.
This is a really awkward issue that keeps coming up in these meta-criticism discussions: the proper place of formal description and analysis in the criticism of art. I’m wondering if anybody knows how fine art/art history and criticism deals with it?
——————-
Caro says:
…I guess I’m steeped in a tradition that recognizes genre categories for writing about writing, like:
– book reviews
– literary history
– literary criticism
– literary essays/non-fiction
Is there a reason why you guys think all these different categories should be lumped into one giant category called “criticism” when the subject is comics rather than literature?
——————-
Comics certainly deserve the full range of critical attention. But I dunno why a critic, in writing about a certain comic, can’t hit various bases: the antecedents of the particular approach the creator is taking, influences, where the style falls within certain parameters of the subject or genre, techniques of writing and illustration, even the overall design and “production values” of the book itself.
——————–
…The failure of the sciences to embrace exactly the “conversational” model for their pedagogy was the big conclusion: asking a bright student with a lot of conversational and linguistic dexterity to take someone’s words at face value generally just makes those bright students feel either confused, bored or insulted/dismissed — especially if the face value isn’t crystal clear to them. Since they can’t fight back against a teacher who can’t engage conversationally, they just leave the discipline…
——————–
Well, good riddance! In the “hard sciences,” the boiling point of water at sea level is 100 degrees Celsius; the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second; the diameter of the Earth at the Equator is 7,926.28 miles; a hydrogen atom has one electron, and so forth.
If these bright cases can’t deal with accepting these facts at face value, and that science teachers aren’t interested in a “conversation” about the world maybe being flat, or the Sun revolving around the Earth, by all means let them move on to “mushier” majors.
Can’t students be aware that some subjects feature more cut-and-dried info, while that in others is more open to interpretation, less rigidly defined? And that teaching styles would thus tend to vary accordingly?
———————-
The idea was that the sciences “select” for a different learning personality than the humanities and that this limits both the demographics in the sciences (since the face-value learning model is less common in women than in men) and the available creativity for solving problems in the sciences, to science’s detriment.
———————-
A woman friend of mine was a chef who didn’t do well at baking because, in that field of cookery, following the formulas exactly is far more important; improvisation is a recipe for disaster. And she didn’t like rigidity.
However, most women – or men – who cook have no trouble “shifting gears.”
Personally, I’d rather have the pharmacist who concocts my medications be a “by the book” type, rather than a “let’s try a pinch of this, and a dash of that, and see what happens!” free spirit.
——————–
Alixopulos says:
…I’m not dismissing Jesse’s piece, I’m holding it up as (incomplete) standard…
——————–
It certainly is an incomplete bit of criticism, but it casts light on some areas which most (all?) writers about Frazetta have not sufficiently illuminated. In many cases of criticism, we have a “blind men feeling the elephant” situation. You have to put together many perspectives to achieve a fuller understanding of the work under discussion.
——————–
I think there’s a danger in the presumed authority that an artist has when writing such a piece…
——————–
I’d think an artist would be more authoritative when commenting how some visual effects were achieved; but not necessarily knowledgeable to speak of, say, literary allusions, unless they were learned in that area as well.
Well, good riddance! *rolls eyes*
Er, you do know that hard science is actually predicated on the conversational model I outlined, right?
Hypothesis, proved/not-proved, learning, refinement, hypothesis, proved/not-proved….
I wish I could pull a better example right off the top of my head than Harold Bloom on Crumb http://comicscomicsmag.com/2010/04/worst-comics-criticism-of-the-21st-century.html but from what I’ve been reading over the years his article is not so different from many others. I’m not sure if I could narrow down one common denominator of critical deficiency…I find that the written prose in comics can be catnip for critics, they focus on that and don’t approach the flow of the images as a form of prose as well.
The optimist in me believes that comics can be of such quality as to merit a new critical vocabulary, one that could grab whatever concepts from from literature, poetry, music, film that will do the work. The pessimist in me thinks all that unnecessary, that comics aren’t there yet.
Alixopolous, you’ve been to Thought Balloonists, right? I don’t read those guys as often as I should, but they do really first rate academic criticism of comics. It’s folks like that you need to be reading, not Harold Bloom.
MIke, learning the boiling point of water or whatever has little to do with science. That’s memorization; actual science is a process and an investigation, not a google search.
It strikes me too that you’d actually want a pharmacist who would talk to you and figure out what exactly you need, rather than just fill a formula. Communication is really important in health care in general.
Although Vom and Noah’s defenses of Tobias’ point are completely right, there’s another simple pedagogical point you guys aren’t picking up on (not having read the book, of course) that I think is a more direct rebuttal to Mike.
