Plan B

Well, after the usual two posts, I guess it's time to address what I've seen, done, and had done to me during my hiatus. We'll start with the last: the oral defense of my primary comprehensive examination in multimedia. I went into the defense with a plan:

Despite months of preparation, I would would be unmistakably flustered during the defense. This defense would become increasingly noticeable to the examining professors, as my answers became more and more incoherent, unintelligible, and bizarrely critical of Canada's foreign policy. In the end, they would have no choice but to fail my defense. Under the University of Blank's English Department's policy, I would have five months to prepare for a second attempt. Though I study almost constantly, my confidence is shattered, and further fractured through a series of nervous breakdowns. The actual defense is even more disastrous than the first, as I descend into entirely undecipherable nonsense, except for one long passage in which I insult my examiner's credentials, values, and ancestorial lineage.

At this point, I will be asked to leave the program. After failing to find employment in the Ontario area, I move back to Saskatchewan. I return to the other half of my undergraduate double major, and enroll in the University of Somewhere Else's Mathematics grad program. However, due to my lack of confidence and over five years away from the discipline, I soon find the work load overwhelming, and drop out of a second graduate program. Realizing that my life is spiraling out of control, I take the advice of family and friends and enter into long sessions with a life guidance counselor. Working together, we investigate the roots of my self-destructive behavior, and forge a new direction for my career.

Following in the footsteps of my parents, I enroll in the University of Somewhere Else's education college. Though the entry interview is nearly disastrous, I pull through largely as a result of the college's strong need for male teachers; my dual English and mathematics background is also an asset. As a mature student, I pass quickly through the program and soon possess a Bachelor of Education. Given my rural upbringing, I apply to every municipal division I can, reasoning that there is less competition for these positions than the city postings, and that I would be able to adjust to the environment quickly. I find a post, and settle into my new job. I meet a woman at this town, and appeal to her through the joint benefits of her being over thirty and desperate, and me being someone she hasn't known since the day she was born. We marry, and though she wasn't what I had been looking for and I wasn't she was looking for, we quietly settle down into some sort of life.

Eight years later, she leaves me for a younger man. I return to my spiral of self-loathing and recrimination, and drop out of sight, eventually changing my name to Bryce Larkin, and no one ever hears from me again.

But I passed the defense, so I guess I'll have to go with Plan B.

Later Days.

How do you spell "Hiatus"?

Future forecast: comp exam is on the 28th. Moving day is the 29th. And my trip to Montreal/presentation for Congress starts on the 31st. I get back on the 5th, and (assuming I passed the written, knock on electronic wood) I take my oral exam some time before the 11th. To plan for that busy-ness, I've got tomorrow to finish my Congress paper and send my change of address, Wednesday to finish my flash cards for the exam, Thursday to study the potential object texts I could be asked about the exam (Mass Effect for PS2, Mafia Wars for Facebook, and Super Mario Cross-Over) and to turn my modem in to Rogers. All of which is to say, it's going to be a busy few weeks, and I'll see you all on the other side of 11th. And then I'll try something different--maybe a daily feature for a week or two. Or something. I'll be back, though. Count the days, gentle audience.

Later Days.

*EDIT: And if you want to leave a message, and wish me luck... I could use some luck. Whole heaps of it.

MY HANDS HURT.

I was going to post this on my Facebook status, 'cause of its relative brevity, but I thought it would be too much bragging. So I'm posting it here, because once you utter the phrase "I posted it on my blog," any level of narcissism can already be safely implied.

I've now typed 500 pages of single-spaced notes for my comp exam. It's time, therefore, to stop reading and start reviewing. And hope that whatever texts that are left have really comprehensive reviews available online.*

*If anyone on my comp committee is reading this, that is A JOKE. Totally a joke. I've read everything, and there is no reason for anyone who may or may not be operating in an examining capacity to be overly zealous in verifying that.

Later Days.

The Book Informed Me of the Existence of "How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic," so at least it wasn't a complete loss..

I'm desperately trudging through the last few books I can cram in before the exam. Sadly, my slow reading rate is really catching up to me at this point. Is it petty that I'm feeling smugly superior about the fact that the text I'm currently reading is very theoretically difficult, but rife with spelling errors?

Well, yes, it is, but at least I have the theoretical basis to justify my pettiness. See, according to Hodge and Kress' Social Semiotics, texts exert a certain level of modality that signals the appropriate affinity group that it is trying to appeal towards. Modality in this case means a claim towards truth and reality. A person can claim to have a high level of modality by using nothing but logical propositions and high level jargon (like, say, the term modality), but he or she is clearly aiming an affinity towards high-level discourse and logic-based arguments. Also, probably academics. On the other hand, a person could claim a high level of modality by appealing to simpler, language, the kind of down-to-earth tones that regular people understand--it's still a level of modality, but the audience you're appealing to is different.

Or to rephrase, modality = truthiness. Thanks, Stephen Colbert.

Now, spelling and grammar in general indicate that the person using it belongs to a certain social group--Kress and Hodge argue that not using double negatives sets up a social group every bit as much as using the term "fo'shizzle." So the text I'm reading is attempting, through its high grammar, to signal an affinity towards an academic group, and create a modality based on this affinity and high level. But because the spelling errors are so rampant, the affinity fails. Now, it could be argued they are deliberately introducing mispellings, which signals their commitment to an anti-affinity, an anti-domain outside the scholarly norm. (Like some guy who tries to write humorously about academic theory on his blog, thus creating a rapport with his readers while striking against the academic institution.) But this destroys their effective modality, which lends me to believe it's just an error on their part, and that thus the theory isn't as much of an all-encompassing truth as it pretends to be. Considering that the book is part of a long list of comp texts that all try to inject a high modality into my reading, to the point where I feel like I've been institutionally enveloped, being able to take the text to pieces feels like, in communist terms, taking apart the Master's house with his own tools. (Yes, I know that the communist point was that you can't actually do this. Didn't stop them from using hammers to break down a bunch of houses.)

Oh, and by the way? That text with all the spelling mistakes? It was Hodge and Kress' Social Semiotics.

I just blew your minds.

Note: I'm pretty sure very little of that made sense. So here's a panel of the week to clear everyone's palette. Actually, a cover, but never mind.



Oh, that Spider Jerusalem. What a card.

Later Days.

I could see myself doing this for the next 30 to 40 years.

Let's be honest. Posts of late have been sporadic, meandering, and oddly focused. But unlike usual, they've also had a sense of apocalyptic doom. The comp is three weeks away, and the closer the date comes, the more I descend into a nightmare of insomniac nights, bizarre sleeping routines, and an increasing certainty that I know nothing, and I'm going to fail miserably.

But right now, I'm feeling pretty good.

Today was the first day of a course I'm auditing. The professor couldn't make it (conference), and asked me to conduct the class. She did all the work: she printed off the syllabus, chose the readings, and even left a power-point presentation complete with sound clips of her explaining the course and subject. But the interactive part, leading discussions and focusing material, was all me.

Today I conducted my first grad seminar. Man, that feels good to say.

