Avery's Post on Eula Biss's essay!
Shapiro Article
Growing up in the public school system, I learned to be quite good at following direct instruction. That is to say, I appreciated Susan Shapiro's many numbered lists for tips and tricks to writing a personal essay. Shapiro assigned her students to write about a humiliating time in their life, and this prompt proved successful (a handful went on to be published). Shaprio points out that no one wants to hear about how great your life is; they will get bored after the first paragraph and give up, or have hostile reactions to your seemingly perfect life. This leads me to wonder, can happiness sell? Do people want to hear about the good in life if it is not accompanied with struggle, loss, or heartache? Shapiro spends a lot of time discussing topics to consider or throw out, seeming to land on these humiliation stories, or these moments of absurdity, are what sell. Life is full of cliches that are easy and compelling to fall into; it often seems like the safest option, but it is also ...
Great analysis and questions, Avery! Like you, I initially believed that this piece was primarily focused on the history of telephone poles. Even the title of the essay leads us in that direction. As readers, we are lulled into a false sense of security, led to believe that we are reading an innocent if not mundane piece about telephone poles. Then, Biss blindsides us with the horrific recounting of lynchings. It’s a very jarring transition from the mundane to the horrific, and it demands the reader’s attention, more so than if the piece had begun with the history of lynching. And then to make us aware that lynchings were not isolated instances or rare occurrences, Biss overwhelms us with a litany of specific lynchings, one after another. Furthermore, to make us realize that lynchings did not occur only in the South, Biss presents accounts of lynchings in Illinois and Ohio.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your next question, I believe Biss also chose to connect racism and lynching with telephone poles to demonstrate that a seemingly useful and positive development or invention, such as the telephone, can have unforeseen and tragic consequences. Here, I wonder if Biss is asking us to consider the internet, the “telephone” of our era. Initially, “dial-up” internet service carried our emails across these same telephone lines and poles. Like the telephone, the internet was also supposed to bring us all closer together. To a certain extent, that has occurred. However, the internet has also provided a platform for hate groups and amplified hate speech. And, of course, social media is frequently not very “social.”
The form of this essay really stuck out to me. The frequent paragraph breaks and white space really work here, as it helps make the voice blunt and quick. I have to agree with Avery: I didn't realize why I was able to read the terrible accounts of lynching which are repeated throughout the piece without a "sense of barrier," as she put it, and I do think it has to do with this form. We are able to keep moving because it doesn't dwell on the grisly details too long.
ReplyDeleteThinking about the question of topic, when the piece started about the history of telephone poles, I knew it had to build to more. I did find the history interesting, but it felt like an introduction to a larger issue. I don't know if the piece would have been able to stand on its own as strictly a piece about the beginning of the telephone. And as we read more, we find that bigger issue to be racism and lynchings. Not exactly where I thought it was going, but Biss does it very successfully and it makes a very strong piece! I wasn't aware of the connection between the two histories, but they are woven together in the essay in a way that makes their connection impossible to ignore.
Scott points out another, more current, example of this use of technological advancement with an unexpected evil: social media. A device similarly used for connection and "overcoming time and distance" can also be used as an outlet for hate. I didn't consider a modern day equivalent to this until reading his point.
Avery,
ReplyDeleteGreat questions! As someone that's read this piece before, I feel like my answers to your questions won't be as productive as others, but I will offer my perspective anyway. I completely agree with both Scott and Elise, about the form and content. Even though I knew what the essay was about, my second read was not limited by the fact that I already knew the content; the emotion and stark contrast between the "mundane", as Scott mentioned, beginning, with the horrifying reality of the lynchings, stands out, even though I have already read the piece.
In terms of your first question, I think that Biss was not only laying the historical groundwork for her piece, but also the working metaphor of the telephone poles, which turned from figurative to literal, when the reader realizes what inhumane and despicable purposes they were used for. I think that both the figurative metaphor and literal history of telephone poles are connected to racism because of both the history of the telephone poles themselves, as well as to the idea that "nothing is innocent, but nothing remains unrepentant". Something as trivial and unassuming as a telephone pole, now considered virtually obsolete, was not only hated for its original purpose, but also used as a platform or tool for human hate. Scott brings up a great point about an modern counterpoint to telephone poles, and how similar hate is still unfortunately spread through seemingly innocuous and well-intentioned things.
