I am no fan of Madison Avenue, but I do admire the creativity and occasional success at producing advertisements that, but for the motivation, would have been correctly labeled as art.  Marketing is an area around which I get squeamish defending my belief in absolute free speech and free markets.  Ideals would be great if it were not for the human beings who gave birth to them.

Enter John Fox, a self-proclaimed fiction writer and professor, who recently started keeping a literary blog.  My own discovery of Professor Fox and his blog came as a result of finding that he has added me to his blogroll.  In all sincerity, I am always pleased to be added to a blogroll, especially when they are short (The blogroll, that is. Physical stature is only a passing concern.), and I am added unknown to the adder.  I’ve known a few adders and it’s a bad idea to make fun venom.  (I am probably no longer on any blogroll after that last sentence.)

Anyway, my favorite part of BookFox is the Literary Mix Tape.  The blogger in question chooses a few short passages all related to a particular idea or theme.  Now, perhaps you were wondering why I started with a short jab at Madison Avenue.  Well, anytime one can cheap shot those soulless bastards, even at the expense of saliency, I say go for it.  But, I have a reason for this and it is taking me entirely too long to get to it.

The concept of gathering readings on a particular subject is nothing new, but our new pal John Fox seems to have coined a phrase, and has marketed it well on his site.  He has given it a new spin.  Repackaged it, if you will.  A short bit of Yahoo! research turns up the following:

• The San Francisco Magazine used the term in reviewing Howl on Trial in November, several months after BookFox.
• I found the term used by Kevin Sampsell at Sporkpress.com.
• The Boston Globe’s Vanessa Jones used the term in a 2004 article about Marcyliena Morgan.
• There were a variety of references to actual music mix tapes associated with authors or books.

That was about it.  Searching the term in quotes on Yahoo! generates only four pages of results.  So BookFox is on top of something new here in the blogosphere.  Plus he seem pretty good at it.  I enjoyed all five of his “tapes”, and am looking forward to the next one.  I will probably show them to my students after Christmas break, and perhaps put together a year ending activity along similar lines.

So check out BookFox.  Lots to enjoy.

Here is a quick and sorry version of my own literary mix tape.  I am just finishing Ender’s Game with some of my 11th graders, so the subject is timely to me.

To an Enemy
Maxwell Bodenheim

I DESPISE my friends more than you.
I would have known myself, but they stood before the mirrors
And painted on them images of the virtues I craved.
You came with sharpest chisel, scraping away the false paint. 
Then I knew and detested myself, but not you:
For glimpses of you in the glasses you uncovered.

 

From Ender’s Game
Orson Scott Card
I am your enemy, the first one you’ve ever had who was smarter than you.  There is no teacher, but the enemy.  No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do.  No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer.  Only the enemy shows where you are weak.  Only the enemy tells you where he is strong.  And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you.  I am your enemy from now on.  From now on I am your teacher.

 

From Enemy Pie
by Derek Munson and Tara Calahan King (Illustrator)
He talked quietly.  “There is one part of Enemy Pie that I can’t do.  In order for it to work, you need to spend a day with your enemy.  Even worse, you have to be nice to him.  It’s not easy.  But that’s the only way that Enemy Pie can work.  Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

Of course I was.

It sounded Horrible.  It was scary.  But is was worth a try.  All I had to do was spend one day with Jeremy Ross, then he’d be out of my hair for the rest of my life.  I rode my bike to his house and knocked on the door.

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