Lived Literacy--transcript of interview with Ryan Auclair

me: Hey, you there. I am recovering from eating some fresh summer corn and 2 cans of PBR.
ryanauclair99: Ha, good one
Sent at 8:05 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I can't get decent fresh corn down here
Sent at 8:06 PM on Saturday
me: I was looking over some of your answers esp. about the authors like Shakespeare that meant a lot to you growing up. What do you think about people who think we should teach kids anything they WILL read as opposed to trying to force them to read what we think they SHOULD? And where would you draw the line? I don't know personally but I wonder what redeeming value is in the Twilight books, for instance...
Sent at 8:08 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: That's an interesting question. I think there is a balance that must be found between making sure that kids learn about the canonical writers but aren't forced through it kicking and screaming. I sort of found that balance naturally since the English department at my high school alternated between working their way through the big hitters while also allowing you to pick your own books for certain papers and projects. I was also reading a lot on my own, so I never felt that Shakespeare or Melville was taking all of my reading time.
Twilight is like a dog whistle for a teenage girl.
Sent at 8:11 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: The books have a certain pitch perfect slant and tone about being an awkward teenage girl, the "life and death" aspects of teenage love and the general self centeredness of a teenager.
me: I'll come out and say that I threw a few books against the wall in college that just weren't reaching me at all. Chaucer, Henry James, no thanks! Some of it, too, seemed to depend wildly on my seriousness as a reader, which at the time I would rate low to very low...
That seems like a good balance your hs. achieved. Quite sane.
ryanauclair99: I hear that- Henry James never appealed to me. The same with Hardy and a few other late period Victorians.
Sent at 8:13 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I think by that point, after the Romantics, Austen and Dickens, Brit lit got very overwrought and needed the moderns to come in and pare everything down again.
me: Being a sly and lazy dog of limited intelligence, I will now proceed to poach my former list of questions...Some writers struggle when they try to make the leap from high-school level writing to college, and then again from college to work writing. Did you find either of these transitions challenging? What was it about the transitions you found jarring? The volume of the writing, the expectations of professors or bosses?
Sent at 8:15 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: The hardest jump was from HS to college. I went from a public high with a decent English department to a pretty academically challenging college. I was slaughtered on my first few papers then I "got" it and gradually adjusted. I think the challenge came from both my own limited skills and having professors with high expectations (I was in an Honors program). The jump from college to the Army was easy since everything is written at an 8th grade level. The hard part was dumbing down enough to get memos and other communications through the staffing and approval process. Even among t he officer corps, the general level of writing hovers somewhere in the HS range.
Sent at 8:18 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: The hardest adjustment in the service came from writing mostly long form in College then switching to a very PowerPoint and verbal presentation centric communication culture. I'm sure you've seen the overwrought PPT chart detailing the Afghanistan situation- that's exceptional, but within the realm of normal for the military.
I salute the poor staff mope who had to build that slide
Sent at 8:20 PM on Saturday
me: I did see that. PPT seems to have taken the military by storm. Like the joke about shutting Italians up by tying their hands behind their backs, I wonder if same would happen in mil. w/o PPT. I will whack my Internet question in here now...
You post on our fly-fishing board extensively and participate in the Buster Wants to Fish blog. What is it about the online literacy you like? I don’t know about you, but I remember feeling trepidation and a little bit of a thrill the first time I posted to a board and waited to see how others would react…Also, I have been amazed at the depth of community that can be created just through words. Do you think it is an illusion? Do you feel like you really know your online friends or do they remain just avatars and largely fictive personas? Do you believe a like-minded community can become too closed, inasmuch as everyone knows the likes and dislikes of the group and may become afraid to express divergent opinions or stifle their true feelings about things?
Is there stuff you read online that regularly pisses you off? My top few include: casual racism, sloppy reasoning, ridiculous generalizations, denial-of-service Troll types, and Internet macho poseurs.
ryanauclair99: If the Chinese ever unleash a virus that disables PPT and MS Outlook, the US military will grind to a halt.
me: I must have chased a fistful of coffee grounds to have asked that many questions at once...
Thass funny.
