I just have to share this, even in the ether, so to speak

From Beckett's Molloy:

"Chameleon in spite of himself, there you have Molloy, viewed from a certain angle. And in winter, under my greatcoat, I wrapped myself in swathes of newspaper, and did not shed them until the earth awoke, for good, in April. The Times Literary Supplement was admirably adapted to this purpose, of never failing toughness and impermeability. Even farts made no impression on it. I can't help it, gas escapes from my fundament on the least pretext, it's hard not to mention it now and then, however great my distaste.

"One day I counted them. Three hundred and fifteen farts in nineteen hours, or an average of over sixteen farts an hour. After all, it's not excessive. Four farts every fifteen minutes. It's nothing. Not even one fart every five minutes. It's unbelievable. Damn it, I hardly fart at all, I should never have mentioned it. Extraordinary how mathematics help you to know yourself."

Awkward

I'm so glad you all came to our renewal celebration. I'm sincerely grateful to have you as friends, and I love you all. Sometimes I feel awkward in expressing my emotions, but I'm working on that. It's a lot easier to use allusion as expression. I'm great at showing love through the words in other's works. 

So, a short poem by Thomas Lux. This one's for you, Sam:

I Love You, Sweatheart

A man risked his life to write the words.

A man hung upside down (an idiot friend

holding his legs?) with spray paint

to write the words on a girder fifty feet above

a highway. And his beloved,

the next morning driving to work. . . ?

His words are not (meant to be) so unique.

Does she recognize his handwriting?

Did he hint to her at her doorstep the night before

of "something special, darling, tomorrow"?

And did he call her at work

expecting her to faint with delight

at his celebration of her, his passion, his risk?

She will know I love her now,

the world will know my love for her!

A man risked his life to write the world.

Love is like this at the bone, we hope, love

is like this, Sweatheart, all sore and dumb

and dangerous, ignited, blessed—always,

regardless, no exceptions,

always in blazing matters like these: blessed.

 

Last Friday

I really tied one on with a great big bow, and I'm glad I was with Sam because I hate to think what might have happened to me if I were alone. It's kind of scary to get that drunk. So, on that note (and to post a poem Sam reminded me of this morning), here's a golden oldie by A.E. Housman, "'Terrence, This Is Stupid Stuff'" (1896). It's long but worth it:

"Terrence, this is stupid stuff:

You eat your victuals fast enough; 

There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,

To see the rate you drink you beer.

But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,

It gives a chap the belly-ache.

The cow, the old cow, she is dead;

It sleeps well, the horned head:

We poor lads, 'tis our turn  now

To hear such tunes as killed the cow.

Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme

Your friends to death before their time

Moping melancholy man:

Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would  be,

There's brisker pipes than poetry.

Say, for what were hop-yards meant,

Or why was Burton built on Trent?

Oh many a peer of England brews

Livelier liquid than the Muse,

And malt does more than Milton can

To justify God's ways to man.

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink

For fellows whom it hurts to think:

Look into the pewter pot

To see the world as the world's not.

And faith, 'tis pleasure till 'tis past:

The mischief is that 'twill not last.

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair

And left my necktie God knows where,

And carried half way home, or near,

Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:

Then the world seemed none so bad,

And I myself a sterling lad;

And down in lovely muck I've lain,

Happy till I woke again.

Then I saw the morning sky:

Heighho, the tale was all a lie;

The world, it was the old world yet,

I was I, my things were wet,

And nothing now remained to do

But begin the game anew. 

Therefore, since the world has still

Much good, but much less good than ill,

And while the sun and moon endure

Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,

I'd face it like a wise man would,

And train for ill and not for good.

'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale

Is not so brisk a brew as ale:

Out of a stem that scored the hand

I wrung it in a weary land.

But take it: if the smack is sour,

The better for the embittered hour;

It should do good in heart and head

When your soul is in my soul's stead;

And I will friend you, if I may,

In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:

There, when kings will sit down to feast,

They get their fill before they think

With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.

He gathered all the springs to birth

From the many-venomed earth;

First a little, thence to more,

He sampled all her killing store;

And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,

Sate the king when healths went round.

They put arsenic in his meat

And stared aghast to watch him eat;

They put strychnine in his up 

And shook to see him drink it up:

Them it was their poison hurt.

