Bluer Shades of Pale

Yet again...

Mon, 25 May 2009 03:58:33 GMT

The semester is done, I have a week left before I start teaching for June, after which I have July and August to myself before classes recommence. You know what that means: it's summer reading time!

Katie's been mad at me for buying lots of books that I never get around to reading, especially since our bookshelves are filling rather fast. Therefore, I'm going to try to limit the list to books currently in the apartment and certain key exceptions. The only category I'll treat differently from that is currentish novels, since I've been feeling bad about not having read much of them at all. With that said...

Contemporary Novels
~~The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz~~
~~The Road, Cormac McCarthy~~
Netherland, Joseph O’Neill
Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
American Pastoral, Phillip Roth
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Blindness, Jose Saramago
2666, Roberto Bolano

Long Novels
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Francois Rabelais
Underworld, Don DeLillo
The Ambassadors, Henry James
V, Thomas Pynchon
The Goldbug Variations, Richard Powers
Quiet Flows the Don, Mikhail Sholokohov

Normal Novels
The Wild Ass’s Skin, Honore de Balzac (in French, as prep for my language exam)
Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh
Malone Dies/The Unnameable, Samuel Beckett
Cat and Mouse/Dog Days, Gunter Grass
L'Oeuvre, Emile Zola (more French)
The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor
The Ox Breadth, Alan Singer

Short Story Collections
Complete Jorge Luis Borges
Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen
Sportsman’s Sketches, Ivan Turgenev
Complete O. Henry
Pastoralia, George Saunders

Poetry
~~Inferno, Dante~~
Complete Wallace Stevens
Near-Complete John Ashbery
Complete Emily Dickinson
Complete T.S. Eliot
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
Complete Gerard Manley Hopkins
Norton Anthology of Poetry

Plays
Complete William Shakespeare
Complete Eugene O’Neill
Devil’s Disciple/Candida, Shaw
Every Man in His Humor/Sejanus/Volpone/Candida, Ben Jonson
Complete Richard Sheridan
Complete George Kaufman

Nonfiction
The Bible
Essays and Reviews of the 30s-40s, Edmund Wilson
~~How Fiction Works, James Wood~~
~~The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber~~
A Collection of Essays, George Orwell
Critical Essays on Wallace Stevens
Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens
The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Oscar Wilde
[The Rest of] The Critique of Judgment, Immaneul Kant
[The Rest of] The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer
Either/Or, Soren Kierkegaard
Collected Works, Henry David Thoreau
Collected Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~Playwrights in Rehearsal, Susan Letzler Cole~~
About Writing, Samuel Delany
Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari
The Levinas Reader, Emmanuel Levinas
[All that Comp./Rhet. On my shelves]
[Some David Foster Wallace in prep. for the conference being held at CUNY on the subject]

Other Stuff That I May Put Onto My Oral Exam List But That I Don’t Have On Hand
Postmodernist Fiction, Brian McHale
Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederic Jameson
The Poems of Our Climate, Harold Bloom
On Extended Wings, Helen Vendler
~~Mythologies, Roland Barthes~~

A Record of Our Journey

Mon, 25 May 2009 03:30:46 GMT

On Friday, May 22, Katie and I did successfully complete our Grand Tour of NYC, and it was everything expected. For those who commented on the last entry: thank you for your suggestions. Unfortunately, we couldn't really get around to any of them. Worry not, though--this adventure shall have a sequel, and we've already got lots of stuff lined up for it.

But on with the our tale of adventure through all five boroughs, the exciting neighborhoods, the odd shops, and the quirky people we ran into on the way. The day's culinary highlights in bold:

9:30-- Briarwood, Queens (Borough Count: 1)
We leave the apartment, purchase an MTA day pass for me, and hop the subway, our hearts full of hope and joy.

9:40--Forest Hills, Queens
We disembark at the 71st Ave. F stop and walk over to Austin Street, in search of breakfast. Since Austin Street is really primarily a dinner spot, we go to Martha's Country Bakery. It is a quite fortuitous choice: their pastry selection is amazing, particular the cupcake variety. I decide to throw health considerations to the wind and get myself an M&M cupcake and an Oreo cupcake, and find them quite delicious. (Katie enjoyed her tea and apple turnover, as well). We enjoyed a fine morning's walk through some of the residences just south of Queens Boulevard, many of whose flower bushes were coming into bloom. From here, we hopped the Q60 and rode it all the way down Queens Boulevard. We discovered along the way that there are a tremendous number of White Castles, furniture stores, and diners between Rego Park and Sunnyside, as well as at least one piano store.

Most Representative Establishment Encountered: The absolutely enormous Jewish Community Center--I mean, the size of a major multiplex--of the kind that one rarely finds outside of either Queens or Israel.

