Now that I'm a woman, all grow'd up, I wouldn't even think of it.
Is this a non sequitar? No, it's a continuation of a conversation going on over at Mad Madge World about our changing reading habits.
There was a time when I inhaled books. My delight was in going to Crown Books (remember them?) and buying $30 worth of paperbacks, which was at least six or seven books. When I got home, I wouldn't know which to read first. I don't do that anymore. For one, Crown Books is gone and $30 buys me a couple of trade paperbacks. For another, I'm just not into that kind of reading anymore. What kind of reading is that? Escapist.
When I was reading two novels in a day (DH Lawrence, if you don't mind), I was a miserable coot stuck in a cold flat in a country where I didn't want to be. So I read. To get out of that flat. Obviously if I was reading Lawrence, I wasn't as concerned with getting out of the country.
I think another reason I don't read so much anymore is that--sigh! I've read all the great ones. Okay, that's not true, but you can't have completed the course work and exams for a PhD in English Lit without knowing, and I do mean knowing, most of what the Western world considers great literature.
All that reading spoiled future literature for me in several ways. For one, I can't turn off the critical faculty that was honed in grad school. In some ways, I know too much--about the genre, the author, the culture that produced it. So I'm never reading just for plot and the writing has to be stunning for me to notice it.
With contemporary fiction, I am most often disappointed. I've just finished The Secret Life of Bees. Eh. A bit simple. Innocuous. Sweet. Etc etc etc. Thinking that, I'm wondering what was in the contemporary fiction that I read in my twenties and thirties that was so dynamic: ah, that was the second wave of women coming into their own as novelists. Didion, Jong, Drabble, Lessing: even the mediocre books had some breathtaking piece of wisdom for me. I was learning how to live, and the novels I read were my guidebooks. Now? I guess novels can't do that for me anymore. It's not that I think I'm done learning how to live, but that the majority of the books that I see today are guidebooks for a younger woman.
Therein, I think, lies the issue: it's a midlife thing. The coming of age story or the young wife battling for her independence--they just don't have relevance when you're in midlife. I don't want to know Jo March's story; I want to hear Aunt March's version.
Showing posts with label graduate degrees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graduate degrees. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Telling the Truth
I'm searching for a quote by William Faulkner. You know, the one about memory and ways of looking at a blackbird and the past never really being past. Except I think I'm conflating at least three of Faulkner's most famous lines. I want to find it because today I wrote this:
Not that our linen was really very dirty. Nothing heinous happened in my family; no secrets that would shock the world. Still, I can't really get a grip on what I want to say. I'm writing and deleting line after line, trying to capture this sense I have of--of what? Of smoke and mirrors.
Faulkner has always been my favorite author. If things had been different when I began my PhD studies, if the professor I had gone to work with, the Faulkner scholar, hadn't taken early retirement, I might be teaching Southern Literature at some university. And then surely these Faulkner quotes would be tripping off my tongue, rather than lurking somewhere in the back recesses of my memory.
Every family has their own story, the tale they tell the world about who they are and what they stand for and where they’re going or not. And every member of every family has their own version. As Faulkner said, “….” So too if you added up all the versions of each family member, you would get something perhaps approximating the truth.
This is my version of my family’s story. I call it “Washing Dirty Linen” because that is what my mother was zealous that we never do: wash our dirty linen in public. Bare our secrets. Tell our truths. But she’s gone now and so is my father, so there’s no one left who I care about protecting.I've been thinking about this for a long time. But maybe not long enough to be able to actually write it. Maybe my mother hasn't been dead long enough, although it's now been nine years. The long arm of Libby Lee may, in fact, be capable of reaching far beyond the grave--and she would like that. That arm is doing what it did so often in the past, reaching under the table and squeezing my knee in a vise-like grip: Silence. Quiet. Don't wash your dirty linen.
Not that our linen was really very dirty. Nothing heinous happened in my family; no secrets that would shock the world. Still, I can't really get a grip on what I want to say. I'm writing and deleting line after line, trying to capture this sense I have of--of what? Of smoke and mirrors.
Faulkner has always been my favorite author. If things had been different when I began my PhD studies, if the professor I had gone to work with, the Faulkner scholar, hadn't taken early retirement, I might be teaching Southern Literature at some university. And then surely these Faulkner quotes would be tripping off my tongue, rather than lurking somewhere in the back recesses of my memory.