---I tell the tale that I heard told.

Mithridates, he died old.

To Sam

Sam, I have never better broken a rule. Here's a golden oldie from Phillip Sidney as a tribute:

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange one for another given;

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:

There never was a bargain better driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one;

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:

He loves my heart, for once it was his own;

I cherish his because in me it bides.

His heart his would received from my sight;

My heart was wounded with his wounded heart; 

For as from me on him his hurt did light,

So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:

Both equal hurt, in this changed sought our bliss,

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

My true love hath my heart and I have his.

A reply to J-P's comment on the previous post

My response was getting so long that it made more sense to put it into a comment of its own. The Kindle (and devices like it) probably are boons to inveterate travelers. Books are heavy!

J-P, the questions you ask regarding paper books generally provoke tons of (let's say) vigorous discourse in my field. I could definitely imagine a future in which owning paper books becomes a luxury, a electronic books and their attendant devices drop in price. Just as it is now a luxury to own a horse for now good reason. (Also heavy.)

I believe that the codex (even if not made with paper) will and should endure, but that we'll use it differently, perhaps with more respect or shared ownership within a community. Codices resist change and censorship more easily than electronic documents do. The paper book signifies a drain to our environment, but how does that compare to the environmental impact of producing, distributing, and recycling electronic devices and the infrastructure that they require? (That might be an unanswerable question at this point.)

What I do know is that many codices are beautiful in themselves. As are those luxury horses. (But with less poop.)

---

And now a question regarding my own crappy paperback codices: Does anyone know how to get one's paperbacks re-covered to make them hardbacks? Most of our books are paperbacks, and I like to imagine them as cloth-covered hardbacks, in a range of colors. As a child, I lusted after the huge library of leather-bound books that belonged to one of my father's colleagues. They had a pleasing uniformity of size and color, with exotic names on their spines, like "Seneca" (an Indian chief?) and "Cato the Elder." Now I know I don't want any leather books or the authors in their canon. But it's really cool to think of a cloth-covered canon of our own. So if any of you people know where I could get this done, or anyone on Etsy who would do it, please let me know.

How to start a fire

I miss reading good books but cannot give up the luxury of a quiet voice reading me to sleep. Nevertheless, no illusion stands between an audiobook and actual reading.

In the service of trying to do more real reading, I checked out the Kindle, a device Amazon is pushing. Its screen works like paper, sort of, allowing the user to read even in bright daylight. It also connects to Amazon through a cellular network, allowing fast and free downloading of comparatively inexpensive books anywhere a cell phone can connect. It's ugly and expensive and technologically selfish, but most reviews were positive.

After some thought, I realized that the new device wouldn't solve my central problem. And—this is important—the thing can't retain the physical elements of a paper book, like page layout, paper quality, typeface that isn't Cambria. You can do what I plan to do (here in a minute). Pick up the closest book and smell it. Turn the pages and listen. Look at its age, and open it until the spine cracks. Smush the pages and write your name on the surfaces that creates. Read it until the page falls away, in that mysterious process of becoming absorbed.

Now call me Ned Lud. 

A censory experience

This is fascinating, if a little elderly for the web (2005). Human Events.com, which claims that it's been "leading the Conservative Movement since 1944" [huh?], published a list of the ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries, as identified by a "panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders."

You can imagine the top three, perhaps: The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and The Little Red Book. Das Kapital makes the list at number 6, following closely on the heels of The Kinsey Report and preceding The Feminine Mystique. Works by Dewey, Comte, Nietzsche, and John Maynard Keynes fill out the list.

 They've agreed on this socially and politically conservative list. It makes a kind of ideological sense, I suppose.

The Honorable Mention [huh?] includes works that confuse me in one of two ways: Either they should be on the list itself (e.g., What Is to Be Done by Lenin, Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir ) or it's unclear why they would be listed at all (e.g., works by Darwin, Margaret Mead, Rachel Carson).

A third puzzling category exists: I understand why Adorno, Foucault, B.F. Skinner, Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, and Freud would be on the list, but the books they chose to list for each author don't make a lot of sense. Regarding Foucault, why Madness and Civilization and not Discipline and Punish? Why Freud's Introduction to Psychanalysis and not The Psychopathology of Everyday Life or Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality or any book that Freud actually wrote and not a made-up title.