11:15--East Side, Manhattan (Borough Count: 2)
We become disappointed to discover that not only does the the Q60 pass over and not stop in Roosevelt Island, but there is no bridge connecting Manhattan to Roosevelt Island, foiling our plans to visit this strange place through which we pass on the F train every few days. (Is it part of Manhattan? Is it part of Queens? Who lives here? Who knows!) We console ourselves by looking at the puppies in the window, then going into the Dylan's Candy Bar on 61st. (I have since learned it's a chain, which slightly dampens my spirits--luckily it's huge enough to still count as a distinctive landmark.) Our spirits slightly rise when we discover the cable car from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island. (Apparently this has been around forever--how did we not know???) We mark this for another day's exploring, as do we a location marked "Restaurant/General Store." Then we hop the 4 downtown toward Rector Street.

Most Representative Establishment Encountered: Around 59th and Lex, there's a Tassel Shop. Just sells tassels and edgings. Nothing else. Only in Manhattan, folks, and only on the East Side.

12:20--Financial District, Manhattan
We meet Katie's father and sister for lunch at George's, a pretty high-quality dinerish place on Rector. Cupcakes weigh on stomach a little too much for me to get through chicken salad deluxe wrap, but hey, it's a meal I don't need to pay for. Afterward, we scurry down to South Ferry to catch the 1:30 ferry to Staten Island. The Memorial Day weekend tourist crowd is out in large force: literally hundreds of people crowding to get on, and most of those around us aren't speaking English. We manage, though, to get a nice spot at the front of the boat, getting ourselves delightfully sprayed with New York Harbor water (we'll just think about the water part, not what's in it).

Most Awesome Vehicle Spotted: A bright pink, Mini Cooper stretch limousine, with six wheels driving onto Rector Street. Why six wheels? To provide more stability for the open-air hot tub on the back, of course!

2:00--St. George, Staten Island (Borough Count: 3)
If you're got a busy day planned, it's hard to do all that much in Staten Island. (And frankly, that statement is true without the first condition, too.) But we do get a nice look at the county court, which is a nice enough federalist building, as well as the Staten Island Yankees' stadium. Mostly, though, we just passed lots of vaguely Italian small business in our brief walk, then got back on the 2:30 for Manhattan.

Most Conceptually Amusing Fellow Travelers: It being Fleet Week, we are accompanied back to Manhattan by most of the Canadian navy (that is, about 50 sailors and officers), which, as Katie is a massive Canadianophile, delighted her to no end.

3:20--West Village, Manhattan
We get off at Christopher Street, and Katie gets the cat-shaped tape dispenser she had seen a few weeks back and hadn't had the cash to buy at the time at a home equipment kitsch spot called Pylones. We wander around the pretty brownstones and fetch a strawberry smoothie at a juice place on the street, then work over to the D and venture uptown.

Most Stereotypical Resident: The cashier at Pylones, a man with more stereotypical West Village qualities than I thought possible in a single individual outside of a Sex and the City episode: impeccably groomed Latino, squeaky high-pitched voice, on the phone throughout our visit chattering on matters that somehow seeming simultaneously very petty and of Immense Import, who proceeded to engage Katie in "Uh, MEN!" banter and and make winking, knowing gestures in my direction.

4:40--Yankee Stadium, the Bronx (Borough Count: 4)
We get off and take a look at the new stadium, which really does look nice and historic, right in the middle of that section of the South Bronx. I hadn't realized that they haven't destroyed the old park, but are making it into some "Heritage Field." Sadly, we are unable to access the area containing what is described on the maps as the "Giant Bat." In lieu of this, we take a walk up into Franz Sigel Park, which is a rather spacious and lovely public park. Then we get ourselves back to the B and head over to meet my parents for dinner.

Most Irritating Moment for a Queens Resident: Not only are we in Yankee territory, but, somehow, Phillies fans are out in force, yelling obnoxious Philly things in Philly ways and otherwise antagonizing the locals.

6:00--West Harlem, Manhattan
We walk over to the Dinosaur BBQ, beside the Cotton Club (still up and running, apparently), and celebrated my mother's birthday with my parents. Katie and I share the ribs/pork/brisket/potato salad/fried rice sampler platter and are much sated; I find the homemade tap root beer nicely sweet. Lots of wonderfully sleazy posters on the wall. (For a 60s B-Movie, something like: "Some places, an 18-year-old is called a girl. But in the steamy heat of the bayou, everyone knows...she's a WOMAN.") Equally sleazy bathrooms; Katie and I confirm that neither has an inch of wall space unscribbled upon.

Moment of Being Stereotyped Most Obviously: While there certainly were lots of other affluent-looking white people in the Dinosaur BBQ, seeing four of them get more than half a block away on foot, headed toward Central Harlem on 125th, was such a strange sight that a black car driver rolled his window down at us and shouted out asking if we were looking for car service.

7:45--Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Borough Count: 5! 50-point Bonus!)
Katie and I take the 1 to the L and make our way over to Bedford Ave. On a Friday night, this is Hipster Mecca, and they're out in full force, packs of them headed up and down the street. Katie found them adorable, what with how hard they were all trying to be cool, but refused to go into many of the stores, as she finds that adorable hipster aura really oppressive in enclosed spaces. Nicely pompous used book store called Spoonbill and Sugartown that, if I'd lived there, I'd be buying lots of European philosophy from; I didn't get anything there, but Katie and I agreed that I was allowed to buy, from some vendors outside, the Library of America edition of the collected works of Thoreau if she could get two of the original A. A. Milne books, complete with illustrations. Also got a nice black cherry soda float at an ice cream place called Penny Licks, which, for whatever it lacked in variety of choices, made up for in the silly pencil drawings on the wall. We walked down to Grand Street, but didn't see much of interest there, except for a) an incredibly beat-up, low-to-the-ground, body-looking-like-it-was-made-of-paper-mache, convertible Hipster Mobile, filled with four partying hipsters, and b) someone who is almost certainly one of the people in the Temple MA program a year ahead of me.

