Hugh Nicoll's Weblog

Reading John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”

Hugh Nicoll — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:01:42 +0000

I have just finished reading Steve Rothman’s account of the publication of Hersey’s “Hiroshima,” which I also finished reading today. I have two copies of Hersey’s text in my library, the version published in the 1988 reprint of Here to Stay, a collection of Hersey pieces originally published in The New Yorker and in Life, and the digitized version available on the DVD version of The New Yorker. The print version has all the practical versions of the codex book, easy to read in bed, etc. to pick up and put down as the practical necessities of life take precedence over reading time, while the digitized version gives one a copy of the full text of the 31 August 1946 issue of the magazine. The New Yorker issue of 31 August 1946 was devoted in its entirety — with the notable exception of the columns and pages given over to advertisements — to Hersey’s piece. Hersey’s much praised tone — objective, understated, and sober — is luminous and pure, and stands in ironic contrast to celebrations of wealth and taste in the ads, which would appeal to the The New Yorker’s upper-crust readership: the educated and well-heeled readers who have the leisure to think carefully about the morality of government policy and to shop at Lord & Taylor’s, Tiffanys, and and Bergdorf-Goodman.

“The Publication of “Hiroshima” in The New Yorker,” was written as a term paper for a graduate course on science and society at Harvard in 1997, and contains a very useful overview of the publication and reception of the original version. There are a number of links to related pieces on Rothman’s home page, including one to Terrorism, War, and the Press, a 2003 collection edited by Rothman’s wife, clearly of immediate interest as the war in Iraq drags on, and politicians continue to beat the drums of war. Consider, for example, McCain’s latest pontifications on democracy and so-called U. S. interests in relation to the current crisis in Georgia.

The main questions, as always, reverberate: What must be done? When will we ever learn?

Writing Across the Curriculum

Hugh Nicoll — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:00:59 +0000

The end of the term provokes reflection. What have I done well with my classes? Where did I go wrong? In what ways do I need to change my approach to the teaching of writing, design of assignments, construction of more useful learning environments for my students? Toward those ends, I began to take a look at resources available online, and am very pleased to see what’s happened at The WAC Clearinghouse.

The site now hosts several online journals, most usefully, Across the Disciplines, and a collection of digitized books discussing the teaching of writing, writing across the curriculum pedagogies, and reference guides to rhetoric and composition studies.

In addressing the needs of my students here in Miyazaki, I need to find a similar resource in Japanese addressing academic skills and the development of expertise as a writer in the L1.

Ronald Johnson: Life and Works

Hugh Nicoll — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:48:21 +0000

In Hurrah for Euphony!, Mark Scroggins shares his delight upon taking delivery of Ronald Johnson: Life and Works, just published by the National Poetry Foundation in Orono, ME. Scroggins describes the volume as containing 700 plus pages of critical cool. Hope I can steal some time for it later this summer.

Jacket 36

Hugh Nicoll — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:27:10 +0000

Jacket 36, the late 2008 issue, is taking form. It includes a discussion between Rachel Blau DuPlessis and William Watkin on “Draft 33: Deixis” and Watkin’s essay “Though we keep company with cats and dogs”: Onomatopoeia, Glossolalia and Happiness in the work of Lyn Hejinian and Giorgio Agamben. I am not familiar with W. Watkin’s work, but am inspired by his perspectives on contemporary literature and literary criticism. Watkins is co-coordinator of Archive of the Now, a wondrously rich collection of contemporary writers’ works: confirmation if any is still needed of what an important role the web now plays in making poetics and poetry resources available, no matter our geographic location.

Seminar Presentations

Hugh Nicoll — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:46:17 +0000

My American Studies seminar students finished their graduation thesis presentations yesterday. I am very proud of what they achieved. Their topics included Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Toni Morrison - Sula and Beloved, Ellison’s Invisible Man and Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Langston Hughes - The Ways of White Folks and Not Without Laughter, Truman Capote’s life and works, Chang Rae Lee’s Native Speaker, Ann Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Amateur Marriage, and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.

LifeTime Session 16 Nov 2007

Hugh Nicoll — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 06:29:20 +0000

Katsuki Yasuno (vocals and euphonium) and Onishi Yosuke (piano) played at LifeTime last night with special guests.

Acapella: RobStar Lobster

Hugh Nicoll — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:20:12 +0000

Attended a live performance by RobStar Lobster tonight. “Donny,” (Kotaro-kun) the second vocalist in the group is the son of one of my oldest friends in Miyazaki, Yano Yasuhiro. RobStar Lobster is an acapella group performing polished and moving covers of Stevie Wonder, Beatles, Carole King songs along with Japanese pop standards and a few originals. My preferences for jazz are pretty strong, but this group of young singers put on a great show, and did a great job of highlighting the wonders of the human voice. I especially liked their mic-less version of “What a Wonderful World” they performed as an encore.

Many of the audience are folks I’ve known almost my entire stay in Miyazaki, so lots of hisashiburi (Haven’t seen you in a long time!) sociability, and the strange mix of wonder and familiarity that seeing your friends’ children growing up and finding themselves as adults provokes.

Pity the poor president!

Hugh Nicoll — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:30:07 +0000

Two pieces on Dead Certain. Read ‘em ‘n’ weep . . . .

Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times.

Ed Pilkington in The Guardian.

Zadie Smith on Zora Neale Hurston

Hugh Nicoll — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:24:10 +0000

In the spring of 1969 when I was about to graduate from high school, Dr. King had been gone for a year, black power was in its ascendency (and in the FBI’s sights as we would learn all too well in December of that year. To remember it as a time of many troubles sounds/feels trite now, but important texts were being re-published, including Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Jean Toomer’s Cane, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. My first real exposure to Hurston was attending the performance of TEWWG by a small black theater company in D. C., and I’ve been reading and re-reading the novel ever since, teaching it, and recommending it to my American Studies students as a senior research topic. For Japanese undergraduates the dialect is a challenge, but the writing is so good in so many ways it’s worth the challenge, for them and for me.
In this weekend’s Books section of The Guardian Zadie Smith has one of the most moving and thoughtful essays on the book I’ve read: “What does soulful mean?”.

Jonathan Derbyshire’s review of Mark Edmundson’s new book on Freud, and Paul Laity’s interview with Eric Hobsbawm good, too.

Grace Lee Boggs

Hugh Nicoll — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:19:48 +0000

“Seeds of Change,” a Grace Lee Boggs piece on the Bill Moyers Journal site asks a host of What must be done? questions for our time. She quotes Margaret Wheatley on the necessity of cultivating a new way of thinking about how we should participate in our troubled societies:

“From a Newtonian perspective, our efforts often seem too small, and we doubt that our actions will contribute incrementally to large-scale change. But a quantum view explains the success of small efforts quite differently.
Acting locally allows us to be inside the movement and flow of the system, Changes in small places affect the global system, not through incrementalism, but because every small system participates in an unbroken wholeness. We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.”

Her 1998 autobiograpy, Living for Change: An Autobiography is a longer testament to the ways courage, committment, and good humor can help us keep working.

Boggs is featured this week on the Journal, along with Robert Bly.