Sent at 8:23 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I think that on the whole, the internet has made us more literate in that a vast majority of the internet is text based still. I know that is changing, but a lot of folks read blogs, news sites and forums, etc. The first online community I belonged to was the old Drake BB. I don't even remember how I found it, but I remember there was like maybe 50 members at the time- Wook, Hammer, Conman, Grant, Nemo, some other folks, and it was wild. I held off on posting for like a month since these guys were first rate comedians and jokesters. I think my first post was about unsticking a frozen lid on a Softex jar. Wook said I was in the wrong place for help. After that I just joined in the community and I'm honestly glad I did.
More coming in a bit
Sent at 8:28 PM on Saturday
me: That was exactly how I found the Drake and how I found it to be.
Sent at 8:29 PM on Saturday
me: I go back and forth from thinking Wow, I'm glad I'm posting under a made up name to Hey, that was actually worthy of Christian and family names.
ryanauclair99: I think there is a sense of community there, but that's inversely proportional to the size of the forum. I think the more people you get, it is easier to act like an ass and not develop any sense of belonging. With the smaller forums, like the DBFC, it's the opposite. Shay needed some orders to keep his shop open and a roof over his head and what, like 5 people ponied up rod orders within a few days? In this economy? Or the V-Bay auction for FatPigs son- I don't think a board with more than a hundred members would have known who FP was and cared enough to help out.
me: Yup. I wonder if there will be a tipping point or if good boards organically decay. Hope not.
ryanauclair99: It is funny you mention avatars. I always expect people to look like their avatars. I expected Conman to look like Pussy Nelson, Fyshnutz to look like Dark Helmet, etc. The again, when I met Mikey for the first time, the first thing he said was "I was expecting Robert Shaw"
me: Me too. Though not since you turned into La Jarra de Kool Aid.
Sent at 8:33 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I think that what I don't like about the net is the same thing you don't. It is way too easy to let the ugliness flow behind a keyboard. I know I've been a jackass with some of my BWTF postings, especially about Zach Matthews and the Buffy the Vampire FanFic fourm-Dick Cheney axis of insanity from a few months back. I've tried to consciously tone it down since I didn't think I was getting anything other than a few laughs but I wasn't really adding anything.
Sent at 8:35 PM on Saturday
me: It is easy to say some mean, back stabby, and petty stuff. I've certainly been guilty of that. Sometimes I put it down to sheer boredom.
ryanauclair99: I think there is a tipping point for online communities and it seems to hover around 500 active participants. Less than that and everyone more or less "knows" each other and it's self policing and you can get some really good discussions going. More than that and it's a free fire zone
me: Related to this: Since you have been published in print and online, what do you think the difference is? Do you see a lingering place for reading real books and magazines? Are you a print sentimentalist? Was the print experience somehow more validating to you as a writer than "just" blogging or writing online?
Sent at 8:37 PM on Saturday
me: I have to say I just spent all day on my blog writing about 350.org and without the ability to hotlink to things, it would have really limited my ability to discuss the org. in an interesting way.
Sent at 8:38 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I think that print is much more rigorous and demands more thought than online. I can put up a blog post in 10 minutes, but a print pub will take me about 2 weeks or more to put together. Then again, I like the immediacy of online publishing- That 10 minute post can get the word out on a conservation issue with links to all the relevant background, contacts, etc, while a print pub will lag by weeks or months due to the publishing schedule, editorial and copy issues and decisions, etc. I think I am a print sentimentalist. I don't think I'll ever transition from reading a printed book to an e-book. I just like the way books feel and the fact that you can underline, make marginal notes and kill spiders with them. I can take out a house spider with "From Here to Eternity" with ease, but I don't think an iPad is going to survive the hit to the floor.
Sent at 8:42 PM on Saturday
me: I often think about how explorers got places in the past w/o being Goretex gearwhores or how writers wrote with just pencils and a pad. Which always lead me to admire them but feel glad to be in this time, too.
Sent at 8:44 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I've been reading a few books lately about the Royal Navy trying to find the Northwest Passage in the 1800s and I feel the same way.
me: Right now the iPad is the little de rigeur commuting toy. Oooh, look at me I've got an iPad...
Cool. Here's one more...
Do you have any literacy goals for yourself in the future? Got any aspirations to write literature? What sort of genres of literature do you write in? Why did you gravitate towards those, if you can put that into words? Do you write traditional letters to people still?