Hi Avery,
ReplyDeleteYou brought up amazing points about this essay. I was shocked by the form of this essay. Similarly, I initially thought the essay would tell me the history behind telephone poles, in fact, I am not saying that it did not, I just did not expect that telephone poles had anything to do with such horrible acts. The sudden shift in this essay also complements the overall structure of the essay as well. By utilizing simple but bold vocabulary when talking about racism and lynchings is a great way for writers to evoke powerful emotions in readers, in a way that readers will not be able to take their eyes off the pages.
To answer your first question, I think Biss did this on purpose by discussing the basic history behind the creation of telephone poles and somewhere along the lines, Biss creates a sudden shift in tone, making the readers want to read even more. The point is intentional and it worked! I agree with Scott, reading this piece requires one's full attention. If readers are unwilling to read the first segment of the piece, then they would be missing out on the experience of studying the cruel and horrific acts done in the name of white supremacy.
Addressing your second question, I think Biss tries to tell us that the simplest thing around us can carry a very dark history and it highlights the importance for us to learn from the past and acknowledge it. I also think Biss emphasizes that more often than not, people can easily misuse the invention of something as innovative as a telephone pole to carry out horrendous acts in the name of racism.
Great post, Avery. At first I was excited by the history lesson of the telephone pole. I thought to myself, "Wow, I've never considered what the early days of the telephone invention were like, how interesting." Then the essay switched to interweave the history of telephone poles with the history of lynching. This stark contrast is noticeable. The birth of ultimate connectivity juxtaposed by our disconnect to our humanities, our disconnect to our fellow men and women. While the telephone pole was initially opposed, time prevailed in its' ubiquity. While racism was once rampant and involved the most horrendous of acts such as lynching, time prevailed in our humanity. This is relevant to today's time, when we can still see racism embedded into the fabric of our institutions and wonder if this will ever end? I believe this piece is suggesting that we have hope in ourselves as people, and hope in time. To answer your question, I believe the author chose to connect the telephone poles with lynching for a couple of reasons. For starters, I personally marveled at the fact that the telephone was invented during the time of lynching. Such a technological achievement shrouded by the harsh depravity and ignorance of man. Another reason is one I've already touched on. The telephone pole's connectivity stands in contrast to our disconnect from one another as we treated our fellow humans so terribly. Telephone poles and lynching also work as parallels to ideas that changed over time, but at one point intersected to represent both our achievements and flaws.
ReplyDeleteHi Avery, great questions & observations about a tough piece!
ReplyDeleteLike Sam, I had already read this essay for another class, so I wasn’t as shocked this time about the sudden shift from connection via telephone to murder via telephone pole. When I first read it, I remember being so unsettled by how naturally Biss seemed to draw this connection and how grotesque but objective the accounts of lynchings were written.
To answer/address some of your questions, Biss’ follow-up on the piece is really illustrative of her thought process behind this odd but overwhelming connection between telephone poles and racial murder. She, too, was apparently shocked at how much coverage of telephone poles was related to lynching rather than to actual telephones. In a way, her essay leads us through her own process of discovering and writing it, as her plans to write about Bell’s invention became an effort to draw together the unconnected dots of telephone pole lynchings across the country. That is, when Biss began writing this essay, much like us when we began reading it, she (like us) was under the impression that it would be about “Time and Distance Overcome” by telephones, not by the horrific, apparently Pan-American practice of racial murder by telephone pole.
To answer your first question (sorry, out of order :) ), Biss’ follow-up is once again a great resource. She describes how the parallel structure of this “litany” of lynchings works like any parallel structure to keep a reader moving down the page. Whitman does this in much of his poetry, which is how he can span 20+ pages with single poems without losing his readers. But as Biss explains, this parallel structure is not meant to be light or pleasing to the ear. She ends most every sentence about instances of lynching with “and hanged from a telephone pole” (or something very similar), trapping us as readers in the unrelenting riptide, the ceaseless procession, of telephone pole lynching throughout the country. We know exactly what will happen when she begins each account, but desensitization and numbness are impossible—we read on only to shudder at the horror of each murder.
