Hard Work, Harder Work, Karma and Kismet
Last night I had my third critique, and finished the Evelyn Waugh’s Unconditional Surrender for my War and Politics lit class tonight. Tomorrow night, I’ll read at our student reading. I think I’m the only non-fiction person reading, so with any luck, they’ll forget immediately and assume everything out of me is fiction. There’s an eight-minute time limit, so I have to cut my story way, way down. I’ll edit the tone so that it sounds better “performed” because I’m an insane-o who doesn’t want to suck (from a journalistic read to comedy in a few hours of editing, step right up folks).
I’d like to describe the miracle of having finished the novel last night, instead of finishing it this afternoon as per usual. There is a relative wealth of free time. I slept in til 11am and dreamed. There is time to go to The Strand and find books for a “Young Adults as Narrators” weekend workshop . It’s at school, taught by the professor Ann Hood, so far, so fabulous — and free of charge. Luckily I’ve already read three of the four books, and can’t wait to read Pessl.
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Remember when I wrote about The History of Love? Now I get to read it for class and pick apart the craft.
Remember when I blogged about Shelley Jackson? Um, she’s going to be my lit professor in the spring!
On Halloween, I saw her before classes started. Shelley had made a life-sized paper mache human head and attached it next to her own (like the main character in Half Life. It was well made, hilarious, and brilliant. Knowing why she’d done it wasn’t necessary, though it made it funnier.
This is our reading list for her class themed “The Unnamable” (The unsayable, the unspeakable, the unreachable, the unknowable.)
Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Christa Wolf, Cassandra
Franz Kafka, The Castle
Joseph McElroy, Plus
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
Maurice Blanchot, Thomas the Obscure
Georges Perec, A Void
Lyn Hejinian, My Life
I have only read one of these, and am thrilled to get my brain all bendy. Maybe I should try to grow another head just to handle it?
And last in my list of “why I’m a kid in a candy shop,” remember (Susan) how I used to sometimes go on and on until i was teased (by Susan!) about how much I loved my college prof Vassily Aksyonov? In my current lit class we read his mother’s memoir about being caught up in Stalin’s first purge and living in various prison camps for twenty years. I got to be a nerd and tell the class all about Aksyonov, the man, his Gogol class, his amazing amazingness. And the smart kids took notes. How did I get here? (hard work, harder work, karma and kismet)
In other news, I need more, many more bookshelves, and to join a gym or dance class (years recovering from martial arts injuries makes me think i’m too violent and clumsy to keep that up). I re-sprain my wrist every time I hold a heavy book vertically to put it back on the shelf. That’s not a good thing. Meanwhile, even though I still rock the 0.7 waste to hip ratio, the measurements have gone up because I’m older and I sit, and something clearly needs to be done about that.
Nice to hear I’ll make smart babies, but I rather not be so curvy before they’re in my lap. teehee
.7 means you’re skinny, eat more.
Also, you’d think an English student could spell waist :-P
nuh uh! it’s about proportion. i’m not skinny by any mark.
BUT, but but but, since you pick me up every time we meet I guess you’re allowed to have your opinions. you’re just strong!
p.s. don’t stop. it makes me happy.
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