Monday, July 28, 2008
A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to a PhD
This was written as a guest post for my friend, Nina, of ReaderWrites, whose dad died last week.
So the order of the day is to be funny, crack wise, amuse the crowd so they won't get too totally bummed out by the fact that we're all here because of--hushed tones, Addams Family music--A Death In the Family. And wasn't that a novel by James Agee? Or one of the Agee's. It sticks in my mind, halfway there obviously, as are any number of other works of fiction. My mother gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday, along with five or six other classics that she now considered I was old enough to read. Hah!
Like Nina (or perhaps that should, grammatically speaking, be As with Nina), I am a dropout from a PhD program in literature. We are, Nina and I, what's known as ABDs. All But Dissertation, that is, standing between us and the world calling us Doctor. I gave up the ghost long ago, admitted I would never finish that damn thing and thus condemned myself to, if I choose to teach, a lifetime of Freshman Comp classrooms. If you read Nina regularly, you know that that is somewhere south of purgatory. I don't know if Nina will finish hers. She might get a growth spurt in the fall and just go for it. Or maybe not.
I think statistically there are more of us ABDs than there are PhDs. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the hell that is graduate school may wonder why that is. Why don't we just get on with the fucking thing and finish it (words that I believe my dissertation director, not to mention my department chair, said to me often). Well, here's the truth of it: the easy part of getting a PhD is the course work. It's structured. There are assignments and exams and deadlines that Mommy and Daddy Herr Professors are setting for you. You go through term after term, picking your courses, buying your books, going to your classes, doing your readings, writing your papers, taking your exams and counting just how many credits more you need until you are Done With Your Coursework. And when you have amassed the requisite number of credits, you get shoved into the PhD Exam stage.
It varies from department to department and university to university, but suffice to say, it entails reading EVERYTHING written by and about and even tangentially remotely related to your topic. And then you get to write these horrendous exams written by faculty who are still sulking over (a) their career disappointments, (b) their age, (c) the horrendous exams their profs put them through all those years and years and years ago. Sometimes you're lucky enough to be in a department that has Orals, when those same sulky faculty are now quizzing you face to face about why you didn't put this or that arcane point into your exam answers. Or, as did actually happen to me, one of your examiners will fall asleep while you're responding. Oh, and did I mention that the chair of my committee was certifiable? But even so, the PhD exams are a cakewalk compared to what comes next.
The dissertation. It is not, as many of our relatives think "a really long paper," like maybe forty pages instead of a mere twenty. It is a book length original work of research. See that word 'book'--yep, that's what you're writing, a flippin' book. And for this, you are almost totally on your own. No Mommy and Daddy Herr Professors telling you what to do and when to do it. Just you. Alone. No deadlines, except what you set for yourself. And no one really cares if you keep them. Or not. No one cares about this thing that is taking up your whole life. And no one ever will. The point of it is that you've done it. It's the final hoop you must vault through before you get your degree. I faltered at the last step. I tripped on the final jump. And thus I am, forever and a day, ABD. A vast repository of now-useless knowledge about one minute speck in the world of literature.
So the order of the day is to be funny, crack wise, amuse the crowd so they won't get too totally bummed out by the fact that we're all here because of--hushed tones, Addams Family music--A Death In the Family. And wasn't that a novel by James Agee? Or one of the Agee's. It sticks in my mind, halfway there obviously, as are any number of other works of fiction. My mother gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday, along with five or six other classics that she now considered I was old enough to read. Hah!
Like Nina (or perhaps that should, grammatically speaking, be As with Nina), I am a dropout from a PhD program in literature. We are, Nina and I, what's known as ABDs. All But Dissertation, that is, standing between us and the world calling us Doctor. I gave up the ghost long ago, admitted I would never finish that damn thing and thus condemned myself to, if I choose to teach, a lifetime of Freshman Comp classrooms. If you read Nina regularly, you know that that is somewhere south of purgatory. I don't know if Nina will finish hers. She might get a growth spurt in the fall and just go for it. Or maybe not.