So I'm beginning a list of titles that should scare conservatives even more, starting with Georg Simmel's The Metropolis and Mental Life and Our Bodies, Ourselves. Care to add more?

On the apparent multiplication of things I don't know

Lately, I've been feeling a little dull. Here is an instantiation meant to reproduce this feeling:  

Jorge Luis Borges wrote a little story called "The Garden of the Forking Paths." (You can probably find it online.) The key mystery, if you can call it a mystery, surrounds Dr. Yu Tsun's ancestor, Ts'ui Pen, who undertook a double task: to write an intricate novel and to construct an equally intricate labyrinth. In both, everyone would lose his way. Someone murdered Ts'ui Pen before he completed the novel, and the labyrinth was never found. Other stuff happens in the story, which is quite good, but my chief interest is in this kernel of narrative uncertainty. 

Conventional narrative depicts a character making a decision that eliminates all previously available options. Borges presents the possibility of a world in which every option continues to exist simultaneously, each leading to unlimited future possibilities, some of which converge but for different reasons.

I've been waiting for feedback from my committee on material I gave them a month ago. As days pass, I imagine increasingly elaborate reasons for their silence. I also increasingly think of the things I should have addressed in the draft I gave them: race and slapstick, the myth of the persistence of vision, and sources that my sources referred to, and their sources, and so forth.

"The Garden of the Forking Paths" helps me think about the internal and textual problems I'm encountering. My mind attempts to contain all courses and recourses, while I struggle with the ongoing textual impossibility of tracking down all sources connected to any given bibliography. (Each source I trace contains within it its own bibliography, which I feel compelled to track down as well.)

All things stem from this philosophical dilemma. Clearly, no one can get it all. But it still makes me feel dull. 

The pleasure of being anonymous

First: the eulogy of the world was written last Friday. Rest well, DFW. 

---

One of the aspects of living in a small town (that I hated) is that everyone knows you. Or your dad or mom. Or your mom and dad's car. At least, they think they know you.

One of the things I loved about moving away from Arkadelphia was that I could leave that misremembered history that others associated with me. I apparently was a mud-flinger in kindergarten. Another girl (who I graduated with) bit someone once, which earned her a 15-year nickname. She might still have it—she never left.

When I left town, adults no longer said to me, "Oh, you're Dr. Murphy's daughter. I've heard about you." Which they had because my dad liked to tell "funny" stories about his daughters, in almost every situation, including his classroom. More than a couple of my teachers had been in one of his classes, and some of them had seen at least one "Murphy girl" demonstration of Piaget's developmental experiments. (It wasn't until I was in college that I realized that the psychologist Piaget was the same person as P-I-J.) I hate to say it, but it's embarrassing for someone to tell a story about how you ran out of a classroom when you were five because you were confused by a test you weren't supposed to pass anyway, and wasn't it so adorable.

Anonymity is glorious. It means you can be no one's daughter, no one's test subject, no one's cute story. It means you don't have to wave at every passing car because one in five people knows your parents or was your nursery-school teacher or some shit like that.

Anonymity on the web is a little harder to achieve. But it is still glorious. You belong to no one, not even yourself because it's not your name. It's a different name, and the difference doesn't matter because you're speaking to strangers anyway. You finally write your worst memories, your worst parts of yourself even, to the world. Who writes back. Because who doesn't like to watch a train wreck? Who never is one?

Sarah Palin

Four legs good. Two legs bad.

Addendum: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Preparing for the semester

I taught 100 last spring, and I'm teaching 102 in the fall, which means I have a returning student who's willing to show up at 8 for my class. This makes me happy.

My goal as a teacher this semester is to have a better attitude about grading. 

I like teaching, however much I complain, and I look forward to every semester: learning names, eliciting the first tentative comments, getting the students to engage each other. I'm especially looking forward to teaching The Good Soldier. One day is reserved for an exercise in which I split them into groups of 3 and assign each group a major character to defend. The four major characters all have questionable motives and values, so the conversation can be pretty raucous as each group tries to get its say. The exercise requires them to read closely and helps them see the novel's intensity and brutality. 

And it's fun. No, really. It is as Leonora describes the girl: "not no good."