Most Stereotypical Resident Encountered: Lots of candidates here, but the winner is the bearer of the hipster look to end all hipster outfits: goatee, gray vest, tie, short pants, argyle socks, and bright red converse High-Topps. Katie wanted to take him home and keep him as a pet.

10:00--Briarwood, Queens
We arrive home, happy, tired, and safe. Mission Accomplished.

Until next time, that is, when we ride the tram to Roosevelt Island, ride the water taxi, take a carriage ride in Central Park, and visit Park Slope and Prospect Park.

The Grand Tour: NYC (suggestions wanted)

Wed, 20 May 2009 19:11:11 GMT

It's now been a year since Katie and I have moved to NYC. Of course, it's not like this was a tremendous change, having grown up in the suburbs and spent a lot of time in the city, but we've gotten the chance to do lots of stuff in New York as residents that we wouldn't have otherwise.

However, as great a time as we've had, there's a lot of the city we haven't gotten around to seeing. For instance, in the past year, neither of us has been to the Bronx or Staten Island at all, and I can count the times I've been to Brooklyn on one hand (most of which were to a tiny residential corner to see Katie's aunt).

So, in celebration of the effective beginning of summer, Katie and I will, this Saturday, make a Grand Tour.

The plan: we get day passes for the MTA, leave the house around breakfast time, and start touring the city, particularly its strange shops and eateries
The goal: visit places we've never been in all five boroughs and then return home by midnight.

But while we don't want to overdetermine our exploration, we would like some suggestions as to where we might visit from some other NYC folk. This is where YOU COME IN: what should we hit?

Points of interest decided so far:

1. Touring the shops on Austin Street, Forest Hills, which we totally planned to do when we moved in and never did.
2. A trip to Williamsburg to see the hipsters in their natural habitat.
3. A ride on the Staten Island Ferry.

Self-promotion!

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:04:15 GMT

I've not posted in a while...and I shan't say all that much now. However, I do want to draw your attention to something.

If you'll recall, last summer I was invited to join a writing-workshop book project, in which I wrote two stories based on common prompts. At this point, now that the stories are written and we're trying to get the book agented, our editors are starting in on some promotional stuff.

Such stuff is here: http://shortstorysweet16.com/

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but there's kind of this March Madness gimmick to it, in which we were all chosen by region, as if there were some sort of competition... anyway, go check it out, click on stuff, leave comments and all. There's an explanation of what all the website's doing under "About This Site."

Also, there's an open competition in there for all you aspiring writers out there...

Enjoy!

That time of year

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:51:51 GMT

So, to ring in the Christmas and finals seasons, I traditionally reintroduce the famed "name the song from my iTunes based on the opening lyric." Someone else did it on Facebook, so I felt it was time to bring it back here. There are official rules and everything, but I think you all know the drill.

~~1. ____________, a personage of noble rank and title, a dignified, important officer.~~ sir_graeme
~~2. It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside. I'm not one of those who can easily hide.~~jkalderash
~~3. ____________, with a heavy lid, my pop quiz kid.~~ tolchocky
~~4. So you thought you might like to go to the show.~~ nescio17
~~5. ______________ and I ain't got nobody. I got some money 'cause I just got paid.~~ ambushbug
~~6. I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade.~~ galorette
7. Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy.
~~8. ___________, the organ of delight. The nimble, nimble, nimble larch.~~jkalderash
~~9. Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armor come, saying something about a queen.~~galorette
~~10. They say everything can be replaced. They say every distance is not near.~~guingel
11. Have you heard about the boom on Mizar 5? People got to shout to stay alive.
~~12. ______________, they are lonely and feeling blue.~~amocantare
~~13. ______________, abagazing! I want your attention, everything! We're packing to leave, come on, let's go!~~ amocantare
14. Hurray, I awake from yesterday alive, but the war is here to stay.
~~15. Uh! With your bad self! Say it loud! _____________!~~guingel
~~16. Lucretia walks into a room. Because she does, it's not the same.~~ swagmonkey
~~17. Fish gotta swim, bird's gotta fly. I'm gonna love one man 'til I die.~~ guingel and amocantare
18. Remember hallways; you're waiting always to see behind the door.
~~19. ____________, sweet comic __________, you make me smile with my heart.~~swagmonkey
~~20. There, out in the darkness, a fugitive running, fallen from grace.~~jkalderash
21. He went _____________, and they never called him by name. He went ____________, hangin' on to the back of a train.
~~22. Come and knock on our door, we've been waiting for you, where the kisses are hers and hers and his.~~ sir_graeme
23. And the meek shall inherit the Earth!
~~24. Hey hey, mercy woman, plays a song and no one listens. I need help, I'm falling again.~~kmunson
25. I been working real hard trying to get my hands clean, trying to drive that dusty road from here to Angeline.
26. Well there's no reason to believe she'd always be there. But if you don't put faith in what you believe in, it's getting you nowhere.
27. ______________ so I'll go. I would hate my disappointment to show. There's nothing for me here, so I think I'll disappear.
28. You can go, but _________, you can go but while you're working, this place I'm pacing 'round 'til you're home safe and sound.
29. ~~A whop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-whop-bop-bop! __________, oh, Rudy!~~sir_graeme
30. I've got a song, it ain't got no melody. I'm gonna sing it to my friends.