I think statistically there are more of us ABDs than there are PhDs. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the hell that is graduate school may wonder why that is. Why don't we just get on with the fucking thing and finish it (words that I believe my dissertation director, not to mention my department chair, said to me often). Well, here's the truth of it: the easy part of getting a PhD is the course work. It's structured. There are assignments and exams and deadlines that Mommy and Daddy Herr Professors are setting for you. You go through term after term, picking your courses, buying your books, going to your classes, doing your readings, writing your papers, taking your exams and counting just how many credits more you need until you are Done With Your Coursework. And when you have amassed the requisite number of credits, you get shoved into the PhD Exam stage.
It varies from department to department and university to university, but suffice to say, it entails reading EVERYTHING written by and about and even tangentially remotely related to your topic. And then you get to write these horrendous exams written by faculty who are still sulking over (a) their career disappointments, (b) their age, (c) the horrendous exams their profs put them through all those years and years and years ago. Sometimes you're lucky enough to be in a department that has Orals, when those same sulky faculty are now quizzing you face to face about why you didn't put this or that arcane point into your exam answers. Or, as did actually happen to me, one of your examiners will fall asleep while you're responding. Oh, and did I mention that the chair of my committee was certifiable? But even so, the PhD exams are a cakewalk compared to what comes next.
The dissertation. It is not, as many of our relatives think "a really long paper," like maybe forty pages instead of a mere twenty. It is a book length original work of research. See that word 'book'--yep, that's what you're writing, a flippin' book. And for this, you are almost totally on your own. No Mommy and Daddy Herr Professors telling you what to do and when to do it. Just you. Alone. No deadlines, except what you set for yourself. And no one really cares if you keep them. Or not. No one cares about this thing that is taking up your whole life. And no one ever will. The point of it is that you've done it. It's the final hoop you must vault through before you get your degree. I faltered at the last step. I tripped on the final jump. And thus I am, forever and a day, ABD. A vast repository of now-useless knowledge about one minute speck in the world of literature.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Memorial Day: Thoughts, in no particular order
- I was married, the first time, on Memorial Day. Funny, but I didn't remember that until just now, after I wrote the title. Of course, the year I was married, Memorial Day was not on May 25th, so I suppose I could be excused for not remembering my anniversary. Since it wasn't.
- I was about to say that mine was not a military family. Until I thought about my Uncle Bert, my dad's brother, who served in World War II. And my Aunt Teddy, my mother's sister, who was a WAC in World War II. And my brother-in-law who served in no war, having enlisted and gotten out just before Viet Nam.
- My dad was exempt from World War II because he was Needed At Home. That is, he worked in a job in an industry that had priority. He had extra gas rations because of whatever that priority was, but the story my mother always told was that my father hated not being in uniform during those years.
- One of the careers that I contemplated during that period in my 20s when I didn't know what to do with myself was joining the Navy. It is a good thing that I didn't because I now realize that I would have been a Court Martial Waiting To Happen.
- Dateline had an excellent (except for Keith Morrison's delivery) hour long segment called "Coming Home." The gist of it was that to have killed someone during war marks these soldiers forever and is often the precurser of PTSD.
- When I was in grad school, one thing I hoped to do with my MFT degree was work with vets who had PTSD. I was all geared up to do that until I learned that you need a doctorate to work for the VA. I don't know if I would have been good at it or not, but the urge is still strong.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
My Saturday, An Essay - by Jane
My Saturday contained all the excitement and romance that one could possibly want.
First, there has been the on-going debate over at BlogHer about some guy's book suggesting that the answer to the problems in the Middle East was to ship all the Jews somewhere else . Said "conversation" (ahem!) actually started last night and of course I was in the middle of it from time to time which not only put me to bed all roiled up, but rooted me out earlier than usual this morning. And that, in turn, required that I put myself back to bed for another hour or so after I had checked to make sure that the world was still turning.
Said nap resulted in my being eh eh eh, so I hied myself to the darkened living room to watch a movie IN THE AFTERNOON !! There was a time when I would cheerily spend my Saturdays cleaning and tidying my little abode. That time seems to be over. But the romance, oh yes, the romance was: I watched Message in A Bottle. That is the name of the film with Kevin Costner and Paul Newman playing father and son to Robin Wright Penn's good gal, Teresa. I had not read the book because you know, la de dah, I have all that education in literature and so I only like romances written by dead white women. I suspected it was a tear jerker--all that soft focus is a dead giveaway--and I figured I might as well go for it. The love story didn't really get me going because--well, it just didn't. I got all weepy at the end, but then my life in the current and not so current moment lends itself to that. Still, I made myself feel better by imagining that Robin and Paul consoled each other over Kevin's death. Certainly I would rather have the former than the latter. But that's just me.
