Please stop using the VT shooter's writings to analyze him.

He was an English major. English majors read and write disturbing things. It's what we do. We're the ones reading Shakespeare and making sure we know what all the words mean and trying to figure out what he was really trying to say (and some of his stuff is highly sexual and disturbing).

The problem is it's a fallacy to say that what someone wrote for a class reveals his deepest darkest thoughts. If everyone who writes dark, disturbing stuff is mentally ill, then we should lock up some of our most popular authors, including Stephen King (who has had some of his books banned from high schools). Writers sometimes write of those things to explore the darker side of humanity, to reveal a character's real motivation, or to explore the gothic or sublime. It doesn't mean they're all mentally ill.

And, as a former high school English teacher, please lay off of how he wrote. We don't know what the assignment was, we don't know that playwriting was his preferred medium (poets often don't write plays well and vice versa), and we don't know why his classmate kept the copies and then posted them.

I am concerned that Nikki Giovanni felt so unsafe as to demand his removal from her class. That reveals far more than his writings do. She based that decision on his behavior in class, not so much on his poetry, from the account I read on Comcast's article. I had a student like that in student teaching, and he did get removed from my class when it was found that his family had faked living in the district and hidden his expulsion from another district nearby. It wasn't his writing that made me so concerned, it was the constant suggestive comments and sexual harrassment.

makes it sound like all English Majors are more then excentric.

The spelling you're looking for is "Eccentric."

Former English major here.

:rofl:

:)

Some of what we read is disturbing. It's part of our coursework. Obviously we are not all one type, but we do try to stretch our boundaries and question our preconceived notions of normacly and power.

and turned him in

some of his fellow students read it and were concerned.

But we are not allowed to do so. Why?

OK, so the guy wrote some upsetting stuff. But as some have pointed out, so have others and we have called it Art. People who never killed anyone.

The first thing I thought when I heard yesterday that "he wrote a play about a guy who accuses his stepfather and mother of having killed his father" was "Really? So did Shakespeare. And HIS main character killed off all kinds of people in various ways, and at the end of the play was a mass murder in which he died."

I guess my tendency at this point is more toward just absorbing what information people have to give about how unpopular this guy was and how much he bothered people and then trying to process it all, rather than jumping to conclusions as to "what else should have been done" in response to him. A lot WAS done. It just didn't prevent what happened. I wonder if anything really could have.

His behavior was very odd for an English class--no speaking, even when addressed, covering his face with a hat and sunglasses, refusing to even defend his own work when criticized in class. That stuff says there was a big problem. His classmates and teachers were scared because of his behavior, and a few were based on what he wrote (which was not the worst stuff I've ever read from students, frankly).

yes she said his behavior was a concern, but she also very eloquently stated that based on his words and his behavior BOTH she got the sense that this guy needed help. Her inate sense as a teacher of writing lead her instincts to the correct assumption.

The guy was obviously a whack job and his writings reflect that.

His teacher was allowed to put 2 and 2 together...but we are not. I find your position unreasonable. 'Cut the guy a break, he was just writing fiction, nothing bad comes from it'

My position is that we cannot automatically assume that what he wrote explained his actions. People write things like that all the time as explorations and never act on them. What if he had written all that and never done a thing to act out? Would we still be upset?

If you are referring to the Lucinda Roy interview, I was disturbed by what she said. She says that his behavior and some of his writings bothered her to the point of having a safe word for her assistant to call security, referred him to the police (who said they could do nothing, as no crime had occurred), and referred him to counseling (no knowing if anything had come of it). She did a lot, but in my experience, if you have a student who really concerns you like that, you keep reporting and keep at it until something happens. I'm glad she did all she did, but she sounded more than a little self-serving in her comments.

That, and Lucinda made it clear in the interview I heard that it was his behavior, far more than his writings, that really bothered her.

that as a "teacher of creative writing sometimes you get a sixth sense" (paraphrase) "my experience as a writing teacher" based on a students work that there is a problem beyond the classroom.

She used his words to help her come to this conclusion.

Your position seems to be different to say the least

She also teaches college students, while I taught high school. I read more disturbing stuff from kids who never went to college. They thought it was fun to try and shock the teacher.

Roy was profoundly alarmed by WHAT HE WROTE. If you doubt it, you can look you can look up any of the interviews she has given.

I agree - you may not be qualified to make this judgement, but the department head may be in a better position.

What someone WRITES isn't ALWAYS an indication of their mental state.

Some people are perfectly healthy and still capable of imagining HORRIBLE things.

The OP is saying that just because someone writes something disturbing does't make them disturbed.

His instructors had more than his work to go on. They had his behavior in class.

But could they have done any more than they did about it? And what's the difference between a guy who's dangerous and a guy who's just creepily weird but who, at most, may kill himself someday but not anyone else?

and not his writing. His behavior speaks for itself now. His written words are all that remain. Should we discard his manifesto and the backpack writings too.

Heres a thought what if some of the same themes in his plays were in his suicide note and manifesto? Oh wait we cant analyze that.

