Sunday, January 28, 2007

Concerns about Coffee

In a new series of articles in Politiken, Kristian Ditlev Jensen performs the act of Apprentice for a Day "in a number of colourful branches of trade", as the sidebar puts it. He has tried his luck as a cook (covered on Jan. 7), as a garbage collector (Jan. 14) and then in today's article which takes place in Nicaragua: as a coffee picker. (The concept does have an air of odd jobs performed during sabbatical years about it). In the coming weeks he'll be a halal butcher and an advertising agent too, and readers are encouraged to suggest other jobs for him to explore.

If I were to characterise Ditlev Jensen's approach in today's article (I haven't seen the first two) I'd call it exactly that: explorative. The reporter has been wondering what it's like to work as a coffee picker and goes on to try it out. "He wants to be treated like any other coffee picker. Don't show him special consideration or do anything out of the ordinary", says the representative for the coffee cooperative when she drops the reporter off at the edge of the rain forest in the mountains and leaves him to the care of Pedro, his new boss-for-a-day.

The reporter is an inexperienced, unskilled worker who does however have the talent to describe his experience in vivid detail: The wooden shacks in the forest, the meals of red beans and rice, cow's cheese and tortillas, heavily sugared cups of coffee, the rough wooden furniture and green plastic chairs. A yellow rain coat on a peg. And then, of course, the work: the dirt, the cob webs, the wind, the coffee berries, beans in baskets and sore fingers.

His approach is explorative, I said - but still it stays descriptive. Ditlev Jensen never seems to form an opinion about his material or decide on an angle on his story. The article has a subject and is quite informative, but it doesn't have a thesis since Ditlev Jensen makes no claims about his subject.

No guidance is provided concerning (his or our) view on the scenario which may seem justified in so far as the text is simply written as a diary/notebook and structured chronologically: "8.05 - half a basket later", "9.07 - automatically", "10.04 - straw hat", an so forth. What is more, the text is published in the life style section of the paper and is not supposed to be argumentative or to qualify as news worthy. Still it seems to me that there is a misunderstanding at play concerning the classical reporter's principle of showing and not telling. I do appreciate to have the scenario described to me, to have specific details brought forth that makes me able to draw conclusions on my own. But I like the reporter - especially a first hand witness and participant observer who includes his "I" in his story - to give the reader a sense of direction and of focus in the show: Why is this detail significant? You picked it out to be included in the presentation - and what are you trying to say? What is it all adding up to?

The only sense of conclusion and evaluation of the experience (except for Pedro's final estimate of Ditlev Jensen's efficiency as a worker as being way below average) is added as a note at the end and is concerned with what turns out to be the excuisite quality of coffee from Pedro's particular piece of land. Ditlev Jensen reports that in cooperation with a Danish coffee importer he will do his best to buy Pedro some more land in order to finally, perhaps, make this fine coffee available to Danish consumers. This, however, is presented as more of an accidental twist to the story.

Kristian Ditlev Jensen manages to communicate a general sense of empathy with the workers and a genuine interest in their "colourful trade" by stepping into their shoes and making careful notes for his readers in the process. But as the reader's guide in the scenario, he comes across as being at once passionate and vague; a rhetorical agent without an agenda.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Gonzo ere long done do does did

Critics tend to be charmed and even corrupted by reflexive reporters, because these reporters take such an explicit interest in the rhetorical functions of their own work (or so I have been arguing). Basically, these reporters seem to care about rhetoric, and their celebration of individual rhetorical agency (especially their own) can be contagious.

Obviously, however, some critics are harder to charm than others, and when it comes to being charmed by Hunter Thompson, my aforementioned colleague can be counted among the tougher cookies and so can Wayne C. Booth who once made the following estimate of Thompson's persuasive powers as a political reporter:
The only reason Thompson gives us to believe what he says is what we professors of rhetoric call his ethos; he works very hard to establish his character as the main proof of what he has to say. But shit, man, his ethos ain't no fucking good [...] I will believe nothing Thompson tells me, unless I have corroboration.
Now this isn't any old rhetorical critic making a mindless critique (and a pathetic parody) of Hunter S. Thompson (and neither is my colleague). This is Booth, quite a connoisseur of ethical appeals - and of irony - who is reviewing Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 for the Columbia Journalism Review back in 1973. I'll leave his words seething like this for now and return with a comment when I get hold of a copy of the article and I'm able to read his argument in full.

*

I know it's not a competition, but Wayne's on your side! and I can't help humming The Smiths' Cemetery Gates and wondering who's on mine.

You say: "ere long done do does did" / words which could only be your own / you then produce the text / from whence was ripped / (some dizzy whore, 1804) / A dreaded sunny day / so let's go where we're happy / and I meet you at the cemetery gates / Keats and Yeats are on your side / a dreaded sunny day / so let's go where we're wanted / and I meet you at the cemetery gates / Keats and Yeats are on your side / but you lose / because Wilde is on mine.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Mind the Wave

Last week I was discussing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with a close colleague who had read the book a few years back and remembered it as unimpressive or simply tiresome with its Ooh-I'm-such-a-madman-ain't-I!? first person narrative.

