Thursday, January 18, 2007
Teaching Help?
I suppose it's too late now, but if anyone has any advice on teaching sci-fi writer Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" I'd appreciate it for next time around. I've assigned this story in my Bible And Literature course, but I find it a bit thin, unfortunately. This week we're reading Ecclesiastes, as you might have guessed. In the story a vain writer from Earth and a pessimistic Martian community clash and yet join together to produce hope for the future. The writer takes it as one of his tasks to translate into Martian the Book of Ecclesiastes, and then reads it to the community of Martians he's living with in order to show them how a culture (in this case, western Judeo-Christianity) can be dark and pessimistic and yet brazen enough to push the boundaries of possibility and to succeed in unexpected ways. Zelazny misreads Qohelet's hebel, and doesn't acknowledge the biblical text's skepticism either. Having said all of this, though, I think I've said it all . . . and I've got 75 minutes of teaching time on my hands!
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I should add, also, that the writer (named Gallinger) seems to mirror Qohelet in that, as a youth, he 'inherited' the wisdom of his preacher father (through his education), which he rejects in favor of experience. Given all the allusions in the story one has the sense that Gallinger, indeed, is familiar with "all the works that are done under the sun."
An update:
The story teaches itself! Students really got into it, noted a variety of interesting parallels with Ecclesiastes, and in fact convinced me that Zelazny himself may not misread Ecclesiastes; rather, his character Gallinger does, in ways typical of his own deep vanity.
Slowly slowly I'm reentering the world after having exited it via a labour and delivery room a little over 5 months ago. Which means I'm only now catching up on Jay's blogging, and I'm really sorry I didn't dip into "The Bible And" about four weeks ago, before I made my syllabus for my (soon to be rechristened) Literary Life and Afterlife of the Hebrew Bible course this semester. I'm teaching Ketuvim and contemporary literature this go 'round. Not knowing of the Zelazny story, I've paired Ecclesiastes with "Crimes and Misdemeanors." We watch it in two weeks - I'll let you know how it goes.
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