God forbid if we learn something about the writer by his words.

In the two plays we have, male-on-male rape and abuse are repeated. I find that interesting. It's a dark element, and in the second play, it comes out of nowhere and isn't really dealt with. That's curious. I can't say he was raped, though, just that the theme is there.

but we cant. Once again I ask: Why?

I'm not saying we cannot analyze it. I am saying it is a fallacy to say that everything he wrote was 100% true and was all a message to everyone on what he was going to do. We can say that there are themes, there are interesting possible leads, and that he definitely had a love for the darker sides of human behavior, but we cannot say that all writers who write like that are mentally ill, that his writings show that he was mentally ill, or that anyone who writes like that is going to start killing people.

Now tell me again that King's writings say nothing about the inner workings of his psyche.

It's that his writing doesn't say he is mentally ill and needs to be locked up.

but no one has tried to institutionalize him.

My goodness, Bret Easton Ellis is still walking around. Ever read any of American Psycho? I could not CONCEIVE of some of the horrible murders described in that book. And I haven't even read it cover to cover, just bits and pieces.

So, how come Bret Easton Ellis is walking around a free man and has never gone on a killing rampage? How come he can just write about sick things and never actually DO them? If only we knew the answer to that question, maybe we'd get somewhere.

In this case, I think we're dealing with a whole lot more than just a guy who wrote plays with awful events in them. Some people can write the worst things and never take action to make any horrors in real life come true. For others, they're a dress rehearsal. Would that we knew the difference!

that he was involved in a group discussion and the subject came up of childhood memories. He once mentioned that his mother told them that when he was four, he saw another kid get hit by a train, but that he doesn't remember it. The rest of the group let out a big "ahhhhh" as if it meant something profound, and explained the inner workings of his psyche, and his works. King then explained that he thinks it's a load of psycho-babble bullshit.

Hey, it got them reading and kept them reading. His writings spoke to them somehow, and yet they didn't go on some rampage killing everything in sight.

I have an English Education & Composition degree. The creative writing classes were definitely a window into the lives of my fellow students and the students that I taught. I know that we are trained to dismantle every word and every syllable of writings to find the true meaning, but I don't necessarily think that is right either. Sometimes the meanings are right there practically smacking us in the face.

People write what they know for the most part. Stephen King is the exception, not the rule in my opinion.

What about the gothic writings of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries with the incest and ghosts and weird murders? They were horribly disturbing for readers at the time and even still today. Most of the writers weren't raped by their parents or had seen horrible murders done in the dark of the night.

Humans are capable of amazing horrors, even in our imaginations. Yes, sometimes the meaning is right there, as when my students wrote suicide notes in my class, but sometimes it's pure imagination.

It depends on what's your theorical approach to the analysis of a text. Different readings are possible, and all of them valid. Some people like things like psychoanalysis, new historicism and those approaches that involve getting closer to the "author", and others simply like to think like Barthes did, that the "author" is dead and, for instance, independent and unimportant, and the work of art has a life of its own.

That's the beauty of literature.

it to his senior year as an English major. Maybe his Korean background is to blame, but his grammatical structure, syntax, and vocabulary were pretty poor. Not talking about the plot, either.

which makes you wonder how he got so far.

Then again, grammar, syntax, etc., seem to have taken a backseat in modern teaching to "being able to express yourself."

Spoken English has different rules than written English.

I'm not saying he was a great writer by any means (the plays were weak, in my opinion), but maybe he took that class as a required class and wasn't planning on being a playwright. Poets can't always switch to prose effectively and vice versa.

Oh, and I had a prof who had the absolute worst mechanics in his writing I have ever seen. He got a Ph.D. in literature. It happens.

and violating them because you just don't know what they are.

It's too bad more literary people don't have a better grasp of the mechanics. I think when they don't, they fail to teach completely.

Mistakes are okay here and there, in my opinion, though I hate to see them in books (too many people could've caught them beforehand). Some writers, though, don't even try. That bothers me. Then again, I was the weirdo at my college who loved "Traditional and Modern Grammars" and the linguistics class.

to try and understand the killer.

Of course this needs to be done with the words of guidance you provided, but still, what he wrote is a clue into his soul.

The better we understand people like this, the better chances we have to prevent future tragedies.

>>>And, as a former high school English teacher, please lay off of how he wrote.>>>

OK, sorry. I'll be good.

:)

I've noticed English lit majors tend to be more into writing than anything else, while French and Spanish literature students are more into critical and theorical analysis of texts. We seem to spend more time dealing with Barthes, Derridá, Kristeva than actually producing creative writing.

I ask as a grad student in Latin American and Peninsular literature who has very little contact with the English lit deparment at USF but that has noticed that from the little contact I've had.

Most schools these days have creative writing programs and literature programs. At my little college, we didn't have a creative writing program, so we had to do both--write and criticize. Some were more writers and some were stronger critics. From what I've heard and seen at bigger colleges, the stronger writers are now in the creative writing programs.