Must I go on? Must I tell you that I did a quick turn into the drive-through at Jack in the Box. And then I hied to the drug store where I entertained myself by browsing in the cosmetics department. Okay, MIDLIFEBLOGGER ALERT: I got something called Bio-Oil, a South African product which contains the "breakthrough ingredient PurCellin Oil" and promises to "help smooth and tone aging, sagging and wrinkled skin on both the face and the body." All these breakthroughs and promises I could definitely use, and I'll report back as soon as I have something to say.
And then, and then, and then!! I watched reruns of Law & Order SVU and began the long process of filing and clipping that will culminate tomorrow in a painting of the toenails. O joyous Sunday--one can hardly wait.
First, there has been the on-going debate over at BlogHer about some guy's book suggesting that the answer to the problems in the Middle East was to ship all the Jews somewhere else . Said "conversation" (ahem!) actually started last night and of course I was in the middle of it from time to time which not only put me to bed all roiled up, but rooted me out earlier than usual this morning. And that, in turn, required that I put myself back to bed for another hour or so after I had checked to make sure that the world was still turning.
Said nap resulted in my being eh eh eh, so I hied myself to the darkened living room to watch a movie IN THE AFTERNOON !! There was a time when I would cheerily spend my Saturdays cleaning and tidying my little abode. That time seems to be over. But the romance, oh yes, the romance was: I watched Message in A Bottle. That is the name of the film with Kevin Costner and Paul Newman playing father and son to Robin Wright Penn's good gal, Teresa. I had not read the book because you know, la de dah, I have all that education in literature and so I only like romances written by dead white women. I suspected it was a tear jerker--all that soft focus is a dead giveaway--and I figured I might as well go for it. The love story didn't really get me going because--well, it just didn't. I got all weepy at the end, but then my life in the current and not so current moment lends itself to that. Still, I made myself feel better by imagining that Robin and Paul consoled each other over Kevin's death. Certainly I would rather have the former than the latter. But that's just me.
Must I go on? Must I tell you that I did a quick turn into the drive-through at Jack in the Box. And then I hied to the drug store where I entertained myself by browsing in the cosmetics department. Okay, MIDLIFEBLOGGER ALERT: I got something called Bio-Oil, a South African product which contains the "breakthrough ingredient PurCellin Oil" and promises to "help smooth and tone aging, sagging and wrinkled skin on both the face and the body." All these breakthroughs and promises I could definitely use, and I'll report back as soon as I have something to say.
And then, and then, and then!! I watched reruns of Law & Order SVU and began the long process of filing and clipping that will culminate tomorrow in a painting of the toenails. O joyous Sunday--one can hardly wait.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Interview With A Blogger: Me!
Herein forthwith follows the interview that Whoorl dreamt up for me as part of Citizen of the Month's Interview challenge. Whoorl's questions are in purple, the choice of color being mine, for no reason whatsoever.
ME! I know what Whoorl's trying to do, get me to focus on that one thing that stands between me and success: my inability to focus on one topic. But I can't. Don't you think I want to? Nor can I, it seems, professionalize this blog. That was my intention, and I did, in pursuing it, pay lots of money to go to BlogHer. But whatever they were selling doesn't seem to have taken with me. Maybe I'm just not cool enough or young enough or or--maybe I just don't care enough. I dunno. I see people to-ing and fro-ing with their blogs and pitching for blog awards and doing all this stuff that seems so incredibly "high school" to me. I simply can't sustain it.
What is your beverage of choice?
It depends upon the time I am choosing. In the morning, I’m a coffee-drinkin’ girl. I like it strong, full-bodied and rich, tasting like coffee, dammit. Come afternoon, I switch to Diet Coke, out of the can. Come evening, I prefer l'eau de potato, Russian preferably, over rocks with a twist. Stoly...Grey Goose. Or a Gin Martini (is there any other kind?) straight up with 3 olives. What I don't like are frou frou drinks: all those Tinis they've created to give people something sweet and sickly to get them gassed. Sissies.
Tell me whyNorthern California is a lovely place to live.
