Self-Reliance

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope..."

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Horror!

No, not just for the number of emails in my inbox (although that is horrifyingly substantial!) but because I begin the summer intensive course on horror film. First feature today: "Bride of Frankenstein"! Isn't this a lovely photo of Lanchester?!

Along with a lot of the Universals I'll have a few other things to show the early era, but with only twelve class periods altogether to convey the whole of horror film history, there are going to be holes. Massive holes! There it is.

More later -- Kalamazoo wrap-up, upcoming events, but at present haste precludes verbosity!

I should have known better...

Yes, I was a glutton -- three medieval classes in one term. I should add, I'm teaching three medieval classes with at least two different textbooks, so I am teaching some of the same texts in different translations (as if conveying the complexities of different parts of the Middle Ages were not hard enough!).

I can't tell if it's more perplexing to teach the same text at the same time with very different translations and aims (medieval lit for non-majors v. gender in medieval lit for sophomore majors) or the same text at different times -- so I always catch myself saying, "Did we already talk about this? No? Oh, well -- let me explain..."

My third class of the day -- the upper division one -- bears the brunt of this exhaustion and inevitable confusion. I'm always making them laugh as I get stuck stammering on a word, because suddenly I've lost the one following it as my mind races to check:

1) is this the right text?

2) have we already covered this?

3) am I confused because I said something similar in the previous class?

4) or was it in this class last week?

5) and now they're all staring at my sputtering and thinking I'm crazy!

I generally recover quickly (I can always vamp on just about any medieval topic for a fair space of time until I recall where we're supposed to be) but I'm beginning to think the Medieval Texts on Film class thinks they've signed on with a lunatic. Fair enough.

Nonetheless, it's better to have this embarrassment of riches (teaching the field I love and have been trained for) than to be stuck with the dread thousand year survey. In my last position, I had to cover the class that lumped together everything from early Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry to transitional Anglo-Norman texts to Chaucer and the late Middle Ages to Elizabethan drama to the English Civil War to Restoration drama and the roots of early journalism. In a semester!

It's like having a huge banquet and a half hour in which to eat it. You can cram your mouth with stuff, but you won't digest a lot of it and you won't even get to taste some of the signature dishes (I am so not going to teach Spenser! Just not qualified). You get the academic equivalent of heartburn.

Why do it? Often it springs from a desire to teach 'foundations', the explicit recognition that all writers stand on the shoulders of the giants who have come before. But it also devalues those foundations with the suggestion that a mere semester of running through that thousand years will sufficiently acquaint students with the complexities of these wildly varying texts and cultures. The often unspoken assumption is that the students can then be ready to move on to the 'important' (i.e. post-1800) texts -- argh! Medieval literature is not just 'background' for modern literature.

Albacon & Fall Colors

Ran out to get a hair cut yesterday and decided I needed a little color too, so voilà: Purple highlights! Thanks, Joy. She's so good that she matched the color to the jacket I was wearing.

We had a short night at Albacon -- one panel for me on writing flash fiction. True to form, we cut the panel short (hee hee!). But I sold two copies of Jane Quiet at the end of it (slight upward blip in whuffie), so whoo hoo! We had some tasty ice cream at the ice cream social, but having both slept badly the night before, we went home early and watched the news before collapsing. More today at Albacon -- should be fun. There's free wireless in the hotel, so updates to Facebook likely.

The corset did its job: despite being on my feet all day and driving (a stick) for the first time in a month, there was very little swelling around the ankle. Yay! I even managed to find something to Sanrio-fy it, so that's good.

Fiction/Non-Fiction

From the official Empire State Building site:

Narrating the tour is Tony, a fictional, but nonetheless authentic, native New Yorker born 50 years ago in Chelsea, an area of Manhattan not yet the hot, trendy neighborhood it is today. The tour is written from Tony’s point of view and is filled with his colorful, amusing and informative observations about his favorite city . . . and his favorite building.

Huh? I think I might like to be fictional yet authentic. Maybe I am -- who knows?

Fabrications

I've decided the true story of my injury is very dull. I need suggestions of tales I might tell others, including my students whom I will be seeing tomorrow.

Any ideas?

The bruising is getting more colorful, as it tends to do. Will have to get another picture soon. Still no word on the x-rays, sigh.

Adding insult to injury: my essay on Tideland just got booted from the anthology it was supposed to appear in. Waah.