Thanks! I feel we should have room for creative writers in our departments as well.

If I could draw a cartoon I would show a dead guy lying on a couch with psychiatrist, maybe even Sigmund himself sitting in a chair asking questions. In the background, at the door are a bunch of microphones sticking in. That's DU right now, and it sucks. As I said earlier how in the world do you analyze a dead guy, thousands of miles away through miles of wire and space. Why that's like a Congressman diagnosing a woman in a coma from the Senate floor. Oops, that did happen.

What does he represent to you?

I would ask, "Why Tito? And why not Benitez?"

I respect Benitez's skills and achievements a lot, although he could have done much more with his career had he taken it seriously.

I grew up watching Tito and, even though he was not very technically sound, he brought excitement to the ring and at 147 and 154 he simply demolished his opponents (except for DLH).

Wilfredo Gomez and Trinidad are, in my opinion, the two best Puerto Rican fighters ever, followed by closely followed by Benitez. I have heard a lot about Carlos Ortiz, but have never seen footage of him.

was a great fighter. I can remember his fights against the top fighters of his era, guys like Sugar Ramos, Flash Elorde, Ismael Laguna, and Carlos (Teo) Cruz.

Benitez was not disciplined. Many people were surprised at how little he actually trained. For example, people around him said he spent less than one week preparing for Duran. Yet he beat Roberto Duran as well as anyone, except Tommy Hearns. I remember hearing that he trained 10 days for Leonard.

Gomez was a great warrior. Very exciting, and always well-prepared.

Trinidad was outstanding, and could have done well against the best of any era. But he had some areas that might have allowed Benitez to beat him. Of course, Tito could have defeated Benitez, too. They are among the fighters I have the most respect for.

and yes, Benitez was marvelous even without training much. Benitez-Palomino is a favorite of mine.

Is there any way to watch some of those classic Carlos Ortiz fights?

of The Ring magazine, there is a list of people who sell tapes/DVDs of classic fight films. I think that you can find dealers who make films of specific fights. There are people with huge collections.

It's a shame that ESPN Classic tends to use the same fights, over and over. They bought Jimmy Jacob's collection, so they have the single largest collection on the planet.

One of my sons showed me a site called "YouTube" that has a heck of a lot of fight films, too. Classic fights -- I have had the 8mm film of Liston vs Williams2 since the 1970s (through The Ring!), but had never had the opportunity to see their first fight until watching it on YouTube.

I am surprised that you do not participate in the on-going boxing discussions on the DU:Sports forum.

I used to have film of young Wilfredo Benitez in his 3-6-76 upset victory over the great Antonio Cervantes. In many ways, it was his greatest victory -- he was a teenager, outboxing one of boxing's legendary champions.

Note: The "Collector's Corner" is in the back of Boxing Digest (which is published by The Ring)

no one is suggesting that Steven King is dangerous because of his works. That's why they call it "fiction".

Anyone who wants to judge him by his fiction writing is a dumbass who deserves no further thought anyway.

I do think, however, this so-called manifesto is what we should be judging.

It reads like a journal or diary, and that means that it is of a far more personal nature. The anal rape image was in the screenshot, just like in the plays, which is interesting--why repeat it that often? Was it a deep fear, or was it something he'd personally dealt with? The political hints were odd, too. Lots of anger in that thing.

But only after the manifesto has been digested. Many writers stick to what they know, so it wouldn't be unusual (despite the OP's pleas to the contrary) that there would be seeds of truth in the fiction as well. But they shouldn't be thought of as such unless backed up by the diary.

When I wrote the OP, all we had were the plays. The manifesto hadn't been released yet. If something is in both the plays and the manifesto, such as the anal rape image that seems to be in all three, then there's something to that, most likely.

So many here never change their opinion despite a new idea or new information. Only the truly intelligent can grasp the fact that it's ok to have a new idea.

I agreed with your OP when I first read it, and I'd still feel that way if it weren't for the manifesto.

I think you are special... maybe because you are a knitter and I'm a crocheter... I bet you contemplate many ideas whilst manipulating yarn. It's a meditation, don't you think?

You're too kind, though. I'm nowhere near wisdom these days. *sigh*

Hey, are you going to the Knit and Crochet Show in Manchester, NH this July? The crochet classes look pretty good.

The manifesto changes everything. It's obviously a personal piece that he meant to be read publically, and there's obviously a lot in there to be really disturbed by.

cho's a poor writer, imo.

The manifesto wasn't structured or clear, either, from what I could make out on the screen capture.

I wonder if that's part of why he felt attacked all the time--that people said his writing wasn't as good as he thought it was.

Your position ignores an almost 100year tradition of Psychological interpretation of literature...

:) I'm uncomfortable with saying that everything we write comes out of our conscious and subconscious. I do like Jungian thought for certain pieces, but overall, I'm more of a New Historicist than anything else.

I posted when we only had the two plays, and the manifesto changes everything. If something's in all three or repeated over and over in the manifesto, obviously it's important.