Textbooks aren’t written in “science”; they’re written in “English,” and that makes a nice big old space for confusion, especially when plain English, or jargon from other fields, competes with technical jargon from the science discipline.
Take a paragraph like this (which I copied from Wikipedia but which is similar to things that appeared in my freshman chem textbook):
You can take those assertions at face value. But what happens if you don’t really understand what “transitive” means? Or worse, if your understanding of transitive isn’t exactly quite the same sense as what’s intended here — say, you’re thinking of “transitive verb”, because your high school math class didn’t cover set theory. And say you’re 17 and aren’t completely intellectually equipped to figure out that something’s wrong, that your definition of transitive isn’t the same one that’s being used here.
If you have a teacher who doesn’t want to talk to you, then the odds that your misperception will actually ever be identified, let alone corrected, are really slim. Conversation doesn’t just resolve misunderstandings, it makes them apparent. If you apply your knowledge in conversation, you’ll eventually hit upon a formulation that exposes what you’re getting wrong.
If this doesn’t happen, because your teacher has the attitude that “anybody who doesn’t take what I say at face value is a flat earther”, then you’re probably going to flunk the unit on Thermodynamics. Or if you’re decent at memorizing math, you might pass but without any meaningful understanding, because you’re too confused by the mis-association of “objects” when you ought to be thinking about interrelatedness.
Taking something someone else says at face value without testing your own understanding is never a good pedagogical strategy, for any discipline. Because there really is no such thing as a “face value” understanding of anything except the most exceedingly rudimentary sentences.
To go beyond pegagogy, if your brain is only trained to take scientific statements at face value, you don’t have the critical thinking apparatus that you need to propose your own hypotheses and test them (which is Vom’s point), or to communicate with your patients if you’re an applied scientist (which is Noah’s point).
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Thought Balloonists. So much better than Bloom.
Although Bloom is one of those old guard guys you gotta kinda love for still being around and kicking…more power to him. Just, maybe don’t talk about Crumb.
I have to run, but Alixopolous, I ran across a call for papers just the other day:
http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/announcement/view/2
Noah, if you’re still around, I just want to take this opportunity to tell you what I think of you. Namely this:
You’re a damn generous, straight-shooting, and decent fellow. We’ve had some small and middle-size differences, but you are a mensch and I don’t say that about many.
What triggers this observation is that, in the middle of your fight w/ Mr. Spurgeon, you took the trouble to say the following:
“I like and respect you a great deal — and remain eternally grateful for your support of the gay utopia project, and of this blog as well.”
In the same spirit, I’m grateful that you made me a co-blogger and put up with Wiki Trek and my random musings about non-comics.
Generosity … I don’t have a lot of it myself, but I respect it in others and you’ve got it.
Ok, there’s my 2 cents.
Whenever I think about blogging for comics, all I need to do is read some HU to become dissuaded. Not only are there writers out there who are wicked smart, write well, and know comics like I know porn links, but OMG IS THERE SO MUCH INSIDE COMICS CRITIC BASEBALL. Seriously, this discussion is so inside inside, it’s not even baseball. It’s like two umpire mentally buttfucking in the dugout during the pre-game.
That said…good job?
Well, there you have it, Noah. HU’s motto for the new decade. “A Pundit in every Panopticon” is passe – way too high brow. “The Hooded Utilitarian: We Know Comics Like You Know Porn Links” is unwieldy but definitely the way to go. If Noah feels that the tagline should be his personal preserve, I think that can be arranged as well.
Suat, I do not appreciate you distorting my tagline. You are consigned to the dugout…and you know what that means.
Tom C, bless your heart. I appreciate your getting my back (though the connotations there after Mr. Nedelsky’s comments are perhaps not what they should be.)
—————
vommarlowe says:
Er, you do know that hard science is actually predicated on the conversational model I outlined, right?
Hypothesis, proved/not-proved, learning, refinement, hypothesis, proved/not-proved….
—————–
Yes, but you were talking about students and teaching…
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vommarlowe said earlier:
…certain talented and smart undergraduates who are interested in the hard sciences end up getting degrees in the humanities instead. The failure of the sciences to embrace exactly the “conversational” model for their pedagogy was the big conclusion: asking a bright student with a lot of conversational and linguistic dexterity to take someone’s words at face value generally just makes those bright students feel either confused, bored or insulted/dismissed — especially if the face value isn’t crystal clear to them. Since they can’t fight back against a teacher who can’t engage conversationally, they just leave the discipline.
———————–
…not how the info that is taught was ascertained in the first place.