Great post Avery! I think Biss chose to start her essay the way she did because in doing so she created a sharp and visceral twist. When I was reading this essay, I was actually smiling thinking about the absurdity and outrageous uproar of American’s running around and cutting down telephone poles. The story about the workers throwing dirt back in the whole as the telephone company dug it was hilarious but almost immediately after this, Biss begins this rapid-fire assault depicting racism, brutality, and murder. It curdles your stomach, and I couldn’t believe I was ever smiling. I think Biss is doing a bit more than just providing a thematic devise though. We get the image of this uproar concerning the “erection of telephone poles” in America, but where is the uproar about the lynching of African Americans? I think when we see how upset we can get over something so ridiculous and insignificant in contrast to the lack of empathy concerning the act of lynching, it shows how pervasive and seemingly insurmountable racism in America is.
ReplyDeleteI suppose this takes me into your second question. In connecting racism/lynching to these telephone poles Biss sums it up perfectly writing, “Nothing is innocent, my sister reminds me.” We see telephone/electricity poles everywhere we go. They’re mundane, part of a background scenery and sometimes annoying because their dumb wires get in the way of our pictures. Never have I considered that these same poles could’ve been the sight of such atrocities. Toni Morrison does something similar in her novel Beloved. She gives us this beautiful depiction of a sycamore tree then as she sort of pans out, we find that there are boys hanging from this tree. I think examples like this work to help us think critically about racism. If we want to do something we can’t just see a telephone pole or beautiful tree, but we have to think about the horrific connotations associated with these mundane things.
I think the use of telephone poles as the ceter-point for this piece worked on a number of levels, the first of which being the time-period aligning so well. The line "shortly before the invention of the telephone and long after the first trans-Atlantic call" seems to be evidence enough of that, but I found myself thinking about how quickly the poles were used for hate to be interesting. It seems like the idea of a telephone pole was seen as a terrible one until they realized they could commit such an atrocity with them, something that sounds all-too realistic to our country's history surrounding race.
ReplyDeleteI also think there is a common thread between the history of the telephone and the history of lynchings, that being a constant awareness of them without understanding the scope of the story around them. For the telephone this is fairly obvious, the phone becoming the invention that most people use more than any other in a given day. Despite that level of familiarity, I would have never known that there was such a history behind the implementation, particularly around the infrastructure that makes them function.
Racist killings, in a similar vein, are also something we have become all-too familiar with. Perhaps the constant exposure to them has desensitized the public to how vicious, pointless, and deep-rooted they really are. Biss looks directly at this, specifically around lynchings, which is the literal example. The examination of something as (seemingly) mundane as a telephone pole to something as graphic as a lynching really provides some perspective of how tragically common the killings really are.
Hello Avery! Thank you for your post!
ReplyDeleteI find it absolutely fascinating how Bliss utilized such beautiful, crafted writing to discuss such a deep and painful topic. It is that contrast that gets the message across in a beauty that many people want to read, while giving the harshness that most people need to hear. It is a great way to write about these types of topics, no matter what those topics may be. She crafts this essay to beautifully, and it was the perfect way to begin the discussion for this class period. Those shifts, as many other people have already said, did not surprise me, but they were harsh nonetheless, making for a hard turn into the necessary discussion at hand, which is a great way to get readers, even those who were not surprised, willing to move forward in what they were reading. Surprises in reading I think are hard to come by these days, especially since we are so desensitized to things now, but that doesn't mean an attempt at a surprise cant incite a similar feeling in the reader, and some people may actually be surprised if they have not been exposed at the same rate we may have been.
I think, overall, these types of essays are so important to the development of the conversations that are necessary, no matter what field but especially in the writing field where it is so easy to talk about the happy and the mundane, but there is terror in the mundane that people, especially white people, are able to pretend isn't there because it is not the same terror for them. White people sit and witness and do, while people of color are forced to experience. This essay is extremely important, and is one of many that can help push forward these conversations that just because something is ordinary to you, doesn't mean it does not have a serious and terrifying history for others, and we as white people need to be aware of that.
