Bookstore Exploitation!

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Ed Battistella
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I really enjoyed the article ‘Textbook Affordability Act Passes First Term in Salem.’ For too long, people have just shrugged the shoulders and accepted the exploitation of the school bookstores that sell pamphlets for 100 bucks which are then not used in the course and which you are unable to sell back at the end of the term. I am a bitter, jaded person who refuses to support the school bookstore any more (although I did spend 17 dollars there the other day and it hurt so bad). I bought a 150 dollar book once which I was told I could get 15 dollars back for when I wanted to resell it. Now it sits in a box collecting dust. My 150 dollar French book is apparently not being accepted for resale anymore. The pain.

A few of the most interesting parts of this article:

“The most likely reason why college textbooks are so expensive is that the textbooks market itself is broken. In the textbooks market, the people who choose textbooks (faculty), are not the same people who must purchase textbooks (students). In addition, students are typically required to purchase textbooks as a course requirement, making them a captive consumer. This is an extraordinary dynamic. In his report to the U.S Department of Education, economist Dr. James Koch wrote that student demand for textbooks is “price inelastic”, meaning that unlike normal markets, demand for college textbooks changes very little even with significant price increases.”

With little inherent incentive to compete on the basis of price, publishers have instead historically chosen to compete around who can provide the book with the most “added value” regardless of cost. Publishers have raced to produce expensive “new” editions whether or not content has significantly changed and added additional instructional materials – both of which have helped drive up costs and undermine the used book market (which has long been the only respite for students looking for affordable books).”

It is true that expensive new editions of the books will go up but show almost no difference from the previous version (this is true of the philosophy book I am using right now). OSPIRG goes on to say:

“The intended effect of the price disclosure law is to re-insert price into the conversation between faculty and publishers. This alone is no guarantee that faculty will choose a cheaper option, or even that a cheaper option is available. However, the law could help prompt more faculty to search for less expensive options, opening up more space in the textbooks market and creating the kind of competition around price that the market needs.

There is certainly evidence that faculty are receptive to making price a criteria in textbooks selection, in spite of the market dynamics that run in the opposite direction. OSPIRG student chapters and many other PIRG chapters nationwide have been asking faculty to make a written commitment to consider switching to lower cost course materials, and over 2,500 faculty nationwide have agreed to do so.”

I agree that it is very good for the prices of the textbooks to be out in the open and not hidden in secret shame. This allows the student more time to search for cheaper editions, as is mentioned later in the article. I am also intrigued by what is written about students being able to access books for free online. That would be a true miracle and if SOU offered that option easily, I would certainly choose it over going out and buying books.

School is already expensive enough so I don’t see the reason why one should have to dip into their life savings or kiss their ideas of retirement goodbye every time they enter the bookstore. I support anything that lowers textbook prices to a reasonable amount.

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Epic Interview With David Lau

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Ed Battistella
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Poet, essayist and film-maker David Lau, the coeditor of Lana Turner: A Magazine of Poetry and Opinion visted Southern Oregon University on May 19 for a series of readings and informal visits with students. Lau writes what could be called unorthodox or in his own words ‘unprecedented’ poetry and he has published a collection of short stories called Virgil and the Mountain Cat and his work has appeared in such placeas as The Boston Review and The New Orleans Review. David was nice enough to sit down with me after his reading and answer some questions about his poetry and his experience in the publishing world.

BR: When did you start writing poetry?

DL: I started writing poetry when I was probably 14 years old, 13 or 14. I wrote through high school. We had a poetry club called The Revolutionary Beet Society in my high school. I kind of transitioned into taking writing classes as a college freshman at UCLA. I’ve written pretty steadily since then.

BR: What was your early poetry like?

DL: I think that my early poetry was mainly about girls. I also did read some interesting poets so I had models to imitate that were more complex than that and I tried writing in different kinds of ways. There’s a way in which my earlier influences, Allan Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, remain with me, even if the poetry’s changed a lot.

BR: Who has influenced your writing?

DL: Yeah, when I was young I read a lot of things but the things I encountered on my own that I liked were the Beets, William Blake, Amiri Baraka, and Kafka I read in high school. There were a few other things I read when I was very young that were important to me, and then in college I probably took on the work of John Ashbury in a big way. That remains a pretty seminal influence on my work. Also a poet like Michael Palmer. There’s been a lot of influences over the years.

BR: When were you first published as a poet?

DL: The first time I published poetry was in college. I sent out some work to some contest for poets and writers. I really had no idea what I was doing but I won and was published in a small magazine in Missouri. Then I began to send out work after I finished my MFA and published in slightly larger, some cases very well known, magazines. That was mid ‘20s, 26 or 27. I don’t think you have to worry about getting published too much. To me publishing is a very fraught and difficult question. There are many things to do before publishing. Figuring out how you want to write and really trying to know your own writing is a real challenge. Publishing, one does it but to what effect and to what end is not always totally clear. I myself am cautious about publishing work.

BR: Why is that?

DL: We live in a time when there’s a kind of abundance of publishing and I’m not always sure what it’s about. I myself have tried to send out only work that I felt really strongly about and that’s taken me years at times.

BR: Do you have any tips for aspiring poets?

DL: Reading. Just reading poetry in translation, reading a lot of not just contemporary poetry, but 19th century, early 20th century poetry, reading interesting thought and philosophical reading and political tracks. One can’t say enough about how much that nourishes one’s mind and one’s own poetry. Read read read.