Who said it was? Not me. I've lived all over--here, there, and everywhere--and what I've learned is that every place and no place is lovely to live in. I'm here because my SoonTBX wanted to move here. Okay, okay, I wasn't exactly tied up and shipped to Sacramento, but if it hadn't been for his gentle urging, which manifested as constant whining and complaining and a pervasively permanent bad mood, I would still be living in LA. And probably right now my roof would be leaking because they're having terrible rains down there and that's what my roof did when it rained. Instead I am up here, sealed in tight, warm and dry in this wasteland called Elk Grove. And my SoonTBX is living elsewhere. And his roof is leaking. Ha! Karma!
Who is your favorite author?
Doing the coursework for a PhD in English Lit sort of ruined reading novels for me. Once you learn how to deconstruct a text, there's no going back to just reading for pleasure. When I did my MA, I did it in Southern Lit, and then Faulkner was my favorite. When I started my PhD, I thought I'd be an "Austen scholar" (la-de-dah), but my professor was insane and that sadly tinged my doctoral work with intense nutsiness. I haven't read Austen since I didn't have to, and I'm certainly not watching Austen month on PBS. Jane would be appalled.
What would your friends say is your most charming quality? Most annoying?
Oh, jeeze, I haven't a clue what they'd say is my most charming quality. Truth be told, I don't think of myself as one who could ever be labeled charming. I don't crook my little finger when I drink tea and although my manners are passable, I don't think the Vanderbilt's will be inviting me to join the cotillion. I will say that when I saw the film Steel Magnolias, I recognized a quality in the Shirley McLaine character that made me say, "that's what I'm going to be like when I grow up." And I believe I am, for good or ill.
That I speaketh the truth, even when I probably shouldn't is probably my most annoying quality. And that I speak it as if my truth is The Truth can and does create some moments of angst for those around me. I'm working on that, though, because I really don't believe in an Essential Truth, so to sound as if I do is antithetical to...to...my truth.
In 2006, you mentioned wanting to "be more present in you life". Do you feel you have accomplished this goal?
I am more present in my life, but it's an ongoing goal which I don't believe one ever accomplishes. I'm just starting out with little baby steps and lots of backsliding and falling down and smashing my nose flat. But one of the ways in which I have gotten better relates to the first question. I'm somewhere in the middle of working my way through the bullshit of being A Blogger. I am trying to quell all urges to write to please an audience. I am trying to at the least be true to me in this thing I do.
ME! I know what Whoorl's trying to do, get me to focus on that one thing that stands between me and success: my inability to focus on one topic. But I can't. Don't you think I want to? Nor can I, it seems, professionalize this blog. That was my intention, and I did, in pursuing it, pay lots of money to go to BlogHer. But whatever they were selling doesn't seem to have taken with me. Maybe I'm just not cool enough or young enough or or--maybe I just don't care enough. I dunno. I see people to-ing and fro-ing with their blogs and pitching for blog awards and doing all this stuff that seems so incredibly "high school" to me. I simply can't sustain it.
What is your beverage of choice?
It depends upon the time I am choosing. In the morning, I’m a coffee-drinkin’ girl. I like it strong, full-bodied and rich, tasting like coffee, dammit. Come afternoon, I switch to Diet Coke, out of the can. Come evening, I prefer l'eau de potato, Russian preferably, over rocks with a twist. Stoly...Grey Goose. Or a Gin Martini (is there any other kind?) straight up with 3 olives. What I don't like are frou frou drinks: all those Tinis they've created to give people something sweet and sickly to get them gassed. Sissies.
Tell me why
Who said it was? Not me. I've lived all over--here, there, and everywhere--and what I've learned is that every place and no place is lovely to live in. I'm here because my SoonTBX wanted to move here. Okay, okay, I wasn't exactly tied up and shipped to Sacramento, but if it hadn't been for his gentle urging, which manifested as constant whining and complaining and a pervasively permanent bad mood, I would still be living in LA. And probably right now my roof would be leaking because they're having terrible rains down there and that's what my roof did when it rained. Instead I am up here, sealed in tight, warm and dry in this wasteland called Elk Grove. And my SoonTBX is living elsewhere. And his roof is leaking. Ha! Karma!
Who is your favorite author?