The eye's plain version is a thing apart, the vulgate of experience

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:49:59 GMT

It's been a long, long time since I've updated. In brief--over the past three months, in no particular order:

1. I have been teaching composition and taking classes toward my doctorate at CUNY. It's been a bit rough: I'm teaching at York (in Jamaica, Queens) TTh 8-10 AM (and I walk about a half hour to work), then taking a 50 min subway ride to Manhattan for a 12-2 seminar, then either staying there until a 6:30-8:30 seminar or immediately hopping back on the subway to go to York to take a seminar there. MWF are delightfully free (to do lots of reading, that is).

2. After me harping at her for many months, Katie finally got a job at North Shore Animal League. It's a mix of ups and downs--it pays lousy but has excellent benefits; it's a long commute (25 min on the bus, then 30 on the train) but gives her time to knit; she has weird hours (usually 1:30-9:30 PM), but gets to play with puppies and kittens. She's been at it a couple weeks now; we'll see how long she sticks with it and whether conditions might improve a bit. Until then, we have dinner together at noon.

3. I have been enjoying a little bit of the arts scene and such, though perhaps not as much as I'd wished. When I go in on Fridays for lectures, I usually stay in the city and get student tickets for shows. Have seen The 39 Steps (which was divertingly amusing) and Speed-the-Plow (which demonstrates again that Mamet, like Pinter, is best with all-male casts). I'm also trying to do the opera more--saw Dr. Atomic with paesanobri, the first act of which I quite enjoyed (even General Leslie Groves' "Man, I hate this low-calorie diet" aria), until the interminable "Hey, we're going to test the bomb soon" choruses and symbolic Indians of the second act began to wear on me. Next up, methinks, is The Damnation of Faust from 9-midnight on November 25th.

4. Visited tolchocky and othercriteria at the start of October in Providence. Played quiz bowl with the latter and Zach, which was fun; saw some of Providence, which was kind of eh; and had the worst bus trip of all times, in which the Greyhound was over an hour late arriving and broke down outside New London, leaving us--after the next bus was too full to take everyone and the replacement went to New Haven instead of New London--sitting on an onramp for five hours. Combining this with a sick passenger on the next E train, I got home about seven hours later than I'd planned. Ah well. At least I had time to start reading The Handmaid's Tale, finally.

5. My grandfather died, which we had all expected--he was 93 and hadn't been doing well for some time. I did finally look again through the massive photo album my aunt had compiled for his 45th anniversary in 1994 and had not seen since, as well as finally reading my great-aunt Anne's Family History letter, in which I learned that my great-great-grandfather Meyer Letzler was an orthodox rabbi; his son Penechas Letzler was the first Jewish mayor of Ploesti, Romania and almost became a major cabinet figure under Iuliu Maniu but was sent to prison to die a broken man under the Communists; someone else on that side changed his name to Sebastian Sebastian and became a Parisian designer; and some other guy got conned into marrying an older woman he thought he'd impregnated (who was not pregnant) and then died young of pneumonia while trying to comply with the harsh shoveling laws of the nation. Oh, family history.

6. I'm trying to begin to figure out some future career stuff for myself. At the end of this semester, I'm going to send out at least two papers to academic journals, methinks, and I'm going to send an abstract to a graduate student conference in the next couple months, too. (The book project I'm working on creaively is going alright, too, I think.) In the next week I also plan to get my shit together and register for the 2008 MLA Conference in San Francisco, December 27-30. (Any West Coasters want to meet up?)

7. One day a couple weeks ago I accidentally bought $125 of books. Whoops.

Also--Emerson, William James, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, I find you frustrating. Tolstoy--you went a little off the deep end in your later years, but at least you make sense.

Opera

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:12:18 GMT

So, I should make a real post at some point detailing all the excitement in my life lately. However, before it becomes too late:

Being tired of going to stuff in NYC alone, the other evening I decided to buy 2 tickets to see Dr. Atomic at the Met on Thursday, October 30th, 8:00 PM, figuring I should be able to scare up someone to go with. (For those not in the know: it's a contemporary minimalisty opera about Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, i.e. not really Katie's scene.) However, the first few people I've asked have had other stuff to do at that time.

So, ticket's $16.50. We'll be in the Family Circle. Anyone interested?

Call for suggestions

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:28:24 GMT

For the next semester at York College--and indeed, for many semesters after that, probably--I am going to be teaching a course in composition. I have done this before--indeed, I've even written my own syllabus in the past.