One Down

I don't know why it was particularly difficult to return to the regular business of the academic year, but it was today. I suppose knowing the day would end with a meeting cast a bit of a pall on things, but I was having a hard time adjusting back to the public sphere of the classroom after spending so much time writing this summer. Maybe that had something to do with enjoying myself less at Pi-Con, too. I just wasn't ready to be in the midst of the swirl after a week of solitude at Domus Crispini.

But the schedule I chose for this semester threw me right into the thick of it. Two classes back to back, a slight break (which will be office hours after today), then the third class and department meeting. It's always a little nerve-wracking to walk into the first class of the semester but today I felt especially ill-prepared and lacking in confidence. It comes back -- that's the good thing, I suppose -- the song and dance, the re-telling of the stories.

I had to go through the introduction to Anglo-Saxon England with my Powerpoint slides (including the Simpsons and Angelina Jolie) twice today. As usual, my voice was giving out by the third class, despite two thermoses of tea. My final class is the one with the most potential for participation (what makes a class energizing rather than draining), although the other two might prove to have some liveliness. But the upper division courses tend to have students who are more independent and likely to want to have their say. Fingers crossed.

Tonight, we relaxed with the Joe Strummer documentary (review coming soon). Tomorrow I'll need to actually get the schedules spelled out on Blackboard (our support software for the classes), a tedious process that I avoid for as long as possible. I have to plan my work schedule, too. Teaching takes a big chunk of time, so it's important not to let the writing get lost in that process. Goals and deadlines are essential, otherwise you look up and suddenly it's the end of the semester.

Penultimate

It's the penultimate day of the "working week" and it's raining. Not ideal for moving, of course, particularly because a large part of what needs to be moved is art. Plus, the cable guy (or gal) is coming today to finally hook up the internet at the aerie, which will make life more convenient. I keep imagining bills I have forgotten to pay.

I seem to recall that I first learned the word "penultimate" as a wee teen (pre-teen?) from the "Last Supper" routine recorded on A Poke in the Eye (with a sharp stick), the LP of the first Amnesty benefit, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring Peter Cook, the Pythons, the Goodies, Neil Innes, the fabulous Eleanor Bron, and more (but not Pirate "Bob", alas). It's a bit irritating that the film version, Pleasure at Her Majesty's, cuts some of the bits (gaah, how can you cut Peter Cook?!) but is still wonderful. The bit in question has to do with a conversation between Michelangelo and the pope about this painting he's done of the Last Supper: the pope has a few objections. While Jonathan Lynn plays the painter to Cleese's pope in that version, on YouTube I found this other version with Ade Edmonson playing Michelangelo: enjoy.

Oh, and the reason the word was on my mind: I'm into what I thought would be the penultimate chapter of the novel I've been writing for the last year (although now I think it will be hard to wrap up in the next chapter). If this is news to you, don't worry -- I haven't been talking about it. It's a weird feeling -- while a year may seem like a long time, it's relatively short for me to write a book (as some of you foot-tapping folks have let me know). Being near the end is both frightening and exhilarating.

And yes, Unikirja will be done this summer too. Really!

Editing

Sending off edits to my story "Fluorescence" which will appear in the Harrow next month. As always, awkward phrases seem to abound, but it's best to avoid giving the editor the impression that you're writing a completely different story when you make editing suggestions. I'm such a bad copy editor. Detail work is not my strong point.

I keep waking up around four which leaves me a bit sleepy, oddly enough. Doesn't help that Kipper has found his unibrow nemesis. They yowl and spit at each other through the window by the fire escape. Consequently, I'm sleep-walking through the days. At least it keeps me from thinking about how much more there is to move...

If Thursday was a Boat...

"Here's why I did not go to work today..."

I'm spending this "surreptitiously unique" day once more in the moving process because time is running out, work was not advancing well anyway, and it's got to get done. Somehow, somehow -- at least Harry Nilsson is in my head.

Think positive: progress is being made. Not entirely tangible right now as I sit among scattered boxes in the still-too-full house, but there has been progress.

Minus One Sofa

Consumatum est: well, the big furniture that required a truck, anyway (we still have lots of boxes, cough cough, hint hint). We decided the sofa did not have a place in our new third floor lifestyle (fortunately, we decided this on the first set of stairs). I wanted to chuck it off the back of the truck, but Gene insisted we not do that. So if you need a sofa, come and get it. We're going to get a futon again, which will double as a guest bed (hint hint).

