Midterms are Thursday. Your test will consist of two parts: a twenty minute short answer/multiple choice test on anything we've done in class - short stories, poetry, Gatsby, terminology; and a 40 minute essay. Section 1 will focus on Gatsby but may also include "A Family Supper," "Hills Like White Elephants," "The Outsider" (reposted in the links section) and "The Raven." There will not be a question on The Age of Innocence (whew!). The essay portion of the test will be one 40 minute time limit question from the College Board (AP) exam of 2003. On your College Boards, you won't have this luxury, but I am posting here the question for you to prepare for in advance. Write your essay in your head, on paper, outline what you will say, etc. You may not use your notes or turn in a pre-written essay.

You may use your Journal for Section 1.

THE ESSAY:
In his 1998 book Life, the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, Neal Gabler wrote the following:

On does not necessarily have to cluck in disapproval to admit that entertainment is all the things its detractors say it is: fun, effortless, sensational, mindless, formulaic, predictable and subversive. In fact, one might argue that those are the very reasons so many people love it.

At the same time, it is not hard to see why cultural aristocrats in the nineteenth century and intellectuals in the twentieth hated entertainment and why they predicted, as one typical 19th century critique railed, that its eventual effect would be to "overturn all morality, to poison the springs of domestic happiness, to dissolve the ties of our social order, and to involve our country in ruin."

Write a thoughtful and carefully constructed essay in which you use specific evidence to defend, challenge, or qualify the assertion that entertainment has the capacity to ruin society.



That's what you can expect from your AP exam this May. It will be written in this style and may at first seem out of your realm, but step back, think logically, figure out what is being asked and answer the question. Make sure you address all parts of the question. Use specific examples. Your test on Thursday is our first real example of what to expect on your College Boards. Do your best. Be prepared (as the Boy Scouts would say).

There was some truly compelling work in you POV accounts of the novel UnBlinking. I think we've really opened up an arena to honestly and critically reflect on each others' work. UnBlinking, as you may have guessed, is my personal contribution to the project. Here's more:

“I’m wondering,” I said to the girl behind the glass, “why someone who arrived fifteen minutes after me was seen first?” I got no real response, but I could just spot the woman’s shoes wiggling to and fro in the dentist’s chair. With any luck she had a great big cavity in a front tooth.

Forgive me, I’m all over the place, yet you may wonder how a 17-year-old girl was living on her own in the East Village? I don’t know either, except that my parents had money but no time, and in lieu of affection I was the recipient of hugs in the form of money, with which I bought pills. There’s a bit of irony. Mother would hug me at Bloomingdale’s and blow kisses from the escalator and there you have it.

I was playing school at Barnard, by the way, if but casually, and I would have no part of campus housing. The apartment was above Mickey’s Donutland (No. 499), and when we would saunter home smelling of smoke and pulling off our white gloves with our teeth, the aroma of glazed and sprinkled and frosted wafted through the pores of the building and permeated our souls. The friend who was killed in 1967 had been dead half the year, but we never rented out her room. She was just 19. Her name was Nan (no one was Nancy). Her favorites were the Boston crèmes.

To save time and typing, imagine if you will an apartment in an episode of Love American Style, filled with Eames and Nelson and items that today on eBay would pay my bar tab. We stole the Nelson Marshmallow from my father’s office. I don’t believe he ever noticed, despite sitting on it on at least one occasion. I remember his fumbling with Their Satanic Majesty’s Request as he sat uncomfortably while my roommate ran past in a bra and panties. “Just need the iron.”
Funny the things that come round and go round. In what can only be described as a moment of sheer lunacy, I walked the other day from 40th Street and Lexington to Kiehl’s. I was incredulous, and oh, the things one encounters on a cosmetics mission. There were Uggs in numbers too ridiculous to ignore, most disturbingly, a rather mukluk-y version on a fifty-something bleached blonde made of rawhide. There was a plethora of ponchos, the most irritating being a one-shouldered camel job, trés Wilma Flintstone, on someone old enough and monied enough to know better. Finally there were brooches, broaches and gaudy pins of every kind, and some on otherwise stylish young girls. It was all I could do to keep myself from grabbing their trendy jewelry and putting out my eyes.

I mention it because the day was saved by a man who said hello to me and held the door as I finally entered Keihl’s. He was singing “She’s a Rainbow” and making sitar noises. He reminded me of my father, but only if my father and I were the same age. “Have a nice day,” he said. I guess he’d been looking at the famous collection of motorcycles.

You should now be singing, “She’s a Rainbow” from the Stones’ anomalous psychedelic work that far too few appreciate, Her Satanic Majesty’s Request. See how I bring it all back around so that it makes sense? There’s a Cormac McCarthy in here somewhere, even if there isn’t a west Texas.

My other roommate, the subject of this catalogue, was older than I, and formerly innocent, a simple and beautiful nature, seemingly incorruptible until we met. Would you like to meet her? Be careful what you wish for.
My teeth all-clean, I headed home. In the elevator they were playing the theme from Valley of the Dolls. [END]

This type of narrative contains much of what one could call metafiction, the breaking down of the assumed role of the author as being invisible. (Look it up for clarity). This works in fiction (you can disagree if you like), but is rarely effective in your essay work. Thoughts? Let's discuss tomorrow. Remember we will begin to read our work IN CHARACTER first thing next week.