However, I've been asked by the muckety-mucks at York to have a "themed" course: that is, we read a variety of articles on a broad theme that will allow them to direct their energies at a wide array of research topics. Now, my existing syllabus is not themed, and furthermore, it requires the purchasing of books, which I have been told I should not have my students do (behind a grammar handbook).

So, I have decided that my theme will be Education (for example, why are we all here and what should we get out of this?). That means that I need to acquire about 20-30 or so readings on this subject (on the order of 10-25 pages) to discuss with my students and on which to have them hone their critical thinking skills. I'd like them to be a mix of recent general-audience articles, more scholarly articles, classic texts, fiction, and so on. I also want them to be appropriate to the demographics of the class, which is typically two-thirds female, almost entirely black and Latino, and in their mid-20s (that is, reflections on the cutthroat admissions process in preppie New England suburbs are not likely to really be relevant in any volume).

Any suggestions you all have would be not only welcome, but really quite appreciated. I'd like them to hit a range of issues, including your standard race/gender/class as well as some more erudite issues.

Stuff that I'm considering:
"In the Basement of the Ivory Tower"-Atlantic Monthly
"Teaching to Transgress"- bell hooks
Some excerpt from The Education of Henry Adams
Some excerpt from Democracy and Education

The word of the day is "tittivating"

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:16:22 GMT

From guingel

1. Open a music player.
2. Go to 'all music'/'library'.
3. Hit shuffle/repeat/randomise.
4. Find photos of the first 25 artists/bands that come up (no repeats and no cheating).
5. Have people guess who the artists/bands are.

No peeking at the source code. I like the lyrics one a little better, but this is a little easier. Composer/performer selected at my discretion.

1.
2.
Hint: not English-speaking
3.
4.
5.
6.
Hint: not very famous at all
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
Hint: Let's see who can see past the KISS makeup...

Things in Denmark have funny names

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:16:54 GMT

Some of you environmental types (and even those who are only moderately so, like me) will find this interesting:

The Two-Thousand Watt Society

Sometimes I just don't know what to do with Op-Eds...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:00:47 GMT

Why Obama Should Stop Trying to Quit Smoking

New Home

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:22:47 GMT

Well, I'm finally fully moved in at the apartment in Queens referred to in my last post, posting from my new wireless. The super caught us moving in at a time we weren't supposed to be, but whatever. Hoorah.

Yet again, that time of year...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:26:50 GMT

It's summer reading list time! I'm not even going to pretend to start up on Proust this time; if I really feel the need, I'll take the yearlong course on him being offered at CUNY next year.

As always, suggestions are greatly encouraged and welcome.

No rereads this time around; ordered roughly by priority/availability.

*= never read anything by the author. Otherwise, assume I read something by the writer and generally liked it, at least in some respects.

&= I own a copy

#= added on recommendation

Long:
~~Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon~~ &
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Francois Rabelais *&
Finnegans Wake, James Joyce &
The Golden Bowl, Henry James &
Quiet Flows the Don, Mikhail Sholokhov *&
Dog Days, Gunter Grass &
U.S.A., John Dos Passos *
The Recognitions, William Gaddis *
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski *

Medium:
~~Pale Horse Pale Rider, Katharine Porter &~~
Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov &* (excepting the puppetshow version...)
Like You'd Understand, Anyway, Jim Shepherd &* (embarrassing omission)
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (oy, still)
Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West
Under the Volcano, Malcom Lowry *
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
~~The Trial, Franz Kafka~~
~~Beloved, Toni Morrison~~
~~The Collected Stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez~~
~~McTeague, Frank Norris &~~
~~The Kite Runner *&~~
Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen &
Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco &
Malone Dies/The Unnameable, Samuel Beckett &
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
~~Wise Blood~~/~~A Good Man is Hard to Find~~/The Violent Bear it Away, Flannery O'Connor &
Cat and Mouse, Gunter Grass &
Lord Jim, Josef Conrad &
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins & (ah, if galorette had not been going on about it, I'd have totally forgotten I had it!)
Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan *
Temple of the Sun/Decay of the Angel, Yukio Mishima
By Night in Chile, Roberto Bolano *
American Pastoral, Phillip Roth * (other embarrassing admission)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera *
Blindness, Jose Saramago
The Sea, John Banville
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany *
Pastoralia, George Saunders &
The Ox-Breath, Alan Singer *&

Nonfiction:
Seminar XVII, Jacques Lacan &
The Parallax View, Slavoj Zizek &
~~Phaedo, Plato &~~
~~Love and Death in the American Novel,*& Leslie Fielder~~
~~The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams~~ &*
~~Cultural Literacy, E.D. Hirsch~~
~~The War Against Boys, Christina Hoff Sommers~~
Either/Or, Soren Kierkegaard &*
Practical Criticism, I.A. Richards *
Understanding Poetry, Cleanth Brooks/ Robert Penn Warren
Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari &*
The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche
Cambridge Guide to Wallace Stevens/Companion to Wallace Stevens &