Dead tired, achey, body covered with a galaxy of new bruises (the ones on my left thigh form Ursa Minor!), so we're getting Kipper and the minimum of necessities and heading back to the new place. Tomorrow I have a retreat (yay! woodsy goodness) and then a party at Mahar's. Much better than moving furniture. Wow, one day of physical labor and I'm done in. I'm so lazy!

Boxing Day

Just taking a break from the numbing process. Today we need to box up everything that's sitting on furniture large enough to have to be moved on the truck that we rented for tomorrow. Time to turn off the brain in order to avoid thinking about a) how much stuff we still have, b) how hard it will be to drag it up to the third floor, and c) how it will not all fit anyway. Yes, yes, we brought it on ourselves. No one should pity us. Just reporting the facts, ma'am. And doing a good impression of a Romero extra.

Tomorrow will be the deciding day: what doesn't fit (furniture-wise), has to go... somewhere. Not in the aerie. Shelves that don't fit mean books that won't fit either. I just don't know. I don't think I can fit too many more books in my office. But we're not going to live with boxes like now; I've had enough of that.

Save the date: Saturday June 28th -- I think by then everything that's going there will have to be situated. Sangria in the afternoon, chips and salsa and the unveiling of the new digs. It's small, but there are the stairs for overflow. Kipper will just hide under the bed anyway.

Yard sale at the old place the day after... everything must go.

What Fresh Hell?

What could make the process of moving less pleasant? 90+ F degree weather (that's 30+ C) and humidity -- what is this, Houston?! Let's not forget thunderstorms, too. We moved some lighter stuff yesterday: musical instruments and dvds. Our new stove is in, though not the new fridge and our landlord was busy painting some of the chipped and peeled areas. Despite the climb to our third floor walk up, we found it cooler up there in our new aerie than in our squat house, so that portends well for that unimaginable time in the future when the move is done. The sparrows were hopping along the roof looking in at us with frank curiosity ("hey, new neighbors!"). I still don't know how it will be done, but somehow it will have to be.

Want to read about one of the plays I saw in London? The Guardian has a review up of Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy. Billington's right about the opening squashing the first speech, but it was quite a cornucopia of sights that had the audience riveted (even up amongst the gods where I was sitting). Kinnear clearly enjoyed himself thoroughly in the role(s, I suppose I ought to add). There was a weird inconsistency in register throughout, playing the gothic for humor, but how else to combine Caravaggio and camp? Gleeful mayhem all around. Kinnear's also going to be in the new Bond film, so more folks will see him soon (his dad would be proud).

Here's a review of the Midsummer Night's Dream we saw at the Globe. It's a bit harsh, but it does touch on my main problem: if Puck isn't magic, it doesn't come off. The rest of the cast worked well -- certainly the students saw it more like this review, but for me Michael Jibson might have made a better Bottom than Puck (although Paul Hunter did just fine in that role while eerily reminiscent physically of Chris Elliott). Puck should be fluid, androgynous, quicksilver and dangerous. Jibson looked far too mundane, weary even at times, and yes, irrationally, I thought his head too round. Sue me. I would have liked to have seen Adam Burton, who played Mustardseed, try the role. You expect the regals (Tom Mannion and Siobhan Redmond) to be great -- they were -- but too often the four lovers are little more than mooning cyphers. Not so here: Boot and Brandon made Demetrius and Lysander wildly passionate lovers, ready to erupt violently at the least provocation, and Nixon and Rogers brought a powerful physicality to the traditionally demure young women which matched them well. It was fun -- how can it not be? -- but I wanted a better Puck. Dean Lennox Kelly was good in the recent BBC version: you might recognize him as a saucy Shakespeare in one of the first Martha Jones episodes of Doctor Who.

Vecchia Zimarra

Off to Connecticut tonight to empty out the storage space. I shall have to sing my goodbyes to the things we throw away (may they be many). But I'll think about that later -- work to do now and anyway, I should be thinking about seeing friends tonight (a much more pleasant thought).

I woke up thinking of Dorothy Parker:

When I am sober and the grass springs up green,
I will tell you the meaning of miracles you have seen.
When I am tipsy and the grass has grown brown,
I'll explain why good intentions usually drown.

I looked into extending my trip, but purchasing a one-way ticket for a different date would cost over $1100. Yikes. Maybe next year when I am not taking a group of students to London (I swear), I can have more free time.