Doing the coursework for a PhD in English Lit sort of ruined reading novels for me. Once you learn how to deconstruct a text, there's no going back to just reading for pleasure. When I did my MA, I did it in Southern Lit, and then Faulkner was my favorite. When I started my PhD, I thought I'd be an "Austen scholar" (la-de-dah), but my professor was insane and that sadly tinged my doctoral work with intense nutsiness. I haven't read Austen since I didn't have to, and I'm certainly not watching Austen month on PBS. Jane would be appalled.
What would your friends say is your most charming quality? Most annoying?
Oh, jeeze, I haven't a clue what they'd say is my most charming quality. Truth be told, I don't think of myself as one who could ever be labeled charming. I don't crook my little finger when I drink tea and although my manners are passable, I don't think the Vanderbilt's will be inviting me to join the cotillion. I will say that when I saw the film Steel Magnolias, I recognized a quality in the Shirley McLaine character that made me say, "that's what I'm going to be like when I grow up." And I believe I am, for good or ill.
That I speaketh the truth, even when I probably shouldn't is probably my most annoying quality. And that I speak it as if my truth is The Truth can and does create some moments of angst for those around me. I'm working on that, though, because I really don't believe in an Essential Truth, so to sound as if I do is antithetical to...to...my truth.
In 2006, you mentioned wanting to "be more present in you life". Do you feel you have accomplished this goal?
I am more present in my life, but it's an ongoing goal which I don't believe one ever accomplishes. I'm just starting out with little baby steps and lots of backsliding and falling down and smashing my nose flat. But one of the ways in which I have gotten better relates to the first question. I'm somewhere in the middle of working my way through the bullshit of being A Blogger. I am trying to quell all urges to write to please an audience. I am trying to at the least be true to me in this thing I do.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
I Think I'm Feeling Better...
I don't know why, but I am. Last night I had a major dream in which many of the greatest disappointments in my life were revisited and revised. My ex-husband Hamish did not marry a woman named Megan, which was the name we were going to give to our first born. My mentor in the PhD program revealed that the reason I wasn't too popular among certain faculty was not that I was mouthy, but that my ideas were so incredibly advanced, they were in awe. I really did dream both these things.
I did not dream, but did realize in my early morning meditation (would Buddha say it counted if said meditation took place lying flat in bed and sometimes resulted in returning to sleep?) that my clothespin magnets, albeit "colorful" as my cousin said, are also emblematic of what ails me. Which is: the urge to keep the products of my creativity neat and controlled. Small. Within the lines. Showing no signs of the fucking chaos that reigns within.
I must somehow break out of myself. I'm just not sure how to effect it.
I did not dream, but did realize in my early morning meditation (would Buddha say it counted if said meditation took place lying flat in bed and sometimes resulted in returning to sleep?) that my clothespin magnets, albeit "colorful" as my cousin said, are also emblematic of what ails me. Which is: the urge to keep the products of my creativity neat and controlled. Small. Within the lines. Showing no signs of the fucking chaos that reigns within.
I must somehow break out of myself. I'm just not sure how to effect it.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Blogito Ergo Sum, redux
For those of you who have faithfully followed my every post, yes, you have already read this. But I'm reposting it because (a) I'm going to use it as the "About Me" on this blog, (b) it is still so very, very true not to mention heartfelt, and (c) hot damn, it's good. Oh, a nb: my knitting group was merciless when they read this, so I've already taken all the stick they have to give.
Blogito Ergo Sum: I take this as my honi soit, to be hoisted on the masts and engraved on the crest. Or at least heat-stamped on a T-shirt. I had planned a rather humorous, lighthearted disquisition on this topic, but some serious thoughts keep pushing their heavy-handed way in. So bear with me, and maybe we'll get to the yucks later. Or maybe not.
I've always been a smart chick (too smart for your own good, missy, some would say) and a mouthy one as well. I have a showy kind of intelligence, the sort that ranges wide but doesn't settle particularly well. As my dissertation director once said to me, "You are good at synthesizing a broad amount of information; you are not good at digging into one particular point to follow it to it's end." Basically, what she was saying was: you're terrific in a class where you see the connections among the works; you're lousy at writing a dissertation. And she was right. As, obviously, my continued status as an ABD (All But Dissertation completed for the Ph.D) will attest.
