Fini

Well, that's all there was folks. It was amazing how unprepared I was. There were 2 questions about American lit, 1 about medieval women, and 1 that said "you must use 3 texts from the list" to answer a question. And it was about language, which is one of my "things" (signifier/signified), but the way the question was asked, I couldn't answer. Feh.

Questions I ended up answering

• Gender and work. This was worded kind of vaguely, so I'm hoping I actually answered it. I went "work=means of production=economy" and went all Marxian on the question, talking about how women participated (or not) in the economy. In Beowulf, they don't. Only the men do. Women, such as Grendel's mother, are actually a disruptive force to the economy, as they take without providing. In Gatsby, Daisy is the whole basis of Gatsby's life: that is, his superstructure. She is the raw material for his labor (the acquistion of wealth) and the end product; once he "produces," he gets Daisy. But it begins to crack when he meets Daisy's daughter--objects can't produce on their own, after all. Finally, when she chooses to stay with Tom, she removes herself from Gatsby's economy. And the structure can't hold without the superstructure. The 3rd text I chose was "Survivor," a chapter in Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. Kathleen creates her own superstructure, a world without men. She produces a world view (a fabulation) and gets mad when the men try to remove her right to produce it.
  
  
• "Woman Question"; must use Pride and Prejudice and Wollstonecraft. Had read about 50 pages of the former, and have a "working knowledge" of the latter. I talked about how Austen mixed fantasy (Lizzie and Jane get to marry rich men they love) and reality (Charlotte marries for security). Wollstonecraft believed in educating women, but emphasized that society wouldn't fall apart, because most of her audience were men, so she had to appeal to them. Third text I used was Cavendish's Assaulted and Pursued Chastity--which I had never read, only looked at the handout. I talked about how Travelia was "masculinized," but then Cavendish undercuts herself by marrying off Travelia and the Queen.
  
  
• "Othering." I used Gulliver's Travels, showing how it's the British looking at themselves through themselves (Gulliver as the idealized Englishman); The Tempest, where the colonized (Caliban) refuses to be reformed, but then plays the part of the dumb colonized in order to achieve his aims; and Larsen, who journeys to other cultures only to discover she's always other, because she is half-black, or half-white, or a Northerner, or a non-conformist.
  
  
• Experimentation and theme. Woolf's To the Lighthouse works with the fluid narrator, while addressing the question of the female role (what happens when the glue that is Mrs. Ramsay is not present.) Language is the object of Joyce's analysis, which he addresses with Stephen's coming to language. TS Eliot goes nuts on allusions, because of his view that culture is bits of the past, while fighting against the past because rejuvenation never happens.
  

These were all the "good" questions. I felt either very happy or content with these answers. The fifth one sucked. What was it?

• Evidence of colonial dynamics. Yeats advocates "precolonialism," which kicks out the English but envisions a "ruling class," as the peasantry obviously can't rule itself. Joyce says that's useless and shows how the Irish are complicit in their own repression. And then in The Quare Fellow, Behan sets up a microcosm of the Irish Republic under de Valera, where the split between prisoners and warders is like the difference between colonizer and colonized. And like Caliban, characters play their parts when they think it will get them something.
  

So, that's that. I'll find out if I passed about 2 weeks from today. Really don't know how I did. I'm fluctuating between "passing" and "completely bombing." We'll see. I'll keep you informed.

October 16, 2002.

23 Days

"There is a hole in your mind." --Babylon 5: And the Sky Full of Stars

I think there really is. No matter how much I read, I still feel like I'm missing something.

However, I did expand my horizons this past weekend. I realised I was woefully deficient in American, feminist, and African-American lit. So I read Sylvia Plath's Ariel poetry collection Saturday, and got through Nella Larsen's Quicksand Sunday. Sylvia is typical of the "Confessional" writers, and extremely depressing. (Explains the suicide thing, though.) But I love her poem "Daddy." The imagery is scary, but the rhythm is phenomenal. ("You do not do, you do not do/Any more, black shoe.")

Larsen is the African-American author. I got an edition with a very good introduction, which emphasized the female subject/object issues present in the novel. So now I could try to answer a question about feminism.