———————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
…Mike, learning the boiling point of water or whatever has little to do with science. That’s memorization; actual science is a process and an investigation, not a google search.
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Are the results which the process and investigation come up with not a part of “science,” then? Texts for the various sciences are heavily loaded with facts, as I recall.
Memorization’s gotten an awfully bad rep in teaching. Which reminds of the advent of the “child-centered” teaching method – which sounds awfully reminiscent of the “conversational model” mentioned earlier – and what it wrought.
From “How to Save the Schools,” a critique by E. D. Hirsch Jr., in the May 13th “New York Review of Books”:
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…by the 1930s, under the enduring influence of European Romanticism, educational leaders had begun to convert the community-centered school of the nineteenth century to the child-centered school of the twentieth—a process that was complete by 1950. The chief tenet of the child-centered school was that no bookish curriculum was to be set out in advance. Rather, learning was to arise naturally out of activities, projects, and daily experience. A 1939 critic of the new movement, Isaac Kandel, described it this way:
Children should be allowed to grow in accordance with their needs and interests…Knowledge is valuable only as it is acquired in a real situation; the teacher must be present to provide the proper environment for experiencing but must not intervene except to guide and advise. There must, in fact, be “nothing-fixed-in-advance” and subjects must not be “set-out-to-be-learned.”
By 1950, with new, watered-down schoolbooks and a new generation of teachers trained in specialized colleges for education, the anti-bookish, child-centered viewpoint had taken over the schools. The consequence was a steep decline in twelfth-grade academic achievement between 1962 and 1980, after which, despite vigorous reform efforts, reading and math scores on the federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress have hardly changed.
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So Noah, are students – rather than being told the way, say, blood circulates around the body – supposed to do dissections and discover it for themselves? And do a similar research project for every single fact they’re supposed to learn? Not very efficient, to say the least. “Class, today we’re going to do experiments to discover whether or not the world is flat; tomorrow, we’re going to try and find out if the Sun goes around the Earth, or if it’s the other way around.”
That “process and an investigation” is better known as the “scientific method“:
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The steps of the scientific method are to:
* Ask a Question
* Do Background Research
* Construct a Hypothesis
* Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
* Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
* Communicate Your Results
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(From the aimed-at-kids “Science Buddies” site)
Other scientists, then, possibly questioning those results, and continuing the process.
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Caro says:
Alix, this is a really interesting comment: “the people you would expect to come in with critical standards, mainstream academics, mysteriously forget those standards when confronted with a comic book.”
I haven’t noticed this, but I’m not particularly well-read in academic comics criticism. Do you think this is because they’re either trained in prose or art and it’s hard to maintain the same level of rigor on a text that requires them to do both? Or is it deeper than that?
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It might not qualify as “academic comics criticism,” but the pieces on comics I’ve read in “The New York Review of Books” (where I’m reminded that Harold Bloom piece appeared) routinely fall far short of that publication’s usual standards.
The problem is, they pick famed (relatively speaking, anyway) “names” that will look impressive on the front cover, might have impressive literary credentials…
…and who know bupkis about comics. It’s not that they forget their standards, it’s that they’re so relatively unfamiliar with comics – instead of being steeped in the art form, as a critic should be – that they can’t write about it well.
Sheesh! When there’s a science or history book to be critiqued, they pick someone with a background as a scientist or historian to do the job, not Joyce Carol Oates…
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I agree that engaging the visuals is more important than engaging kerning…
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Tch. My mention of kerning was not to make it sound all-important, but to point out (in relation to Jesse Hamm’s artist’s-eye-view analysis of what made Frazetta so powerful) how some people in a certain discipline – such as graphic designers – would notice technical details about a work of art that the average critic would not notice.
For that matter, a piano tuner might have insights into a musician’s performance that critics might not notice. Noticing that there’s something wrong with the instrument that was somehow not fixed before the performance; how the player compensates for the piano’s deficiencies. While critics would froth about the pianist’s peculiar performance.
In the same fashion that critics tore apart poor Mary Tyler Moore as a lousy singer in the ill-fated “Holly Golightly” musical, while a competent ear-nose-and-throat doctor could have noticed, “She’s not bad, she’s sick! Which has ruined her vocal range…”
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To go beyond pegagogy, if your brain is only trained to take scientific statements at face value, you don’t have the critical thinking apparatus that you need to propose your own hypotheses and test them…
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There are scientific statements which have been utterly, repeatedly proved (such as the speed of light), and others which are conjecture, theories, educated guesses.