BR: You disagree with those artists who say they don’t wanna read because they don’t want other artists infiltrating their work?

DL: I think it probably takes all kinds and I have friends who are great poets who are not the most voracious readers, but for my own experience, it’s meant a lot for me to pursue open ended reading endlessly. I think in our world of distraction, there’s a certain diffuse kind of depressive atmosphere. For me these are the kinds of things that help to make the world manageable, to take on reading projects. I find that I try to write when I feel like it’s really necessary, but reading is something I can do all the time. I’m always reading.

BR: Are you not always writing?

DL: Daily it’s a kind of activity. I know people who probably write too much and they’re too often generating, and I’m a little choosier about when I’ll sit down and get at things.

BR: Do you have a rigid writing method or is it flexible?

DL: I think that my sense is just trying to do things that are unprecedented. That’s my sense of what my method is. It’s almost like you don’t want to be wholly aware of what you’re doing. As you even become aware of it, I think most interesting artists and poets are skeptical of the things that they do. They’re pretty critical of themselves. Awareness of what you’re doing means that you’re often trying to do something else and go beyond what it is you’re doing, so I do try to do things that are unprecedented both for my own writing practices and for other things.

BR: Does anything block your ability to write?

DL: Not really, because I have enough of a habit of using notebooks and just using fragments of things to get myself going. I think having many notebooks and having things written down in many different spots is a way of always having some measure of things to write about or think about. Writer’s block is not something I’ve experienced myself but that doesn’t mean it’s not real or debilitating for people. There’s a dialectic of activity, writing in silence.

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Orson Scott Card

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Ed Battistella
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This post doesn’t really have anything to do with the class, but it does have to do with writers. Sort of.

This weekend, I was reading a collection of short stories by Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender’s Game, probably his most well-known book.  Partway through one of his stories, I noticed a snarky little aside by one of his characters concerning homosexuality cast in a negative light.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the book with me at the moment, so I can’t quote it.  This piqued my interest, and I looked into Card’s personal beliefs.  Before this week, all I knew about him was that he is an awesome writer and a member of the Latter-Day Saints (made evident in his novel Lost Boys).

After a rather cursory bit of research, I discovered that Card is extremely anti-homosexual, mostly within the context of his religious beliefs, but socially as well.  His article, “The Hypocrites of Homosexuality” explains his beliefs on the subject quite well.  I was disgusted while reading this.  This author, who I’d admired so much before, was a bigot, albeit a bigot who can argue intelligently (according to the article, he would argue against my using the word “bigot” to describe him as well).  I finished reading the book of his short stories after reading this article, but the rest of the stories were tainted for me, despite having no subject manner related to homosexuality.  I’m half afraid that upon re-reading Ender’s Game, one of my favorite novels, it will be tainted a bit as well.

Which brings to mind the question of how much I should let knowledge of an author’s personal life influence what I read?  I know little to nothing about the lives of most of my favorite contemporary authors, but if I went in and did the research, how many people’s books would suddenly be ruined for me?  Perhaps I’m taking this a little too far.  Perhaps Card is the exception, the one of few authors who go out of their way to make a particular point known.  Why am I letting this knowledge affect how I read his books, books which almost never reflect his personal moral opinions (other than, of course, his LDS-specific stories)?

Of course I would never deign to silence these authors in any way.  Free speech, and all that.  I would love it if you guys replied to this post with how you would tackle this problem of potentially alienating readers when it came to certain subjects, should you become a relatively well-known author in the future.

Posted in Ideas and Opinions, What People Are Reading | 2 Comments

Who Needs Newspapers?

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Ed Battistella
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Ashlanders Paul Steinle and Sara Brown are on a literary pilgrimage to answer the question Who Needs Newspapers? They have journalistic backgrounds—Sara was vice president of human resources at The Columbian in Vancouver, Washington and manager of organization development at the Los Angeles Times and Paul was the president of UPI and the Financial News Network and a TV news director at KING-TV in Seattle. With an RV, video cameras, a fedora and dog, they are traveling to all 50 states to interview newspaper professionals.

Who Needs Newspapers?

They are asking publishers, editors and reporters how they are doing, how they are changing and why they are committed to staying in the news business . Some, like the publisher of the 118-year old family-run Baltimore Afro-American, see it as crucial to maintain a perspective of advocacy that would be otherwise lost. Other papers are finding new ways to preserve local investigative reporting and their watchdog role on multiple platforms and with less staffing. Some are experimenting with hyper-local, interactive, coverage and citizen journalists,. Steinle and Brown are helping to educate us about what really happens in the news business and perhaps dispelling the notion that news is free. After all, you get what you pay for, as my grandmother used to say.

And I have to admit, I’m fascinated by the names of some the newspapers. Many are called the something-of-other News, of course, but there are also The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette , The Day in New London, Connecticut, The Delaware State News, The St. Petersburg Times, The Rome News-Tribune , The Illinois Northwest Herald , The Kentucky Mountain Eagle (a must read report), The Portland Press Herald, The Afro-American, The Boston Globe, The Jackson Citizen Patriot, The Columbia Missourian (show me), The Concord Monitor , The Record, The Fayetteville Observer , The Sequoyah County Times ,The Providence Journal, The Post & Courier , The Bristol Herald-Courier , The Dominion Post , The Wisconsin State Journal, and The Burlington Free Press.

What do those names tell you?

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