At the last meeting, we tried to figure out what kinds of questions would be asked. We came up with the following list:

• race
  
• feminism
  
• movement (for instance, "what are the characteristics of Romanticism", and showing how these pop up outside of the historical time period
  
• issues of use of language and signfier/signfied
  
• comparing Text X with two other works on the list
  
• construction of national identity and/or postcolonialism
  
• reader-text-author theories
  

The first two sound really easy, and if I hadn't spent so much time reading Dead White [English and Irish] Guys(tm), maybe they would be. I know I'd do very well with signifier/signified. Having 5 classes with Dr. C, who pushes Derrida constantly, I've got a good handle on that. Postcolonialism, I can do a lot with, especially with Irish lit, which seems strange to people. They tend to think of postcolonial lit coming from India, Africa, the Carribean--completely forgetting where England's had their flag firmly planted for centuries. Reader-text-author, I'm a bit shaky on. And with my luck, the comparison question will be about a text I haven't read.

But I am actually quite calm. But, um, maybe no one should talk to me until November 10th. Just in case I snap.

Dr. C's class is going all right. I got a B on the first paper. His son helped him grade it. Did I mention his son is 2, and his "help" consisted of scribbling on Page 1 with a green pen? Dr. C apologised profusely, and the whole class (myself included) got a good laugh. Still waiting on the midterm. You know how when you have one of those "One from Part A, one from Part B" essay tests, you're always really confident about one question, and then not so much on the second group? Yeah, me too. I know I kicked ass on "medieval and Renaissance vernacular writing," but my Plato question? Ooh. However, it was either Plato or Aristotle. And I "forgot" to read Aristotle.

Until next time, friends.

September 29, 2002.
39 Days

"All dead, Dave, all dead." HAL-9000, "2001: A Space Odessey."

I've changed my mind. Dr. M is not trying to kill me. Dr. C is. How come the same weeks the papers and midterms are due, the readings are heavier?

Didn't get to work on Anne Bradstreet. D beat me to it. Oh well. I'm attempting Coleridge. He's slightly easier than Shelley. And in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," he summarises the poem for you in the margin. Heh. Luckily for me, the great Dr. P did a very thorough lesson in "Kublai Khan," and I made good notes in my Norton's margins. Coleridge is also more palatable than Wordsworth, so I suppose I should be grateful we weren't subjected to The Prelude. There's nothing worse than an old poet trying to tell the story of his life as a poem. Okay, Byron did it too, but at least he was funny, and he did the wise thing and died before he got old and ultraconservative.

Last meeting, two weeks ago, I presented a summary of the Victorian era. The more you read of Victorian literature and history, the funnier Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest becomes. The reason Oscar got in so much trouble over the whole Bosie incident is because he dared to mix the public with the private, which is a huge Victorian no-no. He should have listened to Robbie Ross...

We're now 39 days out. I haven't really done any, if you will, "earnest" work in the last month. Does this mean I feel prepared? Feck no. I'm still completely lacking in American literature, except for secondhand knowledge (other people have covered the other American books on the list.) The group hasn't even touched the world lit, and we probably won't. One of M's professors actually advised him, three months ago, not to read anything else, and just brush up on his historical context, via the Norton's introductions. Because we can use texts that aren't on the list. So if I get a question that I want to use Byron, Wilde, and Fitzgerald on, I can. So for the next couple of meetings, I'm going to suggest we do practice essays. I thought of a great question about views of poetry, and I thought about how I could discuss the idea of the poet-prophet using Plato, Shelley, and Peter Gabriel.

Speaking of Peter Gabriel, the new album was less than what Amazon wanted for the single. It was $12.71, with tax, at Best Buy. But honestly, it's worth a lot more than that. It is abso-flogging-lutely wonderful. Buy it. Buy copies for all your friends. See, I'm trying single-handedly to get this album gold in the U.S.

The ranks in Dr. C's class have thinned considerably. Now we only have 4 people who can't fit at the table. In between bouts of theory, we're trying to help him name his baby, due in December. I suggested Declan, which he really likes and was already seriously considering. He's very attached to the name Seamus, but are afraid Floridians can't pronounce it. Ditto on Ciaran, which he also liked.

That's it for now. Maybe something slightly more interesting next time.

September 9,2002
"It's all in the mind." --George Harrison, "Yellow Submarine"

Meetings have started back up. Huzzah. Everyone has mostly been working on their thesis. D has been trying to get through Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and is not having a good time. I probably should have warned her about that. It's one of those books that gets better about the third or fourth time you read it. Dr. S has assigned it to his 20th Century novel class, but I don't know how much of a background in Irish politics he's given them, because otherwise they'll get very confused in Section 4 and 5...