Sent at 8:46 PM on Saturday
me: I have never even tried to write creatively. I guess if I do it will be because some wild, fully formed idea sneaks up on me.
Sent at 8:47 PM on Saturday
me: That also sounds like a cop out when I read it to myself...
Sent at 8:48 PM on Saturday
me: Then again there is enough bad writing out there w/o my contribution...
ryanauclair99: I think that I want to finally read Don Quixote; I never finished it in College and I think that maybe now would be the right time to reread it. I don't know if I have any serious aspirations to write literature. I once had the idea of writing a novel and I actually wrote the first chapter. That's when I realized how hard it was and how I could probably never pull it off with a day job competing for my attention. Also, I don't think I've written an actual pen and paper letter in 7 years. Email is just too easy, immediate and available. If I was to write an actual, no shit work of literature, I would probably go for either the novel or a short story collection.
I agree wholeheartedly that I don't need to add to the bad writing bin.
Sent at 8:51 PM on Saturday
me: It was weird to see how industrialized the writing game is/got to be. In publishing, there seemed to be a track: get Iowa MFA, write in small journals, take stories and anthologize them, publish first novel. If that novel fails, most of the time writers were not heard from again.
Sent at 8:53 PM on Saturday
me: I have many, many gaps in my reading I'd like to patch up...
ryanauclair99: I've noticed that as well. It's almost been commoditized in a way- a packaged artistic career for upper middle class kids who are bright but don't want to work the Street. I know that's a big huge generalization and I'm back to making a snarky internet comment, but who else can afford to drop $50K on an MFA?
commentator
Sent at 8:55 PM on Saturday
me: Yeah, that's why Knockemstiff was refreshing. Same with Chuck Pahlahniuk, though he got into some kind of writing program with Gordon Lish, who was apparently v. much against ever using adjs.
Sent at 8:56 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I was pretty impressed with Pollacks back story and that he actually committed to writing that collection. I'm sure there are quite a few people in America who have that talent, but never develop it.
Sent at 8:58 PM on Saturday
me: I thought about what you said about your Mom reading stuff that wasn't high lit. I think the snobbishness in reading is a shame. I traffic in it sometimes, but when I read a juicy book that keeps me up half the night, it does make you remember: Hey, jackass, this is supposed to be fun...
Sent at 8:59 PM on Saturday
me: Yup, Donald Ray couldn't have gotten much encouragement in the paper mill...
...to indulge his writerly side
Sent at 9:01 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: Totally- I like to read crime novels- George Higgins, David Peace, James Ellroy and I've also been known to read Stephen King, Tom Clancy and James Patterson. When I catch myself being a book snob, I have to check that. Sometimes you just need to relax and enjoy a good ride.
me: Hah, I just read Suicide Hill by Ellroy. It was pretty good, but I bet not his best.
I have admired your writing about the right to bear arms and your overall knowledge of the civic duty to stand up to our government when it needs to be called out. You have made me rethink my own unchecked assumptions and fixed ideas I had. Do you feel like the ability to interact with others online about ideas is a rhetorical space that doesn’t have an equal anywhere else? I feel like serious verbal discussions can rapidly peter out or become too charged to continue. Sometimes, too, the nonverbal cues you get from people are enough to halt real interactions. What do you think?
Sent at 9:03 PM on Saturday
me: Like ****ing Thanksgiving discussions with relatives. They never go anywhere except to clinking of silverware and mumbles about passing the gravyboat...
Sent at 9:04 PM on Saturday
me: It is wild now that I think of it, though, how many online beefs are caused by pure misunderstanding. Those emoticons, stupid though they be, can save the day.
Sent at 9:06 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I think that online and actual verbal discussions have their pluses and minuses. I think that when I was talking about the 2A online, I felt that is was a comfortable enough environment to be able to lay a case out rationally and without resorting to typical internet rhetoric of the unyielding partisan. Then again, it is too easy to be a royal prick and stake out the most extreme end of the spectrum online and write things to another person that you would never say to their face. I like the Thanksgiving metaphor. The non-verbal and tonal cues though do help prevent a lot of handbag fights in teh real world. I can tell when your joking with me if we're sitting at the bar, but I can't when we're reading a screen.