Plays
~~Faust~~
More Shakespeare (I always forget how good he is)
Man and Superman/Other, Bernard Shaw
Five Plays, Ben Jonson
Cherry Orchard, Chekhov &
Complete George Kaufman &
Complete Aristophanes &

Anthologies
Norton Anthology of Poetry
The American Short Story
Modern Literatures of the Non-Western World
Concise Anthology of American Literature
The Modern Short Story
Complete Borges
Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver
Complete Poems, W.B. Yeats &
Complete Poems, Robert Frost &
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman &
Collected Poems, Wallace Stevens &

Nothing that isn't there, and the nothing that is

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:04:41 GMT

It's been a long time since I've given you all a substantial update, for I've been busy this past month. And lo and behold, I've got a lot of stuff to tell you all, and even a few questions to ask. An overview:

1. I will be attending CUNY for the next few years to get my doctorate in English. As Governor Marley's uncontested reelection campaign posters in the first Monkey Island game said, "When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice." But that's fine--the people there seem good, everyone at Temple's impressed I got in (though without a great financial deal, other than tuition remission and adjunct pay), and I'll be in NYC for a few years, which can't be bad.

Incidentally, all you people I know who live in NYC in housing situations not unlike ones I might want to get into: any good leads on apartment stuff Queens that's close to a subway, maybe around Sunnyside or Flushing? I've got a decent amount of income beyond my adjunct pay, and Katie'll be leaving with me and presumably adding some income to the household.

2. I finished and submitted my thesis for my Creative Writing Master's, weighing in at 225 pages; I don't think I'll have any competition for fattest thesis this year. It's entitle Musical Thoughts on Death; all the stories in it deal with those two themes. I tend to think it's pretty good.

That means, for the willing among you, I have a manuscript you can read! Let me know if you'd like a copy. I won't send it out to you until the end of the month, since the big novella toward the end didn't get quite as much attention as I'd hoped, but after then, I'm comfortable enough with it to allow other eyes on it. I'd rather only send it electronically, for ink/paper reasons, but if you'd like paper, we can arrange that.

3. I moderated quiz bowl Nationals in St. Louis last weekend, getting to see arbutus and the guys, who could have challenged for the undergrad title again had they not choked against the forces of othercriteria's old friend Aaron Kashtan in losing by 5 to Florida (incidentally, Jerry is excited to have you join their team, Klein, though he sort of wishes he had a fricking humanities player instead...if they'd only let me in...). This unfortunate led to yet another automotive debacle involving malinalda, which was really unfortunate, but I managed to amuse myself without her delightful company, despite having to take several 3+ mile walks to and from the motel. I'll find some other way to get my copy of Grim Fandango back from you...

Also, the Arch is huge. Like, really huge. Also, when arbutus, David Mathias, and I visited East St. Louis, we decided to explore a bit and walked around a riverside (incidentally, the Mississipi is apparently flooding pretty majorly now) Casino there, eventually causing two Security trucks to drive up to us and suggest that maybe we didn't want to explore so much in that area.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:38:11 GMT

I forgot to mention this to people other than firaela, with whom I had a walk and chat today, but I'm visiting the girlfriend for the week, until Friday morning. I'm going to be pretty busy doing work for most of tomorrow, and Wednesday might not be a mobile day. I think we'll be in Boston Thursday, if anyone wants to say hi.

For those who don't sit around their computers all night waiting for memes

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:29:49 GMT

...I also have a lot of favorite movies. These'll be a little harder.

1. ~~It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why.~~ malinalda
2. ~~Son of a bitch. He stole my line.~~ paesanobri
3. He murdered Bill Shakespeare!
4. I'll lick the stamps.
5. ~~A good fort needs a gap.~~
6. Yes, they will. A skull is more interesting than a naked woman.
7. I'd like to be a hairdresser. Or two. I'd like to be two hairdressers.
8. I'd rather be smart than be an actor.
9. ~~You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.~~ eiviiaru
10. ~~Yeah, the hoof got caught in the grill and I gotta, I gotta hack it off.~~ paesanobri
11. It's a good thing I am pretty much an Olympic sexual athlete.
12. ~~I put a black widow spider underneath his mosquito net. A female, they're the worst. It took him a whole week to die.~~ guingel
13. ~~Are you here for an affair, sir?~~ malinalda
14. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
15. ~~My father used to say that not playing to win is like sleeping with your sister. Sure she's a great piece of tail, with a blouse full of goodies, but... it's just illegal.~~ paesanobri

No Princess Bride in this one, though I love it

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:13:45 GMT

Well, everyone else is doing it, and you all know how I love these.

Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
Post them here for everyone to guess.
Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

1. ~~When you have to shoot, shoot! Don't talk!~~ paesanobri
2. In a way, each of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be *the actual* El Guapo! entropicangel
3. ~~After fifteen minutes I wanted to marry her, and after half an hour I completely gave up the idea of stealing her purse.~~ jkalderash
4. You're dumber than you think I think you are.
5. If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw--there it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching?--and my straw reaches across the room, and starts to drink your milkshake. I... drink... your... milkshake! I drink it up! entropicangel
6. ~~You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.~~ malinalda
7. ~~Even if you were right, that would be one plus one plus two plus one, not one plus *two* plus one plus one.~~ entropicangel
8. ~~The doctors managed to reset her jaw more or less. Saved one of her eyes. His pulse never got above 85, even when he ate her tongue.~~ entropicangel
9. It's brand new. Revolutionary up-lift: No shoulder straps, no back straps, but it does everything a brassiere should do. Works on the principle of the cantilevered bridge.
10. ~~Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it.~~ paesanobri
11. ~~How'dya split a fuckin' car, ya dummy? With a fuckin' chainsaw?~~ paesanobri
12. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. malinalda
13. ~~I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass!~~ paesanobri
14. I'm very sorry the government taxes their tips, that's fucked up. That ain't my fault. It would seem to me that waitresses are one of the many groups the government fucks in the ass on a regular basis. Look, if you ask me to sign something that says the government shouldn't do that, I'll sign it. Put it to a vote, I'll vote for it. But what I won't do is play ball. entropicangel
15. ~~"Greater good?" I am your wife! I'm the greatest *good* you are ever gonna get!~~ entropicangel
16. ~~I just want to break even.~~ guingel

Yo!

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:33:26 GMT

See edit on previous entry. Not my first choice (indeed, I would say it's about my ninth choice), and living in the same city with the parents might be intensely awkward, but at least I won't be totally useless next year.

Oy

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:25:13 GMT

So, we're starting to hear back from grad schools. I know I haven't updated here lately, but you can probably track my mood for the next month by referring back here: if there are bold things, it means I'm happy; strikethroughs, sad.

~~Berkeley~~
~~Brandeis~~
~~Brown~~
~~Columbia~~
~~Cornell~~
CUNY
Irvine
~~Michigan~~
~~Princeton~~
~~Yale~~

Ah well. At least my girlfriend is here, and I'll be visiting amocantare and loretedelpy

Notice to Williams folk on campus

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:03:34 GMT

I am going to be on campus for Trivia tomorrow (I am sure everyone is shocked), and as always am looking to play all night. However, Bethans are planning to go to bed early, because we have rehearsal at 11 in the morning, and most of my usual teammates are playing, separately, off-campus.

In short, who wants me?

Answers to Quiz

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:59:12 GMT

I was a bit disappointed with a number of the songs that were not picked up, so I hope you all feel appropriately shamed for missing the songs you missed. Those that were not gotten:

1. "Laura"-Billy Joel (tsk tsk)
2. "Every Man a King!"- Huey Long (by way of Randy Newman)
3. "Drive In Drive Out"-DMB (oh, c'mon, half of you have this album)
7. "Funky Broadway"- Wilson Pickett (Katie got this, so it sort of counts)
8. "When You Wake Up Feeling Old"- Wilco (half of you have this album too)
9. "Worry Worry"- Fiery Furnaces (several of you who shall remain nameless have indeed seen them live...)
10. "A Simple Twist of Fate"- Bob Dylan (more shame for you all)
12. "I'm a Bad, Bad Man"- Annie Get Your Gun (ok, now that I'm done shaming the indie folk, musical people: what happened?)
13. "Dr. Funkenstein"- P-Funk
15. "Night Time is the Right Time"-Aretha Franklin
19. "Still Raining, Still Dreaming"- Jimi Hendrix
21. "Bungle in the Jungle"- Jethro Tull

Boston

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:32:42 GMT

Forgot to mention this--I'm going to be in the Boston area from about lunchtime Saturday to lunchtime Tuesday. Let me know if any of you folk around there want to hang out.

Done

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:00:47 GMT

My semester is finished: finished my last reading and essays last Thursday; sent out final evaluations for my students today, after having undertaken marathon sessions Friday and Saturday on their portfolios; finished my last bit of work for the Scrib this afternoon; and, most importantly, finished all ten of my English PhD applications. Dear God, I hope I don't strike out again.

I have also suffered more material loss in my life (in addition to the never-found grill): one fateful day a week and a half ago, I went into the office with gloves and a computer mouse (among other knick-knacks) and could not find either when I left. Furthermore, my trial version of Microsoft Office (which I forgot I was using) ran out just before I had to write my major paper, and so I had to shell out $150 to unlock the full version. I finally went to the mall the other day and bought new gloves (quite nice leather ones, for only $10), a new grill ($30, same price as the other, and this one's bigger, more attractive, and better-suited to my needs), and got some nice presents for Katie that also managed to be quite cheap. Ah, money solves so much: I'm glad I'm rich.

So, my plan for the next few days is to read a lot, and maybe do more polish work on some of my stories. I think I won't start anything new until after Christmas.

But, 'tis December, and as far as I'm concerned, that can mean only one thing: the annual iTunes Shuffle Quiz for my LJ friends. And I think this time, there's a good spread of things you'll all get.

First lines of the first twenty-five songs that pop up on my iTunes on shuffle, excluding instrumentals and the far-too-obscure. Comment with the right song/answer, and I'll cross the name off and put your username up in big shiny letters. Google is cheating.