When people think no scientific statements should be taken at face value, that it’s all just “theories” and opinions, then we end up with a huge chunk of the American people insisting the Earth is 10,000 years old; that Global Warming does not exist; that evolution is nonsense; and so forth.
Mike,
When people think no scientific statements should be taken at face value, that it’s all just “theories” and opinions, then we end up with a huge chunk of the American people insisting the Earth is 10,000 years old; that Global Warming does not exist; that evolution is nonsense; and so forth.
Nah. Opposite is true, although I used to think that myself a long time ago.
I teach people how to find information at an advanced level. (That’s my day job.) In my long suffering experience, people who can manage the conversational strategy (from either side) are able to find information successfully. Those who can’t, don’t.
The problem with saying people need to memorize things is that if you don’t have the misunderstand/correct, refine, repeat cycle, you tend to get people who memorize the wrong thing (because they were never corrected on their misunderstanding and believe they’re right) and when teachers cannot handle the “backtalk” of a misunderstanding and instead blow up, they are unable to get their ego out of the way and accept that their explanation was wrong for that student (badly explained) or, as in the case for my fifth grade teacher, accept that in fact she did NOT know how to spell scissors and check their own “facts”. (True fact.)
When looking for new knowledge, or interacting on any level, successful learners/knowledge seekers are confident enough to question both the sources and themselves. If both don’t happen, you end up with extreme whack (Obama was born in Saudi Arabia, another sad example). The conversation cycle of good arguing is more effective, especially in changing minds for good. Too often I see students who say the right thing only for class. They will use good sources (peer reviewed articles) for class, but ONLY for class. In their heart, they believe that the whacko site on the internet is more ‘true’. (It’s amazing what you can overhear at the library front desk…)
When I work with these students on a more misunderstand, correct, refine, apply, repeat level that flows both ways, I tend to get great success. I’ve seen them tell their friends or do research for their moms. It’s really cool, actually, and is my favorite part of the job. It does take a lot of guts as a teacher to accept the criticisms on the chin–my explanation sucked ASS and the student didn’t get it and that’s MY fault–but it’s well worth it in the end. YMMV of course.
Also, Caro says: I’m wondering if anybody knows how fine art/art history and criticism deals with it?
I don’t know, but I could probably find out. Do you mind if I steal this and then answer in a longish blog-post format?
On a scale from Jeffrey Brown to Galactus, ranking purely the enjoyment I get from individual last names, Santoro and Nadel are impotent and crying in the shower, while Berlatsky just devoured Saturn and is considering brunching upon Mercury.
I leave it to you to decide which end of the scale contains winners.
(I don’t think HU would begrudge anyone an innocent Uranus joke or two further down the comments, so…have at it.)
That is very funny, though I must confess I don’t know whether I’ve been flattered or insulted.
I should add that I’m told on good authority that in Russian “Berlatsky” means “barge hauler.” Which I always thought was pretty funny.
Go for it, Vom! That’d be awesome! (That’s in response to “Do you mind if I steal this and then answer in a longish blog-post format?”, of course.)
I don’t think Mike read my post about Zeroth Law! It’s not that there’s a problem with memorization. Some things you have to memorize, like the formula for the ideal gas law or the speed of light. Whether or not you have to memorize stuff or not is not the issue.
The issue is how students (of all ages and circumstances) get to the point that they don’t JUST memorize some important bit of information, but also actually understand what it means, why it’s important, what underlying principles it’s based on (like, say, the properties of atoms or the wave/particle duality) and how to identify diverse situations when the bit of memorized knowledge applies, situations different from the one that showed up in the homework exercises.
Take the example about boiling water: you memorize that water boils at 100C. But science also provides an explanation for why water boils at that temperature, and that explanation is not something you just memorize. You can just memorize it, but memorizing it without understanding it isn’t as useful as memorizing it and understanding it too.
Nobody is saying that students shouldn’t memorize simple facts and formulas and dates. (If you use them and understand them, remembering them is actually pretty easy.) But it’s not enough to memorize the procedures or situations in which those facts apply. If you don’t understand why a procedure gets you the outcome you’re going for, you’ve got training, not learning. Memorizing stuff is vital for making sure you’ve got it at your fingertips when you need it, but it’s no replacement for understanding.
I am sad that Abhay never came back to talk about working class resentment and punk criticism.
Really, I think “Brunching upon Mercury” should be our new tagline. Either that, or the sequel to Breakfast on Pluto.
As an example of the problems with simple memorization — the boiling point of water is not in fact 100?C. It’s variable depending on pressure.
There’s some alternate universe version of this thread where Abhay sticks around and Tom and he and maybe me have a pleasant and low key conversation. I wish I lived in that world.
