For next week, you will note on the syllabus that there’s a “yahoo” annotation assignment. Since we’re thinking about the history and future of annotations in the study of literature in this unit, I thought we could do a quick experiment prior to producing together an actual annotated edition of Benito Cereno. I want to see what happens when we’re confronted with, on the one hand, a relatively blank text–the Project Gutenberg plain vanilla HTML formatted text of Benito Cereno with no notes, introductions, or scholarly apparatus whatsoever–and, on the other, our own relative ignorance about the text.

The challenge, then, is to make annotations that mark areas of questioning or uncertainty, that provide interpretation or analysis of key moments, or gloss difficult words or concepts for peers, using little bits of research (e.g, the Oxford English Dictionary or other useful reference texts). We’ll use good ol’ hypothes.is for this, and please use both the allred720 tag and a “benito” tag as well, so we can pull out just these annotations as a separate stream if we like.

In terms of expectations, let’s say that you must make a minimum of five annotations for next week, but that your annotations can be on absolutely anything from any part of the text. And be sure to annotate the text I’ve posted on this site so your annotations will be with everyone else’s.

And in closing, you may find these two passages from Melville useful or therapeutic as you face this assignment.

First, from Benito itself:

Relieved by these and other better thoughts, the visitor, lightly humming a tune, now began indifferently pacing the poop, so as not to betray to Don Benito that he had at all mistrusted incivility, much less duplicity; for such mistrust would yet be proved illusory, and by the event; though, for the present, the circumstance which had provoked that distrust remained unexplained. But when that little mystery should have been cleared up, Captain Delano thought he might extremely regret it, did he allow Don Benito to become aware that he had indulged in ungenerous surmises. In short, to the Spaniard’s black-letter text, it was best, for awhile, to leave open margin.

Second, a riff on the unbearableness of whiteness from Moby Dick:

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues—every stately or lovely emblazoning—the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

 

Whether or not you prefer to, you will collaborate with peers in the production of an audiobook version of Melville’s enigmatic novella, Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street (1853). Each student will be assigned to a team, and each team will decide on how to divide up the work. I suggest that, at a minimum, each team have:

• reader/s: readers will read/record the text (duh). Each team will decide whether to have one voice read the entire text (it should take about 1:20 of continuous reading, excluding breaks) or whether to assign parts in a “radio play” format. More experimentally, a team could deliberately shift the voice of the narrator, having numerous actors voice one character.
• editor/s: editors will compile the audio files into a format that is listenable. This could involve a single long track or several chapters (though the original does not have chapters, you could create them); it could involve mixing in a soundtrack or sound effects as well. You could use Garage Band for Mac or the free/open Audacity; if you have the skills/software, you could use more sophisticated software. The key is not to have a product with high production values, however: I’m more interested in the process and how well you reflect on it.
• presenter/s: each group will present its a-book to the class on the due date of 9/24. Presentations will be brief (max 15 mins) but focused. Presenters will play a sample of the a-book and walk us through the process and the product: how the team divided the work, what strategic/aesthetic decisions were made, what worked well and what didn’t, how the final product speaks to (sorry) the secondary readings we’ve been doing.

You may want to use Slack or Google Docs or something similar to manage the workflow. The groups are small enough where things shouldn’t get terribly complicated, but it’s helpful to think through how to communicate from the outset.

The last requirement is that you compose a brief post for the blog (500 words max) reflecting on a) the process/product as a whole and b) your specific role within it, with an emphasis on what the experience taught you that merely reading about audiobooks (or, of course, merely reading Bartleby!) would have missed. The post is due on 10/1.

You will be evaluated on the following criteria, which I will not boil down to a simple rubric, since they all interact with one another in subtle ways:

• adventurousness: does the text take risks, or just play it safe? Is the audiobook a straight reading of the text, or does it do something strange/experimental in some way? Does the audiobook transform Bartleby radically or merely transpose it to a new medium?
• quality: is the product accessible? Does it sound good? Did the voice actors review the text and look up the pronunciations of unfamiliar words? Did the editors smooth out problems with the files, maintain steady audio levels, reduce noise where feasible, etc.?
• reflectiveness: does the presentation reflect the group’s careful thinking about the project? Did the secondary readings by Rubery, Allred, Benjamin, etc. feed into the conception of the project?

All group members will receive a collective grade for the group’s work. This can be unfair, I realize, and a given member can be uncooperative or unresponsive, but that’s also true in postgraduate life, so it’s good practice. Each of you will receive individual grades for your reflective post, as well. And all of the group projects will be folded into one grade (20% of total grade), so each project is “low stakes.” If your group is having problems (or has one problem member) you are encouraged to contact me privately for help.

As you plan your attack on this project, feel free to be a bit zany. It may be that “quality” and “adventurousness” are somewhat at odds (since it’s easier to have good quality if you know what you’re aiming for and easier to experiment if you’re not worried too much about quality), so consciously decide what you’re going for, go for it well, and have fun. I’d be tempted to play with the following (not a list for you to copy, necessarily, but a springboard for dreaming about it):

• representing Bartleby’s famous silences and repetitions: what if you used a whispered second track mixed in to represent B’s inner thoughts? Or played with very different vocalizations of the “same” statement that haunts the book (“I prefer not to”)?
• What about a crude video version, using photos or drawings or puppets along with the audio to capture the tensions at work in the text?
• Since the Occupy movement very consciously drew from Bartleby for inspiration, what about a transposition of the tale to a more recent setting to capture this connection in some way? Or even a montage (drawing from the above idea) of imagery of Occupy to accompany the original text?

The overarching theme here is to embody the ethic of “serious play”: there is truly no wrong way to do this, and we will all learn from your efforts, very much including the mistakes or the parts you wish you’d done differently. And I don’t know whether this is an incentive or not, but I will post the finished products to the blog so future students (or anyone who is interested) can enjoy your work. And keep the workload manageable: if you need to perform only a part of the text, or abridge it in some way, or report on what you would have done with more time, please do that!

And here are the two resulting books from the above project from my 2018 class: enjoy and think about how you might approach things. Group one used some echo effects to capture some of the derangement produced by Bartleby in the text’s narrator. Group two rather cheekily had the text-to-speech interface read the text and used that shortcut as a springboard to present to us Bartleby’s place in narratives of automation in cultural work.

You might also enjoy checking out an undergraduate effort: a wonderful Occupy Wall Street themed performance with amazing ambient sound.

Finally, here are the completed projects:

• the Ginger Nuts’ pandemic-themed version, which plays extensively with noise and distraction as a compositional principle.
• the Office Crew’s version draws out the text’s emphasis on the interplay between the mechanical and the biological, processing voices in various ways to underscore this theme.