In case my bubbling enthusiasm wasn't a hint, it went really well. Granted, the technology was a bit off, but not so much as to derail things completely. We had some really great discussions on the readings (McLuhan and Metz, if you're curious). There was a very interesting dynamic--first, it was a five person class, counting me, which meant it was still small enough that everyone not only got a chance to talk, but pretty much had to talk, to keep things moving. But what was more interesting is the power dynamic. I had authority, but it was clearly an invested authority. I think this power shift let the others speak a little more freely--they felt like they could engage and challenge the ideas in the texts a little more than if a full professor was managing things. I thought the discussion was a lot healthier as a result; it's a balance I'd like to maintain if (when!) I lead such a course again.

Even though I was totally operating with a safety net, it really felt like I hit a milestone today. And it put the comp exam a little more into perspective. After four straight months of studying, I think I started to see the exam as this big monolithic THING that encompassed my entire being. Today reminded me that it isn't the most important thing in the world, or even the most important thing in my academic career. It's a milestone, yes, and a big one, but it's also a step on the road to other things.

Best part? Just prior to class, when I'm setting things up, one of my fellow students (who I hadn't met before) comes up to me and asks for permission to take the course. She totally thought I *was* the professor. Professional image win.

Later Days.

The Principle Of Ordinary Perturbances

First: Went for a run today. The 9 k half-needle. I don't have a time for it, though, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was so speedy they had to come up with a new word for it: spdy. Too quick for vowels.

Second: Wanna do a review for the second episode of Dr Who. It answers some of the questions raised in the last discussion. But I want to read the Doctor Who essays in the anthology "Third Person" first (it's for my comp exam). But before that, I need to read the earlier anthology "First Person," because that's the one that someone's placed a recall notice on.

Third: Speaking of comp books, one of the best known books in design theory is on my reading list: Donald Norman's The Psychology Of Everyday Things (with the deliberate acronym of POET). Norman's principle is simple: in the modern world, people often have problems operating the simplest of objects, and the reason for that is that these objects are poorly designed. Rather than focus on the utility (or usability, as he puts it) of objects, designers focus on aesthetics, creating beautiful, frustrating objects. A properly designed object, he argues, should have an obvious affordance--that is, you should be able to tell how it's used by looking at it.And in addition to the notion of affordance, Norman lists the reasons he thinks people tend to make mistakes--we start out with one task in mind, but inadvertently turn our attention to another more common task. You reach for the plunger under the sink, but grab the toilet bowl cleaner. You go for a walk, and reach for the dog leash when the dog's staying overnight with the vet. You mean to drive to your children's gymnastic performance, but you drive to the bar instead. And so on.

Norman's message has a clear appeal: people like being told it's not their fault, it's someone else's. I know I do. Through out the course of my life, time and time again, certain people have accused me of lacking common sense (you know who you are). Just the hint that it might be because I'm weighed down by the detritus of other people's errors gives me the courage to face my lot with stoic resignation. On the other hand, I have to raise an objection to the opposition he's created, and state that, in some conditions, aesthetics IS the purpose of design, and the two can't be separated as easily as he does. (I have to define aesthetics. As an English major, it's written in my contract in very fine and very graceful ink.)

Finally, Norman also goes through many examples of poor everyday designs, and how they could be possibly improved. The computer gets a fair bit of his attention--the effect of a button in a program should be clear, and its effect after clicking should be just as clear--and, depending on the consequence of the button, easily reversible. The text was written in the 90s, so the computer examples are a little out of date; the next example, light switches, still holds strong. A row of light switches is very nice to look at, but there's no easy way to determine which switch goes with which light. Norman suggests that we redesign switches so that they are spatially overlaid on a miniature map of the room, thus eliminating the confusion.

And then there's doors. Doors need to indicate whether they should be pushed or pulled. Many fail to do so. On something as simple as a door, Norman feels that if it requires any instruction, even the word "PULL," it is poorly designed. Instead, a door that needs to be pushed should have an horizontal crossbar, whereas a door that needs to be opened should have a vertical handle. I mention doors because I've been having door-related problems recently. Thanks to some lovely allocation policies, the English PhD students in my department have their offices in a separate building than the rest of the English department. Sometimes, this means a lot of back and forth. The buildings are beside each other, but designed in strange half-oval shapes that open in opposite directions (The only logical, yet admittedly apocryphal, explanation I've heard for this is that it's to prevent massing for student protests). Thus, there is one and only one set of doors that allows for easy passage from one to the other. Fine enough. You get used to the pattern, and move on with your life.

Recently, though, the door to the English Department has been replaced. The replacement is a very pretty door. It has a crossbar on the inside, and a handle on the outside. Sadly, the outside handle is ornamental--the door is designed to open from the inside only. What this means is that I can still take the same route from the department to my office, but I have to take the long way around to get from my office to the department. And, because the old route is still in my head, I still walk all the way to the old door before I realize my error and start moving in the correct direction.

Recently, though, I've noticed that some industrious soul has found a way to circumvent the forced circumference circling--every day, someone puts a bucket in the door to prop it open. Every day, someone removes it at the end of the day. This means that the entrance way is subject to the elements and the outdoors far more than usual--so whichever person decided that the campus would be better served with that door closed has created a situation where the door is now open far more often than ever.

This isn't a principle that Norman mentions, but maybe it should be: People adjust to bad design decisions. One way or the other.

Later Days.

Good Friday, Good Times

There is a world of difference between 11 k at ten degrees Celsius and 7 k at 26 degrees Celsius. Man, I forgot how summer jogging works. Hint: with lots of little breaks in between. And a bottle of water. It was really nice though; it being Easter Weekend, and the beginning at that, there were a lot of families out and about, enjoying the day. And a lot of college-oriented students too, on their break before the studying for finals.

And speaking of studying for finals... after three and a half long years, I've finally uncovered the best part of being a grad student: a stress free end of classes. Throughout the entire undergraduate career, the end of classes is a time of huge stress--you're desperately trying to cram in the last few assignments you didn't quite finish, and then cramming some more for the final exams. Sure, there's usually some "end of class" sort of party, but it's always got this weird sense of desperation to it; you want to get all the partying in before the crunch time comes.

The option to avoid the stress, I suppose, is to get a job and enter the work force--but that doesn't so much avoid stress as make it low level, yet never-ending. Even the MA and the beginning of the PhD courses aren't entirely free, because you've got those giant end term papers to wade through. To date, the closest thing I had to a "responsibility-less" end of term would be the April of 2008, and I was too stressed out about finishing the thesis and leaving my province of birth to really enjoy it.

This time, however, there's nothing to hold back. End of classes means a break from teaching for a semester. And because there's no papers to write, the "end of term" partying felt more tranquil than anything else. Yep, nothing smooth sailing from...

Oh right. That comp thing. Less than two months to finish up over 19 000 pages of over 50 texts that I'm desperately cramming. (There's the cram!) Forget the tranquility then. I'm going to go back to existential dread and panic.
Later Days.

Well, that was a fun four days.

I'm violating both the run choice and the diet today. To make up for it, I've read an extra 100 pages of text.
...I might be on to something here. If I can harness the guilt over destroying my health as an engine to drive my comp reading, and yet somehow not actually destroy my health, the next two months will go much more easily.

Later Days.