I see her point, of course. And the movies, the promotion and all the heyhogonzo quotations and images circling around have supported that very impression.

I beg to differ though and want to draw attention to the contrasts in the narrative, the way the tone shifts from hectic to level-headed, from frantic to pensive. And encouraged this week to SHARE A BRAINWAVE I took the opportunity to quote one of the memorable non-frantic passages at length. (As a rhetorician by training, I was happy to see that passage branded by wikipedians as simply the Wave Speech.)

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Down with Diabetes

My story from this third scenario would have had the feel of an undercover story.

3.
I was 25, and from one day in July to the next I assumed the identity of a full-time, insuline-demanding diabetic. From a casual student life I stepped into the shoes of someone with obvious reasons to eat properly and at regular intervals all day, every day, for the rest of her days, and who actually injected that insuline and handled the bloodsugar measuring devices. One who knew how to distinguish between hyper- and hypoglycemia and instructed her family and friends how to deal with her in case of either.

The shoes were mine, of course. An endless amount of new words found their way into my vocabulary, there were the hyper and hypo kinds as well as all those words that designated the contents of my food and their impact on my body.

It was all a blow to my immune defense as well as to my general aesthetics: I had gone undercover as this dull patient and I wanted to call it off. Perhaps my resentment was somewhat similar to that of many old people when they get the offer to go live in a rest home: Thank you, this is all fine and perfectly sensible, but no thanks, it is really not my thing.

And just like Norah Vincent eventually had a nervous breakdown, a serious identity crisis towards the end of her undercover adventure as a man, I had my crisis and made my most spectacular scene upon entering a supermarket for the first time after leaving the hospital as a newly-appointed Type 1 diabetic. I had hardly stepped into the store and taken a glance down the aisles when I panicked and just about fainted when every single item on the shelves seemed to disintegrate in front of my eyes into potentially harmful particles, hydrates:-0 that I would never be able to identify and never dare consume.

I'm fine now though. A daring consumer like the rest of you.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Clueless at the Qumran

Here's a second scenario in which a skilled reporter might have found material for a really neat story:

2.
I was 18 then, and as chance would have it (it is indeed striking how much chance had to say in those days) I found myself working in a cafeteria by the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were originally discovered. I was selling ice cream, soft drinks and tacky postcards showing guys with broad smiles, their bodies smeared in (mineral-rich) Dead Sea mud and their hands busy leaving dirty finger prints on girls in pink bikinis.

I was also cleaning rooms in the guest house where a group of scroll scholars from California were staying for a while. Sometimes they left their boxes of chocolate chip cookies open in their rooms as a treat - or perhaps as a test of the room maids; we were never quite sure. It seems likely, though, that no kind of intentions were involved at all. Their scholarly work, however, seemed surrounded by controversy to say the least, mainly concerning the publication of the scrolls, i.e. questions of who got access to the material and when. There was this Indiana Jones style mystery simmering quietly in their conversations (one book on the topic, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh's The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, came out around that time), and two names I still remember: Eisenman, because he seemed to actually somehow play the part of Indiana Jones in this setup by the Dead Sea, and Battenfield, because he was kind enough to show me and a couple of my co-workers around the Masada on one of our days off.

Their stories, and we heard most of them from students in the group, were solemn and intriguing and ridiculously hard to follow, and I promised myself to look into these scroll matters upon my return to Denmark - which obviously I never got around to. So ultimately my coverage of the scenario limited itself to enthusiastic, undetailed eye-witness accounts in the tacky postcard format.