I say this and Ann Coulter will come on C-Span and totally disprove my thesis that discussions that are face to face are usually more civil than those online.
me: Ha. That skank! How's that for a cheap Internet putdown.
Sent at 9:09 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: Well played, although it would help if you called her a skank that hates America. That works for either side of the aisle
Sent at 9:10 PM on Saturday
me: I believe I have one or two more ideas to touch on...1) being what is your take on the self-esteem movement you mentioned? I taught an afterschool chess program when I was unemployed and got some cheap medals to give out to those who won in the tourney (I loused up the scoring so it was from from objective who medaled and who didn't. Nonetheless, some kids didn't get one and I was actually confronted by a parent about it. Got a little heated but I just repeated that sometimes in life not everyone wins...OK, with that long-winded preamble, take it away...
from from = far from
Sent at 9:14 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I think that self-esteem comes from actually having to accomplish something. Kids are way tougher and smarter than adults give them credit for. They know when you're patronizing them and they also know the easiest way to get over on something. If you challenge a kid with something within his abilities, or just beyond them (I'm not talking about an 8 year old recreating the moon shot) and they pull it off, that means a thousand times more and will stay with them far longer than a "thanks for coming" medal. As I mentioned before, I'm dealing with the end result of this culture of blowing smoke up every kids' ass and never letting them fail. I had junior staff (in their 20s) that couldn't do anything without both intense supervision and immense amounts of praise. There were times I wanted to say to her that if she wants a "job well done" from me, she has to actually perform a "job well done" and not have me hold her hand through simple tasks. I'm halfway amazed that her fucking parents never called me to talk about her job and what they could do to help.
Sent at 9:20 PM on Saturday
me: Yes! It's a weird culture out there. The pressure seems to have ratched up yet there's seemingly some compensatory grade and praise inflation. I fear for these kids, but I do think that's misplaced since people have resources they don't know about till they're tested.
Sent at 9:23 PM on Saturday
me: 2) Do you think writing comes from somewhere unknowable and subconscious? Or do you think investgating its source would be worthwhile? I read this quote recently and kind of agree..."our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known"...What sayest thou?
Sent at 9:25 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: I agree, yet we seem to lowering standards, such as grade inflation, and the first time someone fails they're usually out on their own. Sometimes I wonder about the high pressure parenting track you see on the coasts. Those kids are shepherded from preschool on through Ivy League Grad school and the first time they have their had on the wheel so to speak, they could be a stockbroker making billion dollar trades or a lawyer. I want them to know about their own failings before then.
me: Related: Do you write best when you are writing for an audience or for yourself?
Sent at 9:27 PM on Saturday
me: Yeah, some of the moral failings of daytraders and big bankers/big oil/big anything has to lie somewhere!
And gd helicopter parents seems a likely place to lay the blame.
ryanauclair99: I think that writing is a mix of talent work and practice. I don't think that anyone is a natural at anything, but yet some people can write and others can't. We could eventually learn the bio chemistry and the neurological conditions that make up "talent", but I don't know if it is worthwhile or even if it will tell us much.
me: Good point. I don't think even the very talented could write without effort.
ryanauclair99: I think I write best when I have an audience, especially online. They'll let you know with a quickness about weak sauce.
me: But, and this sounds gross, if you are pleasing yourself do you find most times that the writing is truly good...
ryanauclair99: At the same time, I know that even with a 100% focus and years of effort, I could never approach the greatness of Hamlet
me: Yes, I would be one of the 100 monkeys in the room with the typewriters. You know the one writing u9puhn4gfpeifhfhwhatlightonyonder98789hp
#$\
ryanauclair99: Sometimes the "zone" comes into effect- If you can block out the outside concerns and "how will this play" you do tend to pull it off more often than not. I too am a fellow monkey
Sent at 9:32 PM on Saturday
me: OK, I have honestly squeezed the bean dry. I want to thank you so much for giving me this time and all of your writing to post. It was great to reread some of that! You are headed on vacay did you say?
Sent at 9:34 PM on Saturday
ryanauclair99: Thanks man, I had fun too. I'm heading to Florida to take my nieces to Disney, then I have a week long working group at [deleted at participant's request].
me: Just a teeny contrast there. Have fun on the Dumbo ride! This was great fun. Cheers.
Oh, crap. Do I just select all copy and paste this?