Bertlasky-
I put you on the Galactus end of the scale! If you don’t reognize that as flattery, we read very different funny books.
Ah, good. Flattery is what I want!
Sorry; just didn’t want to presume on my all encompassing cosmic might.
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Caro says:
…I don’t think Mike read my post about Zeroth Law!…
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Sure I did. Indeed, there are teachers who don’t want to be bothered clarifying their statements. (An acquaintance told of one such specimen who’d get peeved, and simply repeat word for word the statement that was not clearly understood in the first place.) Or those who mumble, or speak at a barely-audible volume.
Do these individual failings thus disqualify the teaching method?
In those cases, aren’t there books to refer to, the Web ready to disgorge bucketloads of information? You don’t even have to – as I used to – walk over to a bookcase and haul down a dictionary or encyclopedia volume to leaf through these days.
Annoyingly, “transitive” in grammar and math (“noting a relation in which one element in relation to a second element and the second in relation to a third element implies the first element is in relation to the third element, as the relation “less than or equal to.” – http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/transitive ) do not fit the more logical “characterized by or involving transition; transitional; intermediate” meaning of transition.
But, the baffled student could look things up; take a clue from the context of the Law in question.
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It’s not that there’s a problem with memorization. Some things you have to memorize, like the formula for the ideal gas law or the speed of light. Whether or not you have to memorize stuff or not is not the issue.
The issue is how students (of all ages and circumstances) get to the point that they don’t JUST memorize some important bit of information, but also actually understand what it means, why it’s important, what underlying principles it’s based on (like, say, the properties of atoms or the wave/particle duality) and how to identify diverse situations when the bit of memorized knowledge applies, situations different from the one that showed up in the homework exercises.
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That’s all excellent. And it would also be beneficial to describe how many such discoveries were made; in some cases adherents of different theories warring over the years, employing different approaches; in others, accident or serendipity being involved. Why, even the earlier-mentioned subconscious can lend a helping hand, as shown by Kekulé’s famous example: “He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail (this is a common symbol in many ancient cultures known as the Ouroboros).”
The Wikipedia entry for Kekulé from which that quote comes giving a nice example of a “conversational” model for scientific discoveries:
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The counting of possible isomers for diderivatives [in that explanation] was however criticized by Albert Ladenburg, a former student of Kekulé, who argued that Kekulé’s 1865 structure implied two distinct “ortho” structures, depending on whether the substituted carbons are separated by a single or a double bond. Since ortho derivatives of benzene were never actually found in more than one isomeric form, Kekulé modified his proposal in 1872 and suggested that the benzene molecule oscillates between two equivalent structures, in such a way that the single and double bonds continually interchange positions.[6] This implies that all six carbon-carbon bonds are equivalent, as each is single half the time and double half the time. A firmer theoretical basis for a similar idea was later proposed in 1928 by Linus Pauling, who replaced Kekulé’s oscillation by the concept of resonance between quantum-mechanical structures.
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Hey Mike: I think there’s a substantive difference between a (palpably bad) teacher who doesn’t want to clarify a statement when a student asks a question and a teacher who doesn’t take account when formulating his or her pedagogy the difficulty students, especially young or poorly prepared students, have recognizing that they’re wrong or confused in the first place.
It’s the latter that I want to disqualify. I prefer a pedagogy that includes a process, before a test, that helps identify a student’s weaknesses so you don’t punish them for failing to do something they didn’t realize they needed to do. Poor grades on quantitative tests aren’t a highly effective way to provide feedback to a student about the quality of his or her understanding while the student is still learning: they’re a highly effective way to measure that understanding at the end of the learning process, but they don’t help the student identify precisely which bits are wrong and they can be very discouraging. Misunderstanding doesn’t feel like confusion.
This is why the current pedagogy pushes out smart students who have more to learn in the sciences: they don’t do well on the tests, but the test is the only feedback they get to evaluate their understanding, so they just give up. The conversational model is a solution to that.
Your approach puts a lot of responsibility on the student — which is fine if the student is advanced enough to take that responsibility and follow up on it, but which gives even the advanced student fewer opportunities to identify points of confusion — or even places where the person has made an assumption that isn’t necessarily wrong, just not necessarily always right or appropriate.
Teaching the history of science can definitely encourage students to think about what they’re learning more, but history can also be taught as memorization. Even in history classes, the conversational model gets better results than the memorization one for exactly the same reasons…Talking to people about your ideas always makes your understanding of those ideas deeper and more nuanced and clearer, at any level: it’s just cogno-feedback.
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