Monday, January 15, 2007

State of the Art of Danish Journalism


Is there even such a thing as journalistic langauge, asked associate professor (+ literary editor and reviewer at Ekstra-Bladet) John Christian Jørgensen in a lecture given at the University of Copenhagen today on the occasion of his retirement - and yes, he offered his own answer too.
In Denmark, he said, there is indeed such a thing as news language in journalism, a style of presentation which was imported from America in the 1920'es and was still dominant when journalism appeared as a subject in Danish university courses in the late 1940'es. From then on the style was officially taught. Today it is still well known, based as it is on principles of brevity and simplicity with one piece of information per short sentence. A typical text consists of a summary lead plus a textual body and is built according to the inverted pyramid style which means putting any important information first, thus making editors able to abbreviate news articles by chopping the last sentence, the last paragraph, the second-to-last paragraph, or if need be: the whole body of the text and keeping nothing but the lead, without losing the essentials of the story.
This main current is of course challenged by counter-currents, and Jørgensen presented three of these alternative styles which he found to have been significant in Danish journalism over the years: the New Journalism (as conceptualized in 1973 by Tom Wolfe in 4 bullet points), literary journalism (as conceptualized in 1995 by Mark Kramer - but in 8 bullet points which to Jørgensen's experience is at least four too many for them to be remembered by anyone) and finally narrative journalism which seems to have caught on in a serious way, firstly by being intensively studied and theorized and secondly, more importantly, by actually being used by reporters in (at least openings of) news features where reporters present a scene or use a style indirect libre to create narrative suspense in stead of simply revealing the main points of their story from the start. This happens frequently on the front page of a big daily paper like Politiken and had, according to Jørgensen, been unthinkable just five years ago.
After his lecture came speech upon speech (upon a mock exam of graduation) upon speech from colleagues as well as students which recognized Jørgensen's immense ability to get an immense amount of good work done. Basically, he has worked hard as a researcher, teacher, supervisor, writer, journalist, reviewer in a careful, generous and enthusiastic manner. No wonder that he has chosen to retire early, that is: on his 63th birthday.
I want to thank him too for excellent support during my three years as a PhD student. Thanks a lot.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Five things? Here's one...

Nadja has tagged me to tell you five things you didn’t know about me. Let’s make it five things that I would have covered in the first person singular if I’d been an awesome reporter and not just a plain style diarist at the time. Here comes the first one - four more will follow before long:

1.
When I was 17 and had decided to drop out of high school for a while, I got to work as a witness for tax collectors in my home town. This was basically a cheap way for the city administration to observe the rule that at least two persons had to be present when citizens were confronted with their depts on their own doorstep. In this very dubious capacity of teenage monitor, I visited various parts of Odense and tried to keep a low profile, looking at people’s knick-knacks or bookshelves and patting their dogs while the tax collector did his thing, i.e. made arrangements for payment. I was supposed to somehow guarantee that everything was done in accordance with the rules, and the only rule I still remember being aware of is this one: No matter how much money you owe them, they can’t take your TV.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I've been reading this multimillion-copy bestseller


And it's an absolutely fantastic book. In 1959 Griffin darkens his skin (through the use of medication as well as a sun lamp), shaves his head and then spends six weeks getting firsthand experience of what it's like to live as a black man in the Deep South.
When seeing his new self in the mirror for the first time,

the transformation was total and shocking. I had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship. ...

I had gone too far. I knew now that there is no such thing as a disguised white man, when the black won't rub off. The black man is wholly a Negro, regardless of what he once may have been. I was a newly created Negro who must go out that door and live in a world unfamiliar to me. ... For a few weeks I must be this aging, bald Negro; I must walk through a land hostile to my colour, hostile to my skin.

How did one start? ... I was a man born old at midnight into a new life. How does such a man act?

Monday, January 08, 2007

Doormat II

I made a promise to give Nova a second chance and, well, the second issue of the magazine appears just as dominated by the you-form as the first one: "Here's why your surroundings don't love your new self".

The direct address is quite a standard convention in this type of magazine, I suppose, and it's meant to be friendly-but-firm with you. I really don't like it. And it seems ironic that five different women, including Leonora Christina Skov, 30, as the youngest among them, have been asked to write a letter to their younger selves, that is: they've been asked to use the first person singular to address themselves in the second person singular, and they do so mainly with encouragement and comfort (don't worry, you'll be fine!), but also with reproval. In fact, journalist and writer Lone Kühlmann, 61, brings out the topos of the doormat again as she tells her younger self in a friendly-but-firm tone:
If you lie down and make like a doormat, don't be surprised if someone comes and wipe their feet on the back of your neck.
It's just a hackneyed phrase, I know, but with so many phrases to choose from---isn't it striking and somewhat appalling that a woman will address another woman by the title of doormat in two out of two issues of a brand new women's magazine?

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Business and Pleasure

A Happy New Year to all passers-by, and thanks to Levende for the comment below about reporters who explicitly draw on their personal and professional background when they write:

Writers who do this [i.e. use their (familiy) backgrounds as material for their writing] have a lot of self-confidence, and because they have the courage to show themselves as whole beings, they cannot not use the first person singular. And because of this openness and courage, they appear somewhat fearless.
I like the sense of dealing with whole beings too. I appreciate it when reviewers and other first person writers commit to their own rhetorical record; when they appear to take responsibility for their work by actively and explicitly integrating their professional subjects and tasks into their personal aesthetics from one case to the next. (And when I say aesthetics it is meant to include ethics.)

We're closing in on a formal definition of integrity now. Wholeness; soundness. The ability to integrate business and pleasure?

And speaking of integrity: In the 2004 issue of Reflexioner (and that's the one reflecting on stars) Nadja Pass has pointed out that just as a star is held together by opposite forces: gravity and radiation, human star quality is all about striking a balance between integrity and charisma. A really keen observation which brings me back to my aforementioned article-in-progress in high spirits.