Media Night

I was originally going to post this in a series of Facebook statuses, but since I haven't done a post here in a while, I thought it might make an interesting experiment in live-blogging. (Yes, I know that's not what live-blogging means. And yes, I know that I said I wouldn't blog about comp stuff. Look, it was either this or a post on the Aero Chunky bar, okay? And I've got to save something for sweeps week.)
Ahem.
Person of Consequence welcomes everyone to another round of "I'm finishing this book before I go to bed, dammit." This evening's challenger is "The New Media Reader," by editors Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort.
7:43 pm. Currently, I'm on page 635 of 800, with an essay by Bill Nichols. It seems like he's trying to update Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." And by "seems," I mean, "that's explicitly what he says he's doing," and the title is also a fair give-away: "The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems." Benjamin essentially said that artwork was originally imbued with an aura of authenticity, but that aura vanishes in the age of mechanical reproduction, especially with technology like the cinema and the camera. Nichols is expanding this idea to the computer, with an emphasis on Baudrillard's concept of simulation and psychoanalytic ideas like the masculine gaze and object fetishization.

8:13 Half an hour, and I've finished the essay and made it 8 pages. This bodes poorly.
Nichols actually covers a lot of the ground that, a few years later, Hayles will be covering in "How We Became Posthuman." They both place emphasis on the cyborg, on abstract/material, on blurring computer and life. Hayles gives a less homogeneous, more sustained view of cybernetics, though. Next: supper, (banana red pepper mushroom pizza) then Lynn Hershman's "The Fantasy Beyond Control."

8:41. Tasty, but slight. (The essay, not the food.) Hershman, a digital instillation artist briefly describes some of her works and what she wants to do next. Basically, she uses interactive systems to require the viewer to make choices that reveal his or her engagement with media. p 649, reached. Next up: Pelle Ehn and Morten Kyng on "Cardboard Computers."

9:18. Ehn and Kyng consider the use of the mock-up, and what happens when you make the transition from a cardboard mock-up to a computer model. Coming at it from entirely practical considerations, they reach a conclusion similar to Nichols: the computer blurs the line between model (or mock-up, or simulation) and actual product. The application of Wittgenstein language games seems to work well in this context, and there's a nice "unifying power of computers" sort of rhetoric. I like the idea of the mock-up: it's basically a physical, material object whose only resemblance to the abstract product may be the way we choose to perceive it.
Next: A trip to the other side of Star Wars' past with "The Lesson of Lucasfilm's Habitat" by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer. p 663, and counting.

10:06. Where the hell did that 45 minutes go??? Okay: Habitat. It's essentially an early example of a MMOG, played with all the computational power a Commodore 64 can offer. Which is basically equivalent to your average modern microwave. Two of the designers here comment on their experiences with it, and how they were constantly surprised by what the users came up with. This is the first essay in the book that really moves from the one user, one computer model to the more modern conception of cyberspace. And what's really interesting is that the designers explicitly say that for cyberspace games, the implementation platform is unimportant. Of course, they have an economic reason for stating that; they really want to convince people that cyberspace can be reached on Commodore 64s rather than virtual reality goggles or something. But still, it's the sort of declaration that makes a McLuhanite howl in fury. As things become more abstract (ie., the move from the personal computer in front of you into cyberspace), I think it becomes easier and more convenient to forget the technology involved. And that's page 679. Next up, an excerpt from Jay Bolter's "Writing Space."

10:38. Ok, that's better time. Bolter basically follows the same pattern here that he did in his book with Grusin, "Remediation": he states his theory, then demonstrates it through a series of mediating (pun intended examples). In this case, the theory is that "our writing space has been a hybrid of verbal and pictorial elements" since at least the ancient Greeks, and he goes on to prove it. He starts with the basic element, letters, then moves on to consider the basic form of the electronic page; pictures in text from the illuminated medieval manuscript to the computer form; diagrammatic space, that is, a codified, labeled picture; and the closely related numbering space. It's a book I'm clearly going to have to read for my larger dissertation. And that's page 691. Next up, Stuart Moulthrop, and "You Say You Want a Revolution?". I like that the editors parse the title for the headings: "You Want a Revolution." Yeah, that means the same thing.

11:24 pm. No... how did? Gah. Another 45 minute interval. Okay, quickly: Moulthrop's big question is what a digital revolution would mean, and if we're capable of it. He considers the revolutionary ability of hypertext under the McLuhan Laws of Media: What does it enhance, what does it render obsolete, what does it retrieve that was obsolete, and what does it produce or become when taken to its limits? Hypertext, he declares, renders TV obsolete. Well, in terms of the Internet it certainly does; I watch nearly all my shows online these days, and my TV is a conduit for my Xbox. And, more controversially, hypertext performs a recursion on literacy, which means it brings it back, but different. That's a description that gives him a suspicious amount of wiggling room. And I think he gets a little caught up in his revolution; though a little more skeptical than some of his predecessors, it basically falls into the other direction: if it's not utopia, it's dystopia. Anyway, p 705. Next up: Robert Coover's "The End of Books." No recursion, then?

11:53 pm. That was quick. Probably because it was four pages long. Coover presents glowing praise of hypertext as the next great medium, and stomps on the corpse of books for a bit. I think this text is most useful as an artifact; it was, as the editors put it, one of the mainstream declarations of the power of hypertext (originally appearing in printed form in The New York Times Book Review). And in terms of Bolter and Grusin's remediation, it would be interesting to study how Coover attempts to remediate the book in favor of hypertext. I guess I can buy the idea that the book is, very slowly, going to go extinct (though probably not in my lifetime); linear storytelling, on the other hand, isn't going anywhere until people stop living linear lives. And that's p 711. Next up, Scott McCloud's "Time Frames." Comic books. Real fun!

12:16. That was fun. And probably the quickest I'll make it through 20 some pages all night. Even the editors here admit that McCloud's techniques for comics don't extend perfectly into new media; maybe they just liked it because it's a cool text--that's my reason. (Okay, and that the juxtaposition of image and text for narrative purpose is relevant to larger issues.) Anyway, this is chapter four of Understanding Comics, which means it's about how time is conveyed in comics, through spacing, motion lines, words, etc. He also looks at how timelessness is conveyed, and how motion is apparent. About the only thing he doesn't cover is nonmotion, AKA stillness. The only reason that popped into my head is that I'm in this comic book reading group, and last time around, one of the members asked how we could tell that the characters in one of the book were photo-based. Well, I answered, because they're clearly posing. But how do we know that? asked the other guy. And I didn't know. And don't know. So: stillness. Mystery for another day. For now: p. 740. Philip E. Agre's "Surveillance and Capture." Longest essay left in the book. But first, a break to watch tonight's Big Bang Theory. What? It's called priorities.

1:26. ...And we're back. Agre's big idea is that we need to replace the surveillance metaphor of Big Brother and Foucaldian panopticons with the capture model, which collects only specific information about people. That is, surveillance is visual, surreptitious, invasive, centralized and state-oriented; capture model applies linguistic metaphors to human behaviors and emphasizes de-centralization. I'm not sure I buy Agre's notion of capture, as it's a little too cozy with computer science artificial intelligence study and computerized notions of information, but Agre is right in pointing out that we need to be aware of how accepting the surveillance model colors our worldview. Onto p. 763. Espen J. Aarseth's "Nonlinearity and Literary Theory." I hope he's going to talk about Dark Castle again.

