But let’s just go back one step. So her book is pieced together almost completely from second-hand experiences. In music, remixing can create something sophisticated that reflects the artist’s skill and vision. But words are by their very nature unoriginal. Putting them together in a way that makes them your own is a helluva job. Remixing writing to make a novel? Why write one at all if you’re producing a product that just reproduces what other people have written? What’s the point?

This also makes me think of my own work as a teacher. In essay writing I preach: Put yourself into your writing. Make it real. Live, and live to talk about it. That’s especially hard to do in “English as a foreign language”, which is basically a large collection of the handiest, most frequently used phrases, so it’s full of linguistic clichés. It can drive a language lover to drink. So it’s hard enough to help language learners find their own voice. Do they plagiarize? All the time. And I give them hell for it.

Here’s what I think: Plagiarizing is not the same thing as remixing. Plagiarizing isn’t “borrowing” from others.  All it is, is stealing from yourself.

Englischlernen mit Anne! Subscribe to the Island Weekly podcast by RSS or in iTunes.

“I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete – that’s what scares me. That’s why I quit the Theater Department. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.”

– Franny, in Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger (1957)

Towards the end, as Franny and Zooey talk things through, Zooey tells her the only thing that counts is detachment. He says, the only thing you can do for God is to act. And he says: What could be prettier?

Not beautiful, pretty. Human-sized, Humanistic. Will do my best to be pretty today. And make this weekend, meeting family, a pretty one, too.

On Christmas Day the 23-year-old “Underwear Bomber” tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Priviledged, rich, well-connected, educated, and so completely wrong-headed. So we will be seeing more of the controversial and frankly embarassing “Naked Scanners” installed at airports, and more senseless waiting and giving up of shampoo and bottled water, and more xenophobia, while the terrorists continue to spread fear and hate. Oh, doesn’t it just make you fume?!

Just before Christmas Stefan gave me John Le Carré’s “A Most Wanted Man” to read, a most excellent thriller on the subject of counterterrorism. Set in Germany, specifically in Hamburg, where 9/11 was masterminded, the novel develops the story of how Issia, an illegal immigrant and asylum seeker with a secret and possibly sinister mission, becomes a pawn in a game of agencies seeking the extraordinary rendition of suspected terrorists. The players include Tommy Brue, a private banker who finds himself saddled with dirty money; Annabelle, an idealistic human rights lawyer with a naive view of the world; and the German and international intelligence community, with each agency following their own (limited) internal agenda, some with a far greated depth and scope of “intelligence” than others, effectively blocking each other rather than collaborating. The subplot is an emerging lovestory. In the end, individual human morality becomes very difficult to balance out against the political imperatives, and some “good” intentions go very “bad”, indeed.

A great read!

Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991

In his first book, The Cat in the Hat, Dick and Sally are latchkey children alone at home with their fish. The Cat in the Hat comes, causing chaos with his two sidekicks, Thing One and Thing Two. In the end, the kids get the Cat in the Hat and (the) Things under control, and the Cat in The Hat tidies everything up… just in time, before Dick and Sally’s parents come home!

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do. And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” – Dr. Seuss

“…adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.” – Dr. Seuss (quoted in his obituary in Time Magazine)

Dr. Seuss

To read them is to learn them by heart. Ten quotes:

Hop on pop: “We like to hop. We like to hop on top of pop. / Stop! You must not hop on pop.”

One fish two fish red fish blue fish

Fox in Socks: “New socks. Two socks. Whose socks? Sue’s socks.”

The Cat in the Hat: “I will pick up the hook. / You will see something new. / Two things. And I call them Thing One and Thing Two.”

Horton Hears a Who: “A person’s a person no matter how small.”

Horton Hatches the Egg: “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant./ An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.”

Green Eggs and Ham: “I will not eat them, Sam I Am!”
Video: The Reverend Jesse Jackson reads Green Eggs and Ham

Put me in the Zoo: “They should not put you in the zoo. / The circus is the place for you!”

Oh, the places you will go! “You have brains in your head. / You have feet in your shoes. / You can steer yourself / any direction you choose.”

How the Grinch Stole Christmas: “The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! / Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.”

One of my most prized possessions is a copy of “Winnie ille Pu” given to me by my dad when he was teaching me Latin. I also love the excellent translation into German by the brilliant Harry Rowohlt. And if you haven’t read The Tao of Pooh, well, what are you waiting for? — On the other hand, I can’t relate to the boneless, squishy Pooh of the Disney films. Oh well. To each his own.

My favorite Pooh quotes:

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’”

“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

“Those who are clever, who have a Brain, never understand anything.”

“Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.”

Isn’t it funny how a bear likes honey?
Buzz buzz buzz
I wonder why he does.

“Tigger is all right really,” said Piglet lazily.
“Of course he is,” said Christopher Robin.
“Everybody is really,” said Pooh. “That’s what I think,” said Pooh.
“But I don’t suppose I’m right,” he said.
“Of course you are,” said Christopher Robin.

NOTE:
I’ll be away for a week, but back for Christmas. I’m sorry if your first-time comments don’t appear right away, or if your comments don’t get a prompt response. I’ll answer when I get back. The advent calendar will continue to appear thanks to the magic of WordPress.

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

You may know the famous first lines of that poem as spoken by Willy Wonka, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

The premise of Roald Dahl’s novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) asks: what would an industrial factory engaged in mass production look like if it was built by a fantasist, dreamer, and romantic in a world dominated by pragmatists, realists, and materialists. In this lonely island, Wonka wonders who will inherit his life’s work and hopes that in the next generation of children there might still be romantics. His sampling of youth via the lottery tickets provides a referendum on Charlie’s generation. The selected tourists to Wonka’s candyland are a fools gallery of technocrats, capitalists, hedonists… and opportunists. – Aharon Varady

“Eat your words!” (Nimm alles zurück!) ... and Milo does. The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) takes him into a parallel world where you have to eat words to use them. — I’m always nibbling on mine.

Highlights from the book: Milo meets the Whether Man (”for after all it’s more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be”),  and picks up a watchdog named Tock (who has a giant alarm clock for a body). Milo and Tock then set off toward the Mountains of Ignorance to rescue the twin Princesses, Rhyme and Reason. In jail, they meet a Which named Faintly Macabre, who used to pick which words were used for which purpose. But she was a very bad which, because she decided to keep all the good words for herself.

Also see the review by Gregory McNamee