Having given up on academia, however, I am left somewhat bereft. There is no place to settle the huge respository of [useless] information that one acquires while doing a lit PhD. No one gets my allusions. There are times, it might even be said, when no one knows what I'm talking about. The other night, for example, I sat at my Wednesday night knitting group at Knitique Yarn Shop, and noticed a hand-lettered sign that had a missing hyphen. I felt compelled to inform all and sundry about the missing hyphen and exactly how it altered the meaning of the sign. Around the table were the faces of my friends, looking at me, with that expectant look that signals someone hopes you'll start making sense soon, but for now you're speaking gibberish. Which is fine, and appropriate for that setting, yet it make me long for the times when three or four grad students would have gotten their teeth into that hyphen and argued it until it's head whipped off. I miss that. It's a part of me that is almost never tapped these days.
This morning while brushing my teeth and reading O Magazine (there are few places in which I don't read), I was reading the list of Zoe Heller's favorite books and Amy Bloom's article on poetry, and I felt quite keenly the absence in my life of people with whom I could talk about such things (and if you don't think I'm an unrepetent grad student, check all those prepositions that come rolling off my tongue in exactly their proper place). It's not that my friends don't read. Some of them do (and some don't, it must be said, which to me is unimaginable but I love them anyway). It's that no one reads a book like a literature grad student, with the full play of the critical conversation, past and present, weighing in. I miss that. I miss the intellectual wrangling that is the academic arena.
I have tried to fill these gaps with what would seem to be similar activities. In LA, I was a member of a bookclub. We met monthly to eat, drink, schmooze, and talk about the book. I think at first they liked having me there, because I more or less taught whatever book we were reading. But then I think that they got tired of me pushing far deeper into the work than they wanted to go, and I got tired of them thinking that "I liked it...It sucks...This would never happen in real life....I hated the main character" sufficed as literary criticism.
In LA I was a grad student again, this time in psychology. That wasn't such a far stretch from my lit studies, as one of the areas of criticism with which I dealt was psychoanalytic literary theory. However, psychoanalytic literary theory and psychoanalytic theory are different beasts, it would seem. Lacan never figured in our class lectures or discussion. The French Feminists? Do they have to do with fashion?
So there I am, with this rich inner life, that gets very short shrift in the outside world. Except here. On By Jane. Here I am free to expound and explicate and elucidate at will. Here, I am free to be me, all of me, not just the comprehensible bits. Thus, for Descartes, it was cogito ergo sum. But for me, it is blogito ergo sum--I blog, therefore I am.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Blogito Ergo Sum
I take this as my honi soit, to be hoisted on the masts and engraved on the crest. Or at least heat-stamped on a T-shirt. I had planned a rather humorous, lighthearted disquisition on this topic, but some serious thoughts keep pushing their heavy-handed way in. So bear with me, and maybe we'll get to the yucks later. Or maybe not.
I've always been a smart chick (too smart for your own good, missy, some would say) and a mouthy one as well. I have a showy kind of intelligence, the sort that ranges wide but doesn't settle particularly well. As my dissertation director once said to me, "You are good at synthesizing a broad amount of information; you are not good at digging into one particular point to follow it to it's end." Basically, what she was saying was: you're terrific in a class where you see the connections among the works; you're lousy at writing a dissertation. And she was right. As, obviously, my continued status as an ABD (All But Dissertation completed for the Ph.D) will attest.
Having given up on academia, however, I am left somewhat bereft. There is no place to settle the huge respository of [useless] information that one acquires while doing a lit PhD. No one gets my allusions. There are times, it might even be said, when no one knows what I'm talking about. The other night, for example, I sat at my Wednesday night knitting group at Knitique Yarn Shop, and noticed a hand-lettered sign that had a missing hyphen. I felt compelled to inform all and sundry about the missing hyphen and exactly how it altered the meaning of the sign. Around the table were the faces of my friends, looking at me, with that expectant look that signals someone hopes you'll start making sense soon, but for now you're speaking gibberish. Which is fine, and appropriate for that setting, yet it make me long for the times when three or four grad students would have gotten their teeth into that hyphen and argued it until it's head whipped off. I miss that. It's a part of me that is almost never tapped these days.
This morning while brushing my teeth and reading O Magazine (there are few places in which I don't read), I was reading the list of Zoe Heller's favorite books and Amy Bloom's article on poetry, and I felt quite keenly the absence in my life of people with whom I could talk about such things (and if you don't think I'm an unrepetent grad student, check all those prepositions that come rolling off my tongue in exactly their proper place). It's not that my friends don't read. Some of them do (and some don't, it must be said, which to me is unimaginable but I love them anyway). It's that no one reads a book like a literature grad student, with the full play of the critical conversation, past and present, weighing in. I miss that. I miss the intellectual wrangling that is the academic arena.