2:19 am. If you want to dig through my archives, you can probably find my original review of Aarseth's "Cybertext." (It's too late at night for hyperlinks.) All of that basically still stands, and this essay is essentially an abridged version of the terminology he sets up there (which, frankly, makes it a little more readable). As the editors point out, he extends the discussion to more than just hypertext or computer-based texts; he wants to form a terminology for all sorts of nonlinear texts, from a Choose Your Own Adventure to the I Ching. After multiple readings, though, I still don't know the difference between scriptons and textons, except that they're derived from exactly the part of linguistics that gave me conniptions in Andersen's "A Theory of Computer Semiotics." So if anyone could inform me of said difference, I'd be grateful. Moving on: p 783. "Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance" by the Critical Art Ensemble.

2:53 am. Idea: in the global village, those in power have become nomads, either roaming the world and taking what they want, or retreating to electronic bunkers. In such a world, traditional forms of protest are no longer valid, so the protests must go online. "By whatever means electronic authority is disturbed, the key is to totally disrupt command and control." "A small but coordinated group of hackers could introduce electronic viruses. worms, and bombs into the data banks, programs, and networks of authority, possibly bringing the destructive forces of inertia into the nomadic realm." It only sounds mildly less "Anarchist Cookbook" in context. p 792. "The World-Wide Web" by Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Ari Luotonen, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, and Arthur Secret. Call me a pessimist, but five writers bodes poorly for an engaging article. Too many cooks, etc. 8 pages left...

3:09 am. Essentially, the essay is an introduction to the web, aimed at an audience of reasonably adept computer users. It's very much an early document, explaining the difference between the web and its competitors, like gopher. I suppose it was included because the editors wanted to end with a sense of history--rather than the sense of immediate, brand new existence often associated with New Media, they deliberately closed with a work that would invoke a sense of the past and history. It's a bold choice. I would have ended with something, you know, interesting, but the ending's the important part.

This was useful. I'll do it again the next time I decide to cram an 800 page anthology into my brain.


More coming later. NO! NO MORE LATER! DONE! DONE!

Later Days.

Poop, or Get off the Pot

So it's Thursday night, 9:00, and I haven't eaten yet. That's because I've vowed not to leave campus until I've read 100 pages of The New Media Reader. Progress is slow. There's a lot of interesting connections and so forth, though, so I'm not too upset about this development. (There's an idea percolating, from the juxtaposition of an article on The Happenings in 60s New York with Alan Turing's comment that telepathy introduces chaos into the computer imitation test, on the element of randomness in New Media processes, which'll probably prove interesting when finished.) No, the problem at hand is the very, very long conversation going on behind me between three undergraduate males. They are having a long, poignant debate on whether the tallest of the three should take a risk and ask out a certain lady friend, thus putting their current relation in jeopardy, but with the potential of greater returns in the long run. They are currently discussing the importance of being earnest. Really.

Okay, this is not a discussion I do not feel sympathy for. I myself have been in the young man's position, and I have, at various times, chosen both sides of the choice before him. And I admire his friends for rallying around them. I even approve of their vocabulary, which, for male undergraduates, is remarkably short on crude sexual innuendo and cursing. But damn it, guys, I'm trying to work here, and when the focus is Douglas Engelbart's discussion on augmenting human intellect, I don't need to hear about your five-year life plan.

I have 8 pages left. 8. And all I can think of is going over to them, and delivering my opinion. At great length. Great, horrible length. The gruesome details of my personal history (because if I know theirs, shouldn't they know mine?), the rich and varied literary references on the subject, (from Pride and Prejudice to Plato's Symposium, with maybe some de Sade thrown in, because I'm feeling nasty), and the views of posthumanism on homeostasis. (Because really, if humans were self-correcting, then there wouldn't be any problem here.) At the very least, such a spiel would probably get them to stop talking long enough to hit me, and really, even that break would be a blessing.

...Apparently, I've become a bitter old man when it comes to the slings of Cupid's Arrows. The transformation into academia is almost complete.

8 pages. 8. pages. 8 p. a. g. e. s.

Later Days.

How It Went

I figure it's about time I did this post. Prepare for excruciating detail that is still very vague to stave off accusations of leaking departmental secrets!

The text was November 27th, from 11:05 am to 3:05. I and 7 of my PhD candidate cohorts were ushered into a computer lab, set up with a word document, and told to have at it. Four hours, four thousand words, and seven single spaced pages later, it was had. The time flew by fairly quickly. I can't really say how long any one question took me, as I alternated: I had three essays to write, and so I would do one paragraph of one, then alternate to the next. It maybe wasn't the best idea in terms of the overall flow of the essays, but for weeks before the exam, I was told over and over again that the worst thing I could do on it would be to skip a question entirely. The alternating method was a way of moving beyond that.

The whole exam went quickly, and unfolded in ways I really didn't expect. For the first two essays, I wound up with theses I actually thought were kind of interesting: "The means by which literature is defended provides the grounds for its next attack" and "The definitions of semiotics demonstrate a constant push and pull towards the original linguistic definition provided by Ferdinand de Saussure." Even the last essay surprised me, in that the pinnacle text turned out to be Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning, a book I almost skipped reading because I thought there was no way I'd be using a Renaissance-based text. I guess the whole exercise was a demonstration of how things can unfold unpredictably in a test situation.

Now, the gripe: I worked pretty damn hard on the studying for this exam. My list had (depending on how you count) 80 some texts on it, with nine different subcategories. I read for 4 months solid (okay, solid if you don't count the time in Toronto with my parents, or the time at the conference in Atlanta. But even in those cases, I had a book with me the whole time, and read a few hundred pages during the trip.). I wound up with 400 pages of typed single-spaced notes. That's about twice the length of the average dissertation. But due to the way the test was written, I could only write on 5 of 9 categories--which means a maximum of about 45 texts. And each text I used should be used in a fairly in-depth manner, which meant that I managed to use about 12 in the whole paper. Twelve texts out of 80. Sigh. Of course, there was no way to know going in which 12 I'd use, and the purpose of the exam to teach me an entire body of literature that will be useful for my academic career. Which texts I use in a 4 hour exam is ultimately of little importance when compared to the significance of setting up an area of expertise I'll be able to draw on for the rest of my life. But still... 12...

Anyway, I turned my paper in, and I'll be hearing the results in 2 weeks. For now, it's time for relaxing and chilling--chillaxin', if you will. We kicked it off English Grad Style starting the night of the exam, which was filled with beer, pool, and bowling--then in bed by midnight, because after 8 years of schooling, we're all prematurely aged and cranky for missing our afternoon nap. Good times.

I'd like to thank my friends and family for all the support over the last few days--it's been hugely encouraging, and being able to celebrate with said friends after the comp was the icing on the awesome cake. One down, one to go--multimedia, be prepared to be... studied.

Later Days.

Portrait of the Flash-Card Maker

My study process:
1. Read the text; take notes, approximately one per page of text.
2. After each chapter, summarize notes for that chapter.
3. Once reading is done, summarize the chapter notes into a RefWorks file.
4. Compress the information from the RefWorks file onto a flashcard.

So, for those keeping track, we have a summary of a summary of a summary of a summary.