We welcomed L to the group. She's done a lot of work in feminism and Renaissance lit, which a couple of us are deficient in, so she's a good addition.

It's only right that I went on a pilgrimage for The Canterbury Tales. I was actually looking for either a good interlinear translation, or something like the Norton has (translations in the margin.) I did find an excellent IL trans. in our library. Unfortunately, it didn't cover any of the assigned tales. So I decided to get the Cliffs Notes. This is not as easy as it sounds. I went to 4 bookstores before I found good old Cliff. The other places all had Spark Notes, which, like the IL trans., didn't contain the tales I had to read. The clerk at one Barnes & Noble, when I inquired if they had Cliffs Notes, said "No, but we have Spark Notes, which are better." I asked how they could be better when The Canterbury Tales' notes didn't contain all of the tales. He didn't have an answer.

But, I did find a good non-prose translation (what is up with the translators who put the verse in prose format?) and a Cliffs Notes version, so now I'm happy. I'm trying to make it through Pride & Predjudice. I may have to rent the BBC miniseries, because it's very tedious. I kept reading the same passages over and over, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be getting out of Austen. Okay, it's a lot about social behaviour and appearances, and false faces (they're nice to Lizzie when she's in the room, but the minute she's gone, they trash her.) But, really, what is the point? No, I'm serious, someone help me understand.

As Day Zero draws near, I become more anxious and more calm, simultaneously. I still have a ton of list left to go, but I just can't possibly cram any faster. I'm taking a theory course, and he wants 3 papers. Okay, so 2 of them are pretty short, but that's more reading that I have to do, in addition to class reading. On the plus side, Dr. C is the instructor. He's ace. My only complaint about the class is the room is too small; not everyone can sit at the conference table, and I think we lose something by not seeing everyone.

For the next meeting, I've decided to leave my comfort zone of 20th century Brit Lit and try something in Early American Lit. Anne Bradstreet, to be specific. I started reading her before leaving for my Atlanta vacation (last week), but like Austen, I felt I was missing something. It seemed very surface. D assured me that no, that's all there was. Whew! Oh, I finally came up with some coherent things to say about Shelley. I concentrated on the short verse and the "Defence of Poetry," and I enjoyed myself a lot more. The Norton's summaries of the longer works helped immensely.

That's all for now, folks. Today, the new Peter Gabriel single comes out, but it seems to be available only as an import. So, now I have to decide if I want to shell out the $12.99 Amazon is asking for it, when the album will cost only slightly more when it comes out. Decisions, decisions...

August 2, 2002

"Falling deep into sky, slipping in the unknown." --Peter Gabriel

Well, meetings have been rather sparse lately. Not blaming anyone. Things crop up, miscommunications happen. We're thinking about cutting back to every other week. M is concerned that he'll slack off. I'm not concerned; I know I'd slack off. However, they all have long distances to drive. Whereas I will be living about 5 minutes up the road. If the agent selling the house decides to stop making my life bloody miserable. I swear to gods, this guy brings new meaning to both "incompetent" and "ballsy." And I don't mean that last one as a compliment. He had the nerve to say that if I wanted to inspect the utilities, I had to turn them on myself. Did I mention on line 101 of the contract, it says "Seller must provide utilities? What a git.

But I digress. To the Lighthouse has been uploaded. Film Theory is finished. I managed to change my project completely, have it mostly done two days before it was due, and write a paper that made sense. I got an A. Go me.

I got a very nice e-mail from Dr. P. He told me of his own struggle with the Comps: the lack of sleep, the loss of appetite. Not very encouraging, old friend. I mean, you actually know what you're doing. Me, I'm just faking my way through this degree. I really must remember to ask him about Middlemarch.

No no. "I am doing all the right things. I know a lot. I will pass." This is the mantra Dr. C said we should say. Sure, I know a lot. Unfortunately, it's all about things that are not on the reading list. I'm going to have to find one question where I can talk about T.S Eliot, since that's my "speciality." (read: I kept doing papers on Eliot, reusing the same ideas, to save myself time.) (Note that I never reuse papers. That's dishonest.)

Guess that's all. Eagerly awaiting the new Peter Gabriel album. I think if my life was a movie, Peter Gabriel would do the soundtrack. But I suspect the script would be written by the Marx Brothers.

RIP, Leo McKern

Be seeing you.