I’m really impressed by the first round of moves in our “Talking Book” play thus far. We’re going to do a brief exercise today reporting on each others’ moves, so this may duplicate some of what we talk about then, but I wanted to call attention to some exemplary moves, categorized by what one can do with a move. So here are some strategies, paired with moves that use those strategies (among others, in many cases):

• breach the levels: you can have authors talk to characters, characters in the “tales” talk to characters in the frame, paratextual figures talk to characters, and so on. Chana/Chesnutt does this very well in an aside to Max’s Oscar Micheaux. And so does Sade/Lucia, a “conjure woman,” who talks back to Chesnutt.
• give another player a soft pitch: you can kind of provoke another player into a move by addressing them. Here, Naho kind of pings out to Julius. And here Jet/book reviewer Julius Waters worries over Chesnutt’s decision not to “pass” in ways that might provoke CC. Finally, Sheena/George W. Cable addresses Chesnutt fondly.
• make a move that conveys an interpretation: especially if you’re playing a character, you can move in ways that decide on what, for readers, is just a latent possibility, solving, so to speak, problems in the text. Here Walter conveys an internal split within Julius, as he talks with his grandson, Tom. And here Eric H. aligns John with the “free soil” movement of the postbellum era, naively (or cynically) assuming that paying low wages to African Americans will liberate them.
• insert “extrinsic” research materials into the text: if you’re playing a “paratextual” figure it will be hard not to do this. Here Joelle references Du Bois’s real relationship with Chesnutt and leverages it into a theoretical discussion of aesthetics and racial politics. And here Eric J. has his latter-day audiobook producer go to a volume of Chesnutt’s speeches to dig up material relevant to thinking about how to make a respectful audiobook production.
• create a plausible voice for a character: all of you are doing this, often very well, but I wanted to call attention to Max’s somewhat old-timey voice he’s created for Micheaux, a pioneering African American filmmaker from the early 20thC. Sheena’s Cable is great, too, and Walter’s Julius demonstrates the trickiness of the “eye dialect: (see above for links on both).