This process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. For example, on account of steps 1 and 2, I now have over 200 pages of typed, single-spaced notes for this exam. This exam on Friday.

In other news, I am insane.

Later Days.

This Update is For My Mother, Because I Know She Worries

It seems every time I promise to recount some trip, my present situation gets sufficiently complicated that I need to cut the recounting short to deal with something else. This time, conference discussion will be compressed here on account of comp studies and one of the weirder illnesses I've had. First, because everyone loves hearing about other people's health problems.
Back in the middle of October, I had a raging sinus headache. It was so bad that every now and then, I had to stop whatever I was doing to just concentrate on not screaming in frustration for the pounding in my head to cease. The sinus stuff ended just before the trip to Atlanta, but a bad cough has plagued me since then--so it's been about a straight month of illness. To top it off, I've been pretty lethargic the whole time. So of course, it's only today that I bother to actually seek medical "help." I put the help in quotations because it wasn't particularly helpful. From the examination, the doctor believes that I had some sort of virus and the cough and tiredness are symptoms of what may be an extremely prolonged recovery period. The bad news is that there isn't really much I can do; the good news is that, from the examination, he was pretty confident it wasn't mono or H1N1. So... yay?
The worst part of this is that it's put a definite cramp in my comp studies. Not enough that I think it's really hampered my ability to take the test, but enough that I won't be devoting quite the level of attention to a few of the more challenging texts that I'd like to. That exam, for those counting the days (like me), is on Nov. 27th. So... nine days. Yikes.
So between the lethargy and the studying, I'm not going to have a lot of time for updating. I know, I'm still getting back to speed after a slump, but... well, that slump will have to last a little longer. Expect a new flurry of book reviews, TV commentary, and a weeklong dissection of "The Batman" TV series when I return. For now, here are some truncated thoughts on the Atlanta conference:
--Though the focus on paper of the conference was coding, what everyone in the science/humanity crossover seems most interested in at the moment is animal-human cognitive relations. I feel very ambiguous towards this focus, but I'm putting off articulating those misgivings to a later date.
--My fellow students gave their panel with Katherine Hayles sitting in the front row. That's a big deal.
--Of the conference, the two highlights in terms of panels would have to be Ian Bogost's key note speaker address, and W. H. Mitchell's presentation on images. Those guys know their stuff.
--Atlanta has some of the most courteous servers I've ever seen, even though one waitress repeatedly referred to me as 'ma'am' to the great amusement of all, until someone finally took pity on me and her and pointed out gently that I am, in fact, all man.
--My presentation went fine; amazingly, the math analogy seemed to be the part that everyone liked the best. It was also the part where I set down the paper, and just presented my thoughts as they came, so that's something to keep in mind for the next conference presentation.
--Atlanta looks like a big forest from above. It's weird. But very eco.
--I kind of wish I'd kept the "confused for a woman" story to myself.

There. Sorry, but that's all you get, conference-wise. I'll post again once the sheer panic from comps requires an outlet.

Later Days.

This is NOT a post about my comps

I'm experimenting with false titles.

I haven't been very prolific postwise recently. Generally, as I'm sure you have all noticed, my posts are either about whatever aspects of my personal life I feel willing to share, how my school research is doing, and various pop culture investigations.

My personal life has been preempted by comps. My school work is comps. My TV show schedule is preempted by comps. And I decided I'm not going to talk about comps on my blog. So not much to post about. Okay, that was all a slight exaggeration; I'm still fitting most of that stuff in, but... frankly it's all really boring of late. The comps stuff, on the other hand, is really interesting.

Here's an example: I've had to read multiple essays by Jacques Derrida. For those who don't know Derrida--I envy you greatly. Derrida is a French literary theorist who specializes in revealing complexities. He's often been named as the main figure of the deconstructionist movement, though he himself would probably deny that. (And if you don't know what deconstructionism is, again, I envy you. The short version is that it's about taking the most obvious readings of a text and tearing them apart. The long version is the same as the short, but to get there, you need to spend about an hour explaining why the short version contradicts itself.)

The text I'm reading at the moment of his is about truth and literature: whether truth is something that exists, and, if it does, what literature's relationship to it is. He's making his mark on a long strand of literary discussion that dates back to ancient Greece. Basically, it boils down to Aristotle and Plato saying that the purpose of literature is to imitate reality. In order to deal with this mimetic relationship, Derrida discusses Mallarme (another French critic) and what Mallarme said about "Peirrot Murderer of His Wife." Peirrott is a stock name for a mime, and miming is about imitating reality, so we have one level of representation. This particular scene was invented by the actor Paul Marguette. Marguette was later accused of plagiarising another actor's scene by a similar name, which would have been a representation of a representation of the "real" murder. He DID write a book about it, and asked one of the people who saw the performance to write the foreward. His book, then, is a representation of the performance of the murder, and the foreword is representation of someone observing the the performance of the murder. Mallarme read the second edition, with a new foreword by Marguette about writing the original book. So the second edition is an imitation of the representation of the performance of the murder. Then, finally, Mallarme writes about his version of this, which makes it an interpretation of an imitation of a representation of the performance of the murder.

Derrida lives for this kind of stuff.

Finally, Big D gets his hands on the text, and in great, yet vague, detail, outlines that this is his interpretation of an interpretation of an imitation of a representation of the performance of the murder. And after that, *I* got a hold of it, took down a set of notes, then used this set to write this blog. So: you're reading an outline of a summary of an interpretation of an interpretation of an imitation of a representation of a performance of a murder. That's seven levels of imitation between you and the murder--now remember that the murder was imaginary. What is the "real" here?

If you are in any way confused, then I have succeeded in conveying the reality of how it feels to read Derrida. To add to all the confusion, I had originally mistaken "Peirrot" for "Poirot" and spent most of the essay waiting for everything to turn into an Agatha Christie murder mystery. Which would have made it so much better.

Later Days.

This Post Never Happened

I had a really nice weekend. A going-away birthday potluck on Thursday, an old U of Blank English alumni coming down for a dance night on Friday. (is alumni the plural? Should I be saying alumnium? alumnius? If only I took a year's worth of Latin classes at some point in the past. Oh, right. And it feels odd that I can actually know alumni from the program after only being here a grand total of three terms. ) Despite my aversion to dance and dance-related phenomena, it was a good time. And Saturday and Sunday were largely spent saving Gotham City from the Joker. I mean, studying for comps.

Speaking of studying for comps, remember how I resolved earlier not to speak about comps? Well, I'm sticking with that. But I still feel a need to talk about the latest book, so I'm going to talk about it without referring to its author, title, or subject matter.

What's left after you strip away all of that is the impact the book had on me, and this impact is crater-shaped. I was about a hundred pages into the book when I realised I'd read it before. My English undergraduate course work is a little spotty; not because I didn't do the work, but because I did a double major in Math and English, there were some holes left in my education. I've taken steps to fill these holes, but for the longest time, lit theory in general was one of the more gaping ones. Additionally, aside from the seminar courses, the courses at U of Someplace Else all went out of their way to tell me NOT to use secondary sources, but rely on my own ideas. (Maybe it was some sort of departmental edict?) This methodology created another set of holes, which also took time to fill--and, to its benefit, also forced me to never use secondary sources as a crutch and to build and construct my own arguments. I will note, though, that my 19th century ecocriticism professor nearly wore out a red pen trying to teach me how to properly do a works cited page.

