A small good thing: Before I decided to cut my losses and turn my attention to a text that holds a different kind of appeal for me (read: I am apparently in American Idol results show mode), I came across the James Marshall’s reading of the pic of Macrorie on the back of Uptaught. Of the photo that “graces the back cover of [his] 1970 edition of Uptaught” Marshall writes:
“[It] represents to me everything that Macrorie was back then, when I was preparing to teach. He is sitting informally on a bench, back to a brick wall. His posture is friendly and open, his shirt and tie informal and rumpled. But it’s the look on his face that’s important because it’s a look that says, ‘I don’t believe you.’ A look that says, finally, 'No.' it was, I think, what Uptaught was about—'No' to dishonesty, 'No' to 'Engfish.' 'No' to uptightness generally. And that 'no' was somehow captured iconographically in the photograph. . .a refusal to go along with old ways of running the country or of old ways of teaching writing.”
Drift warning: Sometime last year I arrived at my office to find that someone had thumbtacked an index card-sized puffy-ish sticker on the bulletin board outside my office door. On the sticker was an image of a pirate that was made to say (by use of an additional sticker) something like, “I hate pirates!” If memory serves, whoever tacked the sticker to the bulletin board, took care to type out (maybe in a times new roman font) and then affix to the bottom of the sticker a thin strip of paper containing a single question, “What work does this do?” That the pirate sticker was placed there by a former or current student I had little doubt because: a.) I vaguely remember saying something about pirates at some point in time in one of my classes. In my defense I doubt that I said that I "hated" them since I do not personally know any pirates. That is to say, my comment was likely based on my “not getting” the whole pirate craze: “Not getting” why some people seem to like to think about pirates, talk like pirates, dress up like pirates, watch pirate movies, and so on (and) b.) Because the words I use most often throughout the course of the semester are, “What work does (or can) this do?”
So, if Macrorie’s photo, according to Marshall’s read, “works” to capture, to illustrate/embody visually (i.e., through the use of an author-image), the message/movement/climate associated with Uptaught, I’ve often wondered about the work that this particular author-image does:
Had this image been placed on the back of the book (i.e., where it would arguably have functioned much differently than it does here, placed on the front of the book), I would find it a delightfully ironic, or else a downright foolish choice given the work the book, at least to my read, proposes to do, and the kind of pedagogical practice it advocates. Thus, that the photo appears on the front of the book suggests that this photo likely does the work of capturing, illustrating, embodying the pre-lessons-learned Tompkins or the pre-awakening Tompkins. Or maybe it works (not-so-simply) to complicate the point made here, suggesting that no matter how hard we try to change, or how badly we want try some new approach, we just is what we is.And now for something that may or may not go over all that well but that I’d be game for trying: What if we (meaning folks in the 486/686 course) were to create cover art and/or author photos for our blogs? What I have in mind here is something different from (or in addition) to the customizing features and profiling functions blogger offers. Put otherwise the question is this: If the contents of the blog appeared in book form (or put still otherwise, if blogs had front and back covers) what would appear on the front cover and back cover and why? If an author-image were to be part of the design, what image would be selected (i.e., a photo, a self-portrait/painting, cartoon), and why?
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