Literature at Lunch
24-Jul-02
Today I went to Border’s for lunch. About once a week or so, I go there for lunch and spend half of my lunch break (and half my allowance) book-shopping, and the other half eating in their micro-cafe. I call it a micro-cafe because there’s almost nothing to eat, and their coffee/drinks selection isn’t even that impressive. It’s best three features are location, location, and location– it’s inside a bookstore. Unfortunately, they forgot to provide really snuggly chairs inside the cafe, but that’s probably for the best, as I would probably just cuddle up with a book and still be there now, instead of here at my place of employment.
Anyway, today I had meat lasagna and a mocha blendie for lunch. Of course, the bulk of my lunchtime was spent buying a very nicely bound hardcover copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses and a book of critical essays on Ulysses, a hardcover sketchbook (it almost matches the Joyce– I’m thinking of using it for reading notes on the book), and some finger-puppets that were 1/2 off (those are for my nephew).
Now, I have never successfully enjoyed a James Joyce story, and I have never actually finished a Joyce novel, so reading this will be an interesting experience for me. Nonetheless, it is crucial for the MA exam in November. I could probably take the exam right now and do okay on the novel/prose question, but I would feel more confident with a bit of Joyce under my belt. I could certainly blast through it with even a moderately strong understanding of, or at least appreciation for, Ulysses. Plus, I want to see how smart and/or crazy I am (I have a theory that you must be either a genius or a madman to really understand Joyce; being both probably helps). Also, I hope to be as pleasantly surprised by Joyce as I was by Milton– who really shocked me by writing a readable and enjoyable poem, once I got the “cadence” of it and could understand what the hell he was saying.
Other works on my upcoming reading list: two books of literary criticism, plus a third that I hope to read in time for the exam. Then, Inga and I will probably outline a plan for getting through some of the poetry, as poetry is my weakest area. I need to re-read The Making of a Poem, which has been very helpful in getting me to understand the forms of poetry, but which has also done an excellent job of fleeing from