Dave the cat and Sam

I love Dave the cat. He snores and makes little dream sounds, and he often keeps me company in my study. He has a deep purr and isn't miserly with it. Dave's patient with Nora the dog (mostly), and sometimes even affectionate. His coat is soft and glossy. He shares a common delight with other cats, the desire to sleep in a box that is too small for him. Also, he likes to drink out of the bathroom faucet, licking the porcelain as the water drips onto his head and down his face. 

Unfortunately, Dave's paws are dirtier than his head, and when he gets out of the sink, he leaves prints on the bathroom counter. His meow is whiney. He also has the habit of pissing outside of the boxes (for which I feel partly responsible because we waited too long to get him fixed). So, in summary, Dave is not a fastidious cat.

If it seems like the endearing traits outweigh the traits that make you want to throw him out, you're not alone. Sam feels the same way. But because Sam loves me, and I love Dave, the cat stays. But I caution Dave, by paraphrasing Emerson (from "Prudence"): the trick to skating over thin ice is speed.

First, do no harm.

Released in 2001, A Beautiful Mind still makes me angry. I bring it up because Netflix keeps suggesting that I take another look at it. In terms of craft, the film is lovely to look at, and the actors do their jobs. And I don't really care if it remains true to the events of Nash's life. What angers me is its fantasy about schizophrenia and the old saw about mad genius. Critics and viewers alike laud this movie for offering a glimpse into the experience of having serious mental illness. Isn't it pretty to think so.

(For bonus points, name the allusion.)

---

In other news, last night M asked me about how a person determines whether a poem is good. I talked a little too long about "One Art," then said that it's easier to show with a selection of poems, rather than a list of qualities. Our conversation makes me think about how I approach teaching poetry in 102. I don't care for the approach lampooned Dead Poets' Society---I'm not going to make a bunch of graphs. But I do believe that one can tell whether a poem has merit. As a pedagogue, I try to make the concepts we talk about as concrete as possible (e.g., handouts for 6 steps to a good thesis statement, 12 steps to a close reading, 6 right ways to use commas). Students like lists and handouts. So, it's not enough for me just to say that these 10 poems we've read are excellent because I say so and anything with 14 lines is a sonnet, no matter what anyone else says.

Poetry is a long and vibrant mode, such that its forms, variations, and ambiguities are much more difficult to quantify than any more recent form (e.g., novels). A traditional Shakespearian sonnet contains 14 lines of iambic pentameter, organized into three 4-line stanzas and a couplet, with a standard rhyme scheme, and a turn of some kind at the end, usually somewhere in the last 4 lines.

Using this description of the form, a person can still write a poem that will make your eyes and ears bleed. In fact, that's the most likely outcome. (Ooh!) It's like giving a person who has never cooked a bare-bones recipe for hollandaise sauce or pastry creme. Something's going break.

So I don't think I can write a list of elements to look for in a great poem. I can only repeat what has been said to me: Great poems are revelatory. They don't conform. Here's a list of terms you can use to talk about poems. Now let's look at one. 

Wilfred Owen (written between two tours in WWI. He himself became one of these youth just before the war ended.)

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen. 

(He died in WWI a week before Armistice Day.)

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning, save the choirs,----

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Virgil's Aeneid

This is the first of two planned Aeneid posts. (The second will be devoted to Dido, the tragic queen abandoned by Aeneas.)  I've always been fascinated by Tartarus, the deepest pit of hell in Greco-Roman mythology. Virgil, Plato, and Dante, among others, wrote chilling descriptions of the terrors, and many people remember figures like Tantalus and Sysyphus.

Here's Dante's description of sinners submerged in Phlegethon, the fiery river of blood that circles Tartarus (verse translated by Mark Musa; line breaks removed for the sake of more space): 

So with this trusted escort [Nessus] we moved on along the boiling crimson river's bank, where piercing shrieks rose from boiling souls. . . . Then I saw other souls stuck in the river who had their heads and chests above the blood, and I knew the names of many who were there.

Older sources describe Tisiphone, the guardian of Tartarus. From Virgil (prose translation from W.F. Jackson Knight): "An iron tower also rose high into the air; and there sat Tisiphone, with bloody robe girt up, the never-sleeping guardian of the entrance-court by night and day." There's more, but it scares me.

I think I've found a great costume for Halloween.