Landschaft Mit Haus

Check out this excellent series of paintings by Maria Zaikina. I think these pieces demonstrate the potential of serial art based on minor variations; also, I appreciate their brite flatness and their refusal of more "expressive" modes. It's interesting to reflect on what the literary equivalent of this kind of work would be.

3 + 1: New York Public Library and Bryant Park

This assignment asks you to expand your descriptive writing by producing vast amounts of organized detail. The goal is to make your writing "thicker" -- to "blow it up," in photographic terms -- by writing intensive, close studies of single subjects. Here are the guidelines:

1. You must stay on the block that holds the New York Public Library. You can travel anywhere on the block, but you cannot cross the street. Treat the block as an island surrounded by deep water.

2. You must stay on the block for at least an hour.

3. In total, you should make notes on 4 subjects: three people and one pigeon.

4. In order to produce a sufficient quantity of detail, you should also try to generate "complete" descriptions of your subjects, capturing every nuance of their appearance, their dress, their actions. Try to produce as much notation as you can -- more than seems possible -- for each one. However, this is also a "stealth assignment": you need to find ways of positioning yourself to observe and write that do not involve staring openly at the people you are studying or disturbing them in any way. (You can stare at the pigeon, of course.)

5. Try to break down single actions into small steps. Don't just write, "He licks his ice cream cone." Expand: "He raises his his right arm, bending it at the elbow and raising the ice cream cone in a sweeping motion across his chest, toward his mouth. As he does so, the sleeve of his jacket pulls against his elbow, expanding slightly at the cuff to reveal a trace of the white shirt underneath. His lips part slightly as the cone approaches his mouth. He does not look at the cone. The ice cream is as white as his sleeve, the cone a pale gold color. Suddenly his mouth opens and he bites the ice cream, quickly taking the cone away and turning his head." Be specific, even maddeningly specific.

6. Try to see details as minutely as possible. Don't just write, "She carries a purse." Expand: "She carries a large, shapeless purse on her right shoulder -- bronze-colored with gold buckles and studs. It has two long straps, one of which is firmly on her shoulder, her right arm passed through it so that the bag is under her arm. She clutches the strap tightly in her hand. The other strap, however, has fallen off her shoulder and hangs against her upper arm a few inches above the elbow." Be specific to the point of seeming unreasonable, stupid, crazy.

7. No interior states! Don't make notes about what you think the person you're describing thinks or feels. Don't make notes about what you think or feel about the person you're describing. You are a neutral recording device, no more biased than a digital camera or an audio recording device -- but just as exhaustive.

8. No figurative language! No one is "tall and skinny as a stork" or "squat like a toad" -- no one is "like" anything!

9. Take your notes and draft an organized piece of descriptive writing for Monday's workshop. Write each description in a separate paragraph, for a total of four paragraphs. This kind of writing is difficult to organize: that's also part of the challenge of this assignment. If you simply copy out what's in your notes in the order you witnessed it, your piece will probably be quite boring. You have to revise, reorganize, strategize about how to create small moments of drama in the arrangement of your sentences or the order of the details you include. Because your description will so minute, small contrasts (for example, between the two purse straps in #6) and minor resemblances (for example, between the shirt and the ice cream in #5) will be important in giving structure and drama to your piece. Word choice ("clutches," not "holds") will be crucial.

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If you missed our field trip and need to make up this assignment with an independent trip to this location, I suggest you go at a time when it will be busy and crowded. This is midtown and there's a park: that means lunch time or immediately after work (5:30 or 6pm) are optimal; weekend afternoons are also good. You'll see very different sorts of people, and see them in different proportions, depending on what time you go: tourists, office workers, Parks Dept. employees, homeless people, schoolchildren, people who are visiting the library to do research.

Be sure to visit the bust of Gertrude Stein in the park, just behind the library.

Field Work this Monday (4/19)

This Monday, we'll use our techniques of Perecian description to tackle another public space: the block that houses the New York Public Library and Bryant Park. The class will meet promptly at 6pm on the steps of the New York Public Library, 5th Ave and 42nd St. After we meet for attendance, we'll break up and make notes for descriptive writing on this block until 7pm, when we'll meet again and I'll dismiss the class.

Also, remember that the revised drafts of Assignment #e: Grand Central are due that day.

Writing the Crowd: Grand Central

based on George Perec's "The Street"

1. Observe the crowd with some concern for system. Take your time -- at least an hour.

2. Note down what you can see, anything worthy of note that is going on. Do you know how to see what is worthy of note? Is there anything that strikes you? If nothing strikes you, perhaps you don't yet know how to see.

3. Set about it more slowly, almost stupidly. Force yourself to write what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common.

4. Force yourself to see more flatly. Take off your glasses. This often helps.

5. Describe the movement of the crowd. What moves them? What drives them together? What separates them? Are they strolling, rushed, from in town, out of town? Who seems to be from in town and who from out of town? What makes you so sure?

6. Don't say, don't write "etc." Make an effort to exhaustively describe the subject in painstaking, almost ridiculous detail. List every miniscule detail your mind can capture. Be obsessive. Remember, in this task "stupid" is an asset. You must engage the tediousness of describing everything as if you were an anthropologist from another planet. Exhaust the topic down to the most obvious details. Even if that seems grotesque or pointless or boring while you are actually doing it, the detail will produce good writing and please your reader -- just as it does in Perec.

7. Detect a rhythm. Do people arrive in clumps? in groups? as individuals? Count the people. List every pair of shoes that passes you. Note their faces, their expressions, their activities.

8. Read what is written in/on the people: their bags, their clothes. Does anyone carry a sign? What kind of signs can you read throughout the place? Can you observe any relation between the signs and the movement of the crowd? How does the writing relate to the purpose of the building? What about advertising? Graffiti? Stickers? Are there any codes or tags that suggest larger, unseen systems?

9. Note the fashion trends. Are heels too high this season? How does this impact the movement of the crowd?

10. Note the loops and circuits that exist within the crowd. Why does that security guard walk by that trash can every ten minutes? Who chose his route?

11. Carry on until the place and the people in it seem entirely strange, as if you were an alien from outer space observing this culture for the first time. Reconsider #1-10 from the perspective of an anthropologist from Mars, sent to understand the lives of earthlings.

12. Keep writing until you cannot go on any longer, until your hand feels like it's going to fall off.

13. Return to your piece the next day. Organize it into paragraphs and, if you like, into sections. Fix the grammar, punctuation, and so forth. While you edit your piece, eliminate the parts that seem superfluous or that distract from the most important observations and movements.

Field Work this Wednesday (4/7)

This Wednesday, we'll use our techniques of Perecian description to tackle a complicated public space: Grand Central Station. The class will meet promptly at 6pm in front of Kenneth Cole at 107 E. 42nd St. After we meet for attendance, we'll break up and make notes for descriptive writing in Grand Central Station until 7pm, when we'll meet again and I'll dismiss the class.

In preparation, please read the very brief written assignment, "Writing the Crowd: Grand Central," which you'll find in the coursepack just after Perec's "The Street."

Also, remember that the revised drafts of Assignment #2: The Street are due that day.