All of this is to build to a single point: in my undergraduate career, I only had to read one book of lit theory from beginning to end. It was for a seminar course I took in my second year, and the book was 600 pages long. That's a lot of theory to inflict on an undergraduate sophomore. Though ridiculously long, the book was well-written, and as I read it again, some seven years later, what it left really stood out.

Because I've already dropped the Coleridge ball, I can mention that his theory of associativity may be at work here. Coleridge said that people associate ideas with other ideas through various associations, and, in this case, we've got a temporal association at work, with the book as the anchor. As I read through it more recently, I was reminded of who I was when I first read it. I think this holds for every book that affects someone greatly, and especially if there's been a lot of time between a small number of readings. And what struck me on this reading was how much of the book had sunk into my general literary philosophy, without me even realizing it. The author is big on a close reading followed by a historical situating. More importantly, the way he uses the texts in a way that doesn't come up in literary criticism as often as you might think. I'm going to give it the italics emphasis: he presents the texts in such a way that you actually want to read them. Now, I'm not saying that this should be the main focus for literary criticism, or even a focus, in some situations. But it's a nice change of pace to see someone who's that enthused about the work itself.

It's funny; I don't really agree with his actual literary theory now, and I don't think I even understood it enough to disagree then. But the style, the method, hell, I'll go as far as to say the ethos of his writing is something I instinctively agreed with, because it was the same way I looked at literature. Looking back, I can't begin to estimate how important this work has been for the direction my scholarly pursuits have gone in since. But I'm glad for the opportunity to look back at my critical roots.

Comps exams: a voyage of self-discovery.

Anyway, I might do a post tomorrow, but between internet problems (every internet application works at home EXCEPT the browsers. My computer hates me.) and an upcoming mini-vacation, I'm going to be in absentia till Friday. Try to last till then.

Later Days.

Comprehensive Exam = 4000 years of Literary Progress Summed Up in A 4 Hour Test

I said yesterday that I'm not going to use this blog as a place to investigate in depth the various readings that make up my comprehensive exams (even though I kind of did that with Biographia Literaria anyway). It's really a pity, to be honest. In my reading today alone, I think I've just had a breakthrough in what the writer is getting at, and I'd love to talk it out. Ideally, this would be a perfect forum for such a discussion. (And yes, I do think me talking and you audience rarely ever responding still constitutes a discussion. David Antin defines his talk poems as conversations in the same way, if you want, the option to reply is there.) And what I'd gain by organizing my thoughts and presenting them in some legible form would probably be at least as much of an educational boost for me as for everyone else. In the most bright-eyed, optomistic view, this is what the internet is for: the exchange of ideas.

But I also recognize that it's not a good idea, for a reason similar to the reason why I don't use my real name on the blog, and the reason why I generally don't provide stories directly involving my family and friends--there's a limit to what I can talk about and still preserve my responsibilities. I have no right to tell stories that aren't mine to tell . Similarly, I have a responsiblity not to flash the University of Blank's English comprehensive exam's reading list on the Net. Further, I have an intellectual responsibility to myself and my future career not to blurt out all my research and thought in a public forum, where it can't be protected. Some day, the copyright and intellectual property right laws may be more settled in this area, but for now... Well, I have no illusion that my real identity would be hidden from anyone who put some effort into finding it, and virtually all my readers know it anyway, but the pretense towards anonymity is important, if for no other reason that it's a reaction to my own sense that I'm being foolhardedly indiscrete.

Of course, there's people who have added their bosses on Facebook, so I've still got a ways to fall yet.

But all that's beside the point. Today's topic: even if I can't discuss the specifics of the comp, I thought it was about time that I explained what it was, since I'll be obliquely complaining about it for most of the next year or so. It's typical for a graduate student, especially a doctoral candidate, to go through a comprehensive exam that ensures he or she has a fundamental grasp of the discipline. This exam usually takes place after the course work has been completed, but before the actual dissertation work begins. In my particular department, the student chooses tw exams from two of the disciplinary categories to focus on, one based in literature, one in rhetoric.

One of these is declared the "primary," and is hopefully related to the eventual dissertation topic, and the other is declared the "secondary." You can do your secondary and primary exam in either order (the first will be done in the last week of November, the second in the last week of... May, I think.). Both have a type-written component that consists of a 4 hour exam. You choose from sets of questions which you want to answer in the time limit provided, using the readings from your category as you see fit. The difference between the primary and the secondary is that the written primary exam is followed up a week or two later by an oral exam, in which a selection of the department specializing in that area quizzes you on the subject.

I've chosen to to do the secondary first, and the primary in the spring. I won't say what categories I picked, but given my recent posts, you can probably figure it out. For the moment, I've been operating on a systematic approach to my reading list: I read everything that's on it, sequentially. Further, I take extensive notes; following the method used in the long-concluded spatial theory course, I take about a quotation per page, and occasionally jot down some note on why it was significant. It's a very comprehensive method, so it works well with the overall endeavour, but it's slower than a snail race through a road of molasses. I'm probably going to have to shift to something more expedient as November nears. I've been averaging about one reading a day, or, bare minimum, 50 pages if the work is particularly dense.

So that's the process, and that's my method. And now, no doubt, I'll never have to mention comprehensive exams ever, ever again.

Later Days.

Whine of the Ancient Grad Student Part III: The Long Awaited Conclusion

Incidentally, this post would have happened a lot sooner, but my keyboard at home is acting up again. So... technology. Yay.

Anyway, I finished Coleridge's Biographia Literaria a few days ago now, so it's gotten a little fuzzy in my mind. From what I recall, the content of the book can be divided into four broad categories: literary criticism, philosophy, Coleridge, and commentary on Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads. These are by no means rigid categories. The commentary on LB is essentially an extension of the literary criticism theories he puts forth, as are the comments Coleridge makes concerning himself. The literary criticism slides into pihlosophy and back again at the drop of a hat as well. But I'll still try to address each of them in turn.

I'll start with philosophy, as it's by far the most complicated. As Coleridge explains, his time in Germany had a great effect on him, and much of his philosophy is bound up with the ideas of the Germans, in particular, Immanuel Kant and the lesser known Friedrich Schelling. It gets very abstract and technical in places, and I'm not entirely sure I understand it even now. One of the key elements Coleridge extracts is an idea he traces back to ancient Greece: the law of associativity. Essentially, this law states every idea we have arises out of some association of either previous ideas or our physical environment. Coleridge explains that there are a few different types of association, including contrast, temporal, and spatial.

There's a lot more to the philosophical side than that, but I'll stop there because associativity is what links the philosophy to the literary criticism. I'm not going to go too far into how literary criticism works in this book, or any of the other books on my comp list, because somehow I don't think my professors will take too kindly to the comp list being summarized and annotated in online form. Suffice to say, the criticism is concerned with three main issues: exactness in terminology, where Coleridge's theory differs from that described in Wordsworth's Preface to LB, and the difference between imagination and fancy. (Associativity comes into play mainly in the last one; if I understand it right, and I'm not saying I do, imagination is the force that generates new associations, whereas fancy organizes and shifts the ones we've already made.)