Algonquin Roundtable

This semester, as many of you know, I have been teaching a class about films that portray the lives of writers. Most recently we watched Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, which tells in part both Parker's life and the coterie that was the Algonquin Roundtable (as drawn by the inimitable Hirschfeld here). It's a little bit of a mess as a film: star Jennifer Jason Leigh went all out to achieve realism in capturing Parker's singular cadences of speech -- sacrificing intelligibility along the way (much to the students' annoyance); plus the story arc seems to flatten jarringly by the end, which seems to come abruptly without much warning.

I had originally scheduled us to do Stranger than Fiction, but by time it came around, I just didn't want to do that film. As much of a mixed bag as Mrs. Parker ends up being, it is far more meaty than the rather slight STF. I think the students would have preferred the latter; when I announced the change, one student joked "okay, we're not friends anymore," but she brightened considerably upon the realization that she could now write on that film for her final paper. Normally the students leap onto Blackboard to begin discussing the films even before they end, but so far only one student has posted on this movie, although we finished watching it yesterday.

But it's Dorothy Parker! and the Algonquin Roundtable! Parker is amazing and her ability to skewer is unparalleled in American culture. We don't appreciate wit in this country. We consider humor too lightly. Under her jests, however, there is a steely critical eye, unerring in its judgment:

Fighting Words

Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad--
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue--
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!

The Algonquin Roundtable has always represented for me the idea of what it ought to mean to be a writer: to be part of a lively, witty and endlessly inventive group. I have always yearned to be in that kind of milieu this hotel evokes (Vonnegut's memorial was even held at the Algonquin). I feel moments of that sensation with our pals in CT, and there's our local roundtable every Tuesday at Mahar's (ironically, not with the English department folks, but with the History and Political Science crew), but no reality can live up to the romantic notion that got fixed in my head all those years ago. It's no more "real" than Homer's drunken party recollection of a similarly erudite gathering, but it persists in my head.

That's part of what the class is about: examining all the romantic notions we tie to the idea of being a writer. Yes, we do always teach classes where we hope to learn something. I don't know how much I'm learning -- I do have an awfully sharp group of students -- but I am thinking.

Cranky

We headed up north again yesterday to meet Crispinus at the Parting Glass before the next Miller event:

Panel Discussion - Film & The Imagination
The panel will feature Jonathan Miller and Faculty members Tom Lewis (English), Marc-Andre Wiesman (Foreign Languages and Literatures), Erica Bastress-Dukehart (History), and Skidmore student Sean Mattison '08.

The pub was a good choice: good pub grub and there was time enough for a couple of Boddingtons before the panel. We arrived to find the auditorium well-filled. After some technical difficulties, things got rolling with a response to the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice. Miller began somewhat crankily by arguing that good books should never be make into films, that bad books make better films. While I'd agree with the latter, I certainly don't agree with the former -- and I thought, Miller (director of a fantastic version of Alice in Wonderland, mad tea party image above) didn't really either.

So when questions were solicited, I raised my hand and asked about this. Miller admitted that this was very "contradictory" of him and that he indeed thought Alice a good book, but he wasn't so much filming the book as a kind of essay about it. I didn't get a chance to ask whether other directors of films from good books might not be doing the same thing, as there were many other eager questioners. I did talk to Erica Bastress-Dukehart afterward, who felt that Miller had dismissed her interpretation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail a bit too quickly. So, we bonded over Python, bad medieval movies and their usefulness in the classroom.

Today we have James Collins here on campus which ought to be a lot of fun. There's still the interview with Miller at 4.30, which I might be able to swing between the Collins events. We'll see how much energy I have by this afternoon. Tired, over-busy and feeling a bit cranky myself (and unappreciated).

That's academic life: surrounded by insecure people who know how to find the weak spots in others and exploit them in order to prop up their own timorousness. Yeah, I chose this line of work -- and it's still better than working 9-5. I have no plans to ever go back to that soul-sucking life, but at times I do have to suppress the temptation to carry a cricket bat for corrective measures (only, of course, "to threaten them with a spanking when they're sulky"). Life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea...

(Oh, and my academic email address has been hijacked for spam -- yay!)

That Kind of Day

But there are few moods that cannot be elevated by hearing (and seeing) the Dickies sing the Banana Splits theme.

Out of the Blue

Why do I wake up at four in the morning with barely remembered songs or those not heard in ages running through my head. You'd think I'd have something that I just watched on the brain, like this:



...but no (and not "Police and Thieves" either from the Xmas episode of Ideal).