I have tried to fill these gaps with what would seem to be similar activities. In LA, I was a member of a bookclub. We met monthly to eat, drink, schmooze, and talk about the book. I think at first they liked having me there, because I more or less taught whatever book we were reading. But then I think that they got tired of me pushing far deeper into the work than they wanted to go, and I got tired of them thinking that "I liked it...It sucks...This would never happen in real life....I hated the main character" sufficed as literary criticism.
In LA I was a grad student again, this time in psychology. That wasn't such a far stretch from my lit studies, as one of the areas of criticism with which I dealt was psychoanalytic literary theory. However, psychoanalytic literary theory and psychoanalytic theory are different beasts, it would seem. Lacan never figured in our class lectures or discussion. The French Feminists? Do they have to do with fashion?
So there I am, with this rich inner life, that gets very short shrift in the outside world. Except here. On By Jane. Here I am free to expound and explicate and elucidate at will. Here, I am free to be me, all of me, not just the comprehensible bits. Thus, for Descartes, it was cogito ergo sum. But for me, it is blogito ergo sum--I blog, therefore I am.
I've always been a smart chick (too smart for your own good, missy, some would say) and a mouthy one as well. I have a showy kind of intelligence, the sort that ranges wide but doesn't settle particularly well. As my dissertation director once said to me, "You are good at synthesizing a broad amount of information; you are not good at digging into one particular point to follow it to it's end." Basically, what she was saying was: you're terrific in a class where you see the connections among the works; you're lousy at writing a dissertation. And she was right. As, obviously, my continued status as an ABD (All But Dissertation completed for the Ph.D) will attest.
Having given up on academia, however, I am left somewhat bereft. There is no place to settle the huge respository of [useless] information that one acquires while doing a lit PhD. No one gets my allusions. There are times, it might even be said, when no one knows what I'm talking about. The other night, for example, I sat at my Wednesday night knitting group at Knitique Yarn Shop, and noticed a hand-lettered sign that had a missing hyphen. I felt compelled to inform all and sundry about the missing hyphen and exactly how it altered the meaning of the sign. Around the table were the faces of my friends, looking at me, with that expectant look that signals someone hopes you'll start making sense soon, but for now you're speaking gibberish. Which is fine, and appropriate for that setting, yet it make me long for the times when three or four grad students would have gotten their teeth into that hyphen and argued it until it's head whipped off. I miss that. It's a part of me that is almost never tapped these days.
This morning while brushing my teeth and reading O Magazine (there are few places in which I don't read), I was reading the list of Zoe Heller's favorite books and Amy Bloom's article on poetry, and I felt quite keenly the absence in my life of people with whom I could talk about such things (and if you don't think I'm an unrepetent grad student, check all those prepositions that come rolling off my tongue in exactly their proper place). It's not that my friends don't read. Some of them do (and some don't, it must be said, which to me is unimaginable but I love them anyway). It's that no one reads a book like a literature grad student, with the full play of the critical conversation, past and present, weighing in. I miss that. I miss the intellectual wrangling that is the academic arena.
I have tried to fill these gaps with what would seem to be similar activities. In LA, I was a member of a bookclub. We met monthly to eat, drink, schmooze, and talk about the book. I think at first they liked having me there, because I more or less taught whatever book we were reading. But then I think that they got tired of me pushing far deeper into the work than they wanted to go, and I got tired of them thinking that "I liked it...It sucks...This would never happen in real life....I hated the main character" sufficed as literary criticism.
In LA I was a grad student again, this time in psychology. That wasn't such a far stretch from my lit studies, as one of the areas of criticism with which I dealt was psychoanalytic literary theory. However, psychoanalytic literary theory and psychoanalytic theory are different beasts, it would seem. Lacan never figured in our class lectures or discussion. The French Feminists? Do they have to do with fashion?
So there I am, with this rich inner life, that gets very short shrift in the outside world. Except here. On By Jane. Here I am free to expound and explicate and elucidate at will. Here, I am free to be me, all of me, not just the comprehensible bits. Thus, for Descartes, it was cogito ergo sum. But for me, it is blogito ergo sum--I blog, therefore I am.
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