Part of the literary criticism involves Coleridge's ideas on how literary critics should act, and this dwells heavily on both his own writing and the way critics have dealt with him. This area of Biographia Literaria is the one that really feels like Coleridge is letting his true feelings through. He honestly thinks that he's made a lot of enemies as a result of his literary work in poems and journals, and that he's been misinterpreted as a result. He also realizes the bind he's in--if he says nothing, then everyone gets the wrong idea about him, but the harder he tries to explain his work, the more defensive he seems. The resulting emotion can almost be called desperation, and it comes out in one chapter in particular, when Coleridge tries to defend himself against the accusation that he doesn't work very hard. (To be honest, I kind of held this opinion myself before reading the book. See Part II.) It's a very plaintive chapter, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for someone who was clearly so emotionally invested in his work.

Given his own feelings towards criticism, you'd think he'd be a little more circumspect himself. At least a quarter of the book is devoted to Wordsworth's LB. As I said last time, Wordsworth and Coleridge's friendship and subsequent falling out is famous--it's arguably the most interesting literary alliance in English history, at least, until the incestuous Bloomsbury group hits the scene. I'm not exactly sure where their relationship was at the time this book was published, but it certainly didn't survive long after it. And the fault is definitely not Wordsworth's. Yes, Coleridge ends up praising the book in the strongest manner possible, declaring that Wordsworth has the potential to write the first true philosophical poem (Oh, and I missed that in the literary criticism part. Coleridge thinks the ultimate expression of art would be its unification with philosophy. Remember that. It's kind of important.)--but given that it's still just potential, even that is essentially damning with faint praise. And this praise comes after 50 pages or so of tearing both the Preface and the poems to absolute shreds. Friends don't mercilessly eviserate other friends' books in publication.

What makes the whole thing so interesting to me is that it's very clear that Coleridge believes he's ultimately doing Wordsworth a favour. He did end up praising the poems, after all. And better these criticisms come from a friend than his enemies. Besides, who wouldn't want to know how to write better poetry? Keep in mind that Lyrical Ballads was originally going to be a collaboration between Coleridge and Wordsworth, in which Coleridge would write supernatural-based poems and Wordsworth nature poems, in equal number, but Coleridge failed to deliver more than a handful of poems.

The editor of my edition of Biographia Literaria tries to downplay the attack by going with the theory that the original Preface that Coleridge was attacking was actually written by Coleridge and not Wordsworth to begin with, and so it was Coleridge contesting his earlier ideas rather than Coleridge contesting Wordsworth. This theory doesn't quite work with me though; Coleridge spends at least as much time attacking the poems themeselves as the Preface. And even if we do accept that Coleridge wrote the Preface, he certainly doesn't say so in the Biographia Literaria, which, if he's going to be disagreeing with it so heavily, seems like the polite thing to do, rather than let Wordsworth take all the blame.

So to sum up, I imagine Wordworth's reaction to Biographia Literaria to be something like this:
"What are you doing, man? First, we agree to do this book of poems. Then you can't come through with your share, so you beg me to let you write the Preface for me. Now, seventeen friggin' years later, you decide you didn't like either, and the first I hear about it is in this d---mned book? (That's how they talked back then, in dashes.) Don't give me that "potential to write the first philosophical poem" bull plop. If you didn't like the poems, you know what you could have done, seventeen years ago? Walked next door and told me. But hey, waiting a decade or two then printing your complaints for the world to see... that's a way to go too.

"You know what? I'm done with this, man. I put up with the opium for as long as I could, but this? No. I got my own problems. I've got bills to pay, a family to support, and a sister who really, really doesn't get the concept of personal space. I don't have time to deal with this passive-aggressive-dope fiend nonsense. I'd give voice to my natural sentiment, but saying "raised middle finger" just lacks some of the punch. Smell you later, jerk."

Truly, it was the age of eloquence.

Later Days.

Whine of the Ancient Grad Student Part II: 4 Things I Hate About Coleridge

I finished Coleridge's Biographia Literaria last night. As to its quality, I'll admit that it's a long way from the most interesting thing I've done after 2 am. In order to see how much of this large, bounteous book I've actually retained, I'm going to do this post without actually consulting the book. I'm off to a good start, since this is the first time I've gotten the title right without having to look it up.

When I looked at my comp list, this is one of the works I was not really looking forward to. I have numbered reasons:
1. Pettiness. So far, since August started, I've been averaging a book on the list per day. When the books are 48 pages and written in large, 17th century font, this is not particularly difficult. But Biographia Literaria clocks in at 289 pages of teeny, tiny font, which makes it the first, though certainly not the last, of my longer comp readings. It's slowing me down, and I don't care for that.

2. The drugs. Coleridge had a long standing opium addiction that played both a part in his writing and a part in his death. This may be the puritanical streak in me, or at the very least, the streak in me that doesn't like poetry very much, but I honestly think that taking drugs then writing poetry is cheating. It's like taking steroids, then going on to be MVP. All writing should be done with a clear, pure mind. (Anyone who says I've ever posted after drinking is an utter, utter liar. Very utter.)

3. And then I woke up. If you've ever taught Coleridge to first year undergraduates, then you've probably taught Kubla Kahn. It's a good poem for teaching vivid imagery, rhyme scheme, rhythm, and a few other poetic devices. It's also got the infamous note, in which Coleridge tells us the poem came to him in a dream, after he'd taken drugs (see point 2). He sat down to write it, but was distracted by a visit by the infamous Person from Porlock, and when he returned, he found that he could not remember how the poem ended. Given what I now know about Coleridge, there's a high chance that this anecdote is really an allegory for how reality interposes itself on creative genius and dream. Even the name "Porlock" can be seen as a thinly disguised version of "Poor Luck." Coleridge certainly wasn't above inventing such incidents if they served his purpose. In that sense, it makes an interesting complementary with his comments on the nature of genius, the use of fancy, and how to integrate a life and family with being a poet. Either way, we've got two options: the dream story is a highly artificial construct or this poem is the result of a fever dream. And either option kind of rubs me the wrong way.

4. Chivalry. Coleridge was famously friends with William Wordsworth, and, just as famously, they felt out over a number of issues, including Coleridge's drug habit and, more than likely, the Biographia Literaria itself. (More on that later.) I'm far more familiar with Wordsworth's poetry over Coleridge's; in the last year of my undergraduate, I took a seminar course on 19th century ecocriticism in which poems such as Wordsworth's "Michael" featured predominantly. We also had to read the collected journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Wordsworth's sister. Dorothy is... how do I say this kindly... a simple soul. (Okay, so much for kindness.) She is, in fact, pretty boring, and while Wordsworth was traipsing around England, she was confined to their estate, as was the 19th century role for society's middle class unmarried women. Reading her journals was like watching a race between grass growing and paint drying, but... without ever actually seeing the movie or reading the book, I think of Dorothy as bland version of Bridget Jones. Yes, she's embarrassing and annoying and any compliment you give her involves the words, "in spite of herself," but... well, in spite of herself, you can't help but like Dorothy, because NOT liking her is like picking on a kid whose parents just got divorced. You could do it, but what's the point? Aren't things already bad enough for them? I mean, she's afraid of cows, for God's sake. Cows. This woman is clearly not a threat to anyone but herself. Anyway, from the journals, she clearly had a soft spot for Coleridge. Thus, in leaving Wordsworth, Coleridge was hurting Dorothy. And that, the romantic in me holds against him.
I'm quite ignoring certain facts here, like Coleridge was either married and interested in other women for most of the time he was close to the Wordsworths, and Dorothy herself was far, far more interested in her brother than any other man--which is a long story. A long, kind of creepy story. But a part of me still believes that Dorothy Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge should have gotten married, which would have led to Coleridge beating his addiction, he and Wordworth would have been BFFs and, most likely, both would have written even more poetry than they already did, which I would have had to learn and... and now that I think about it, why did I want them to get together again? (Seriously, though, it would have been a good thing. Really. "Michael" is a good poem.)

