Total Recall

 

by Alison Janssen

 

First, a word of thanks to everyone who bid in my Thanksgiving critique auction. We ended up with two winners, and two significant donations to literary charities: Literacy Partners and the W.B. Konkle Memorial Library, in Montoursville, PA. Hooray!

 

Today I'd like to talk about memorization.

 

Did you have to do it in school? If you were, like me, a theater nerd, I'm sure you had to. And I'm sure everyone reading this blog today can sing a large number of songs from memory. That's just like text memorization, but with the helpful addition of a tune. So here's a New Year's Challenge for you:

 

1. Choose a monologue, poem, or a few paragraphs of description from a novel you love, and print it out on a single sheet of paper.

2. Go into a quiet room by yourself, close the door, and read it out loud.

3. Mark with a pencil the natural beats and pauses, the words you think should be emphasized, the places where you stumbled and need to pay close attention.

4. Carry the paper with you, and work on memorizing the words every day.

 

You'll exercise your memory, sure, and that's always a good idea. But more than that, having an author's (or poet's, or playwright's) words on hand (er, in head?), doing the work to solidify them by studying the rhythms and tones of the sentences ... well, that will teach you a whole lot about your own dialogue and prose.

 

Here are some of my favorites:

How all occasions do inform against me,

And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep, and feed? a beast, no more.

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be

Bestial oblivian, or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event,

A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom

And ever three parts coward, I do not know

Why yet I live to say, "This things t'do;"

Sith I have cause and will and strength and means

To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:

Witness this army of such mass and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender prince,

Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,

That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,

Excitements of my reason and my blood,

And let all sleep? while to my shame,

I see the immident death of twenty-thousand men,

That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

Which is not tomb enough and continent,

To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 4

 

 

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corner's ... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking ... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths ... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?

Our Town, Act III

 

"You can't guarantee things like that! After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore."

Fahrenheit 451

 

Comments

[Sarah W]

"`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

Sorry, couldn't resist. I memorized the whole thing for a required elocution class - received thunderous applause and a B from the instructor because "the text makes no sense."

But I've always wanted to learn the St. Crispen's Day speech from Henry V . . .I'm in!

[Jeff Cohen]

"Well, I thought my razor was dull until I heard his speech. And that reminds me of a story that's so dirty I'm ashamed to think of it myself. As I look at at your eager faces, I can readily understand why this college is flat on its back. The last college I presided over, things were slightly different--I was flat on my back. Things kept going from bad to worse, but we all put our shoulders to the wheel, and it wasn't long before I was flat on my back again. Any questions? Any answers? Any rags, any bones, any bottles today, any rags... Let's have some action around here--who'll say 76? Who'll say 1776? That's the spirit, 1776!"
--Groucho Marx, Horse Feathers, 1932