1. ________ calls me in the middle of the night, passes on her fateful information.
2. Why weep or slumber America, land of brave and true? There's castles and clothing and food for all!
3. I hear more than I'd like to, so I boil my head in a sense of humor.
4. ~~____________, let your heart be light.~~ amocantare
5. ~~____________, you know I love you, I'll always be true.~~ amocantare
6. ~~In quegli anni in cui val poco~~ paesanobri
7. Every town I go in, there's a street, the name of the street, ______________.
8. _____________ at this piano filled with souls, some strange purse stuffed nervous with gold
9. Don't you never let one man ___________ your little mind
10. They sat together in the park as the evening sky grew dark
11. ~~Do you hear that whistle down the line? I figure that it's engine No. 49.~~ amocantare
12. I'm honored, I'm flattered, this greeting really mattered. This welcome is grand, but I'm really concerned.
13. They say the bigger the headache, the bigger the pill, baby--well, call me the Big Pill.
14. ~~O Freude, nicht diese Tone! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen.~~ arbutus
15. You know ________________, oh to be, be with the one you love.
16. ~~I was born in a cross-fire Hurricane, and I howled at my ma in the driving rain.~~ eiviiaru
17. ~~Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth, pull on your finger, then another finger, then another cigarette.~~ othercriteria
18. ~~You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.~~ othercriteria
19. Rainy day, rain all day, ain't no use in gettin' uptight, just let it groove its own way
20. ~~In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus, nie hätt' ich gesendet die Kinder hinaus.~~ arbutus
21. Walking through forests of palm tree apartments, scoff at the monkeys who live in their dark tents.
22. ~~Oh I've tried before to tell her of the feelings I have for her in my heart. Every time I come her I just lose my nerve, as I've done from the start.~~ paesanobri
23. ~~___________, things are gonna get easier. ___________, things'll get brighter.~~ tolchocky
24. Old lady lost in the city in the middle of a cold cold night. It's 14 below and the winds start to blow--there wasn't a Boy Scout in sight.
25. ~~______________, ___________, su su su su suognun si spazza~~ amocantare

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:21:49 GMT

Indeed, if there are very many people who find it difficult to get through The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Brave New World, I sort of fear for general literacy...

Meme: The 106 Most Unread Books (according to LibraryThing)

Bold is for books you've read. Italics for books you've started but haven't finished. Strikethrough is for books you found unreadable. And, finally, leave the ones you haven't read as they are.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Anna Karenina

Crime and Punishment

Catch-22

Wuthering Heights

~~The Silmarillion~~

Life of Pi

The Name of the Rose

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Don Quixote

Moby Dick

Ulysses

Madame Bovary

The Odyssey

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Eyre

A Tale of Two Cities

The Brothers Karamazov

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

War and Peace

Vanity Fair

The Time Traveler’s Wife

The Iliad

Emma

The Blind Assassin

The Kite Runner

Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations

American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlesex

Quicksilver

Wicked

The Canterbury Tales

The Historian

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Love in the Time of Cholera

Brave New World

The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum

Middlemarch

Frankenstein

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

A Clockwork Orange

Anansi Boys

The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath

The Poisonwood Bible

1984

Angels & Demons

The Inferno

The Satanic Verses

Sense and Sensibility

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mansfield Park

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Oliver Twist

Gulliver’s Travels

Les Misérables

The Corrections

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Dune

The Prince

The Sound and the Fury

Angela’s Ashes

The God of Small Things

A People’s History of the United States : 1492 - Present

Cryptonomicon

Neverwhere

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Dubliners

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Beloved

Slaughterhouse-Five

The Scarlet Letter

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

The Mists of Avalon

Oryx and Crake

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Cloud Atlas

The Confusion

Lolita

On the Road

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Freakonomics

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The Aeneid

Watership Down

Gravity’s Rainbow

The Hobbit

In Cold Blood

White Teeth

Treasure Island

David Copperfield

The Three Musketeers

Grumble

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:06:17 GMT

So, I've been trying to start a quiz bowl team at Temple. Why? Well, I guess I just like it that much. That's why I've continue writing questions, both for NAQT and private tournaments, and even attended Penn Bowl last January. Now, many of you may remember that publicity is not my strong suit. I posted to Temple's LJ about quiz bowl and got a few bites, so I went ahead and submitted for a new organization. However, no one's been that enthusiastic since--but now I've gotten preliminary approval, so I feel like I have to actually make a club.

So, I asked the girl at the desk what the best ways of advertising a new organization were. She suggested flyers (which I don't particularly want to set up, nor go get approved), or little free cards for people to take (only slightly more appealing).

And then she suggested, "Or, you know, a lot of people advertise through Facebook. That might be your best bet."

I could have just decided that Temple quiz bowl was not going to happen. But in the end, I guess I decided that this was the last straw on a road I have been pushed toward for a long time, every time I hear about someone's awesome pictures from their European escapades, or various exciting acquaintances, or the simple joy of maintaining a very small amount of contact via this entity I have so long despised.

Dark side, I have joined thee.

--He Who is No Longer Too Cool For Facebook (though everyone in that group, of course, gets added to my Friends list automatically...)