So that's why I went into the book not liking Coleridge. The reasons, I acknowledge, are both long and irrational. But as unkind critics would tell you, a spirit of long irrationality is the perfect beginning for a study of the Bibliographica Literaria.

It's actually not that bad, and I can definitely see why it deserves a place on the comp list, although certain chapters are more useful than others. But this list went on for longer than I intended, so I'll finish up the Ancient Grad Student series tomorrow with a quick sketch of the book.

Later Days.

Whine of the Ancient Grad Student Part I: Coffee Shop

Coleridge's Advice to Aspiring Writers: "never pursue literature as a trade."

My Comp readings have reached Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and I'll have more to say about that when I actually finish the book. One of the reasons I didn't manage to finish it today is that I chose to do most of my reading in a coffee shop. About a half hour into my work, a girl comes down and sits at a spot two seats away. A friend of hers shows up, and they spend about twenty minutes talking about the first girl's problems: she just lost the lease on the house she shares with her roommate, and her weekend getaway with the boyfriend ended prematurely when the boyfriend pushed her too far and she broke up with him. So the friend--male friend--she's talking to decides that this is a good moment to toss his hat in the ring as a contender for next boyfriend, and takes the seat right next to me. They proceed to have a very heated, yet very whispered conversation. I am, at this point, insanely uncomfortable, but I refuse to leave, or even acknowledge I can hear them, because I was there first, damn it.

So the guy storms off, the girl sits there awkwardly for a few minutes, and then another, female, friend of hers shows up, and they talk about how the first girl's life seems to be spontaneously combusting, and agree to wait for a third (fourth?) friend before going out for drinks. And just as they reach the end of the story, the girl's mother phones, and she gets the whole story minus the boy scene I witnessed, and apparently, judging by the girl's end of the conversation, the mother is indignant on the girl's behalf for losing the house, since the landlord was being sneaky, yet somewhat sympathetic to the boyfriend. And as soon as the phone call ends, the other friend, also male shows up, and immediately asks what's wrong. The girl starts the story, and he says, yeah, he just ran into the most recently rejected guy, and he wouldn't say what's wrong, but he looked rough. Then, after hearing the whole story, he makes this statement: "You know, the only common element in all these situations is you."

Neither girl judges this as a helpful contribution, and the party storms off to discuss things further elsewhere.

I know eavesdropping is not polite behaviour, and that these are real people, and their problems should be taken seriously. And even though I'm preserving their anonymity on this post, by describing the event in this level of detail, I'm definitely edging towards the "uncool" in terms of maintaining internet privacy. But in my defense, they kept sitting next to me and having conversations that really shouldn't be happening in public areas (a point which, to be fair, the girl made repeatedly, albeit without actually moving).

How does all this relate to not finishing Biographia Literaria? Put it this way: try as hard as I might, Coleridge's dissection of David Hartley's mid-eighteenth century philosophical treatise on the oscillating ether of nervous systems just couldn't compete with some well-acted live theater.

Okay, that was kind of mean. Kind of true, but mean.

Later Days.

"What I'd Like Is, I'd Like to Hug and Kiss You"

Full geek points to whoever can trace the relevancy of that title to the content of this post.
Anyway, let's go back to Friday, AKA "Birthday Celebrations." I showed up an hour early to the festivities, to be sure we'd get a table. (A totally unnecessary gesture as it turned out for this evening, but when you just assume that there will be a table open, you wind up booking your going away party at a bar during its wings night, walk through it in amazed bewilderment, then spend a half hour very frantically trying to find a venue that can seat yourself and the seventeen guests who are arriving in short order. Or so I imagine.) And then everyone else pushed the fashionably late motif to about an hour or so, which meant that I had two hours by myself in the bar before anyone showed up.

This is not the most conducive atmosphere to foster feelings of birthday mirth, and I'll admit that I have some angsty tendencies at the best of times, but in this case, there was a bright side. I got done my comp exam reading for the day: Pope's "An Essay on Criticism," which is essentially a discussion on how critics should behave--nicely, as it turns out. To get a sense of the quality of my study, I just checked my notes, and the top of one page is written"Is Pope Catholic?" and it took me a few seconds to remember why that was an honest question instead of a punchline. Also included in reading was Rushdie's "Enchantress of Florence," and "The Art of Stealing" by Christopher Brookmyre. I'll probably do reviews of both later, but "The Art of Stealing" begins with an evaluation of how hookers should be detached yet focused while performing oral sex, concluding with the phrase: "Dammit, it's called "blow JOB" not "blow hobby."

So you know, classy.

Anyway, the festivities. It was a pretty good showing, and there was good company and good conversation. I learned a few things about myself: I like shots of Bazooka Joe (1/2 oz Baileys, 1/2 oz Blue Curacao liquer, 1/2 oz banana liqeur; what's not to like?), I CAN, when dared, fit an entire slice of pizza into my mouth at once, and I have in the past sang the Red Hot Chili Peppers'
"Give It Away."

I'll explain that last one. There was a girl from our program who I never quite got around to meeting who made it out last Friday, and she explained that she remembered me from my awesome rendition of RHC's tune on Rock Band (her description, not mine, as my large portions of that night are "File Not Found," in my memory bank, which is my only excuse for not remembering her, likewise.). The comment put me in a bit of a contemplative mood (contemplative between shots, anyway), on how you can never be sure when you're an impression on someone, or what that impression may be. On previous occasions, I've mentioned James Boswell--in fact, it the party night described in that post is just when the "Give it Away" song occured (and it's proof I don't remember it, 'cause if I did, I definitely would have put it in that list). Anyway, to sum that up, Boswell was constantly torn between two desires: the desire to be liked, through any means necessary, and the desire to preserve his dignity. Looking back at that party, I felt the same way he often did; I overindulged, I went beyond the proper bounds of behaviour in the name of fun, and I felt embarressed as a result. Apparently, though, from what I'm told, the impression I left people with, while it may not be the uber-responsible student, was one of a nice, enthusiastic guy. I can live with that.

Socrates said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." The punchline is that, although that may be true, at least the person living the life won't know it. And there's also the other alternative: "the unparticipated life is not worth living." The condolence to that sentiment is that participation comes in many shapes and forms, and Heisenberg tells us that every spectator is playing the game. (That's what he tells us, right? Any quantam phyics people lurking?)

After the initial drinking and talking, there was a smattering of... ugh... dancing, more lovely drinking and talking, and home by 3:00 with many happy thoughts. Participating is fun.

Later Days.