Hey Avery I really enjoyed your post and the questions you have as well! I think Biss structured the essay the way that she did because we are led to believe that it will be about this great invention that has allowed humanity to overcome time and distance with telephone poles and how Americans can communicate a lot easier now with less hassle. However, Biss is also able to show the opposite side of that with the horrors of lynching that was also an American invention and that people were lynched from telephone poles. I think going along those lines that's why she decided to connect the two because the telephone poles have seen the same horrors that others have seen and the telephone poles were used as a tool to horrifically torture and kill people that were innocent. They were innocent like the telephone poles were innocent before they were used as a method to kill people. The author does a great job of description that is very hard to stomach because she's describing what really happened to people that were living and breathing at one point and she describes their deaths and how their bodies were strung up on telephone poles. Then in the very end she connects the telephone poles to a tree where black people were also often times lynched from which I thought was really interesting and sad since even trees aren't innocent. I think the point of the story was to lead the reader into believing that the telephone poles are truely innocent until the middle where we learn that awful things have happened on telephone poles and are connected to them. I think this makes the reader question what other awful things have happened on other objects that can be seen as innocent. I like how in the very end she connected the telephone poles to a tree as throughout history trees have also been connected to awful events and have probably seen some horrific stuff that people might not know about.
ReplyDeleteYou raise some good questions Avery.
ReplyDeleteI think that Biss begins with discussing the invention of the telephone for a couple of reasons: for introducing some of the themes of this essay and show telephone poles as a symbol of hope with a lighthearted history before twisting the knife in the next section. The stories about throwing the dirt back into the holes that that one telephone company was digging and the workers climbing poles so that they wouldn't be cut down is a funny historical narrative that teaches us about our country's growth and development. It also sets this tone of wonder around globalized connection bringing harmony to people and families.
And then that idea of international connection is twisted on its head when Biss takes us on a horrifying tour of the different telephone pole lynchings that occured across the entire nation. It seemingly comes from nowhere, but I wouldn't call this a bait-and-switch. The first section foreshadows this idea in ways that are only obvious the second time reading through: "And then there was a fierce sense of aesthetics, an obsession with purity, a dislike for the way the poles and wires marred a landscape[...]" Biss masterfully primes us for the subject of lynching by talking about people breaking the law with impunity (destroying telephone poles and not being charged) in order to preserve the our country's aesthetic and social landscape. By gaining our investment through exploring this idea in a light-hearted context where the worst thing that can happen is some property damage, making the stakes higher by transitioning to the murder of innocent black people pulls us further in. If she started the essay by talking about lynching, many people may have chosen not to engage with it. But by talking about it after already catching our interest, she's able to take us through a dark, poignant place that forces us to look at how our country's infrastructure carries different symbolic meanings depending on the historical narratives you've been taught.
Sorry this is a little late! I had to work yesterday morning and didn't get a chance to respond when the blog was posted before class.
ReplyDeleteGreat post and questions Avery! I thought that Biss used the beginning of telephone poles to educate us on how telephone poles weren’t wanted and taken down etc until rules were put in place to keep this from happening, which parallels with African American people who were discriminated against and enslaved/murdered (taken down) by people who thought they didn’t belong or were a “hindrance” in the community and were only able to begin living when rules were set in place and enforced, just like the telephone poles were. Biss connects the telephone poles literally and historically to racism and lynchings (even if we don’t think of them as connected to that, now I think we always will). The education of the telephone poles shows the reader the long and complicated history of them before they were popular and after they became popular and common but used in a horrible way all over the country, not just in the South.
I think Biss used the lynchings to inform her audience because I don’t think a lot of people know about this, as well as to show how something that seemingly has good intentions and is a good invention that is still used today to connect people all over the world, brought pain and death to many. The seeming innocence of a telephone pole is suddenly not so innocent to the eyes of those who know the truth. As Biss hits us with the horrors of telephone poles, we learn and are forced to face the horrible truth, but her reasoning isn’t meaningless. Biss does this to emphasize that the telephone poles, like our country, may seem great and be important, but they also hold dark secrets and a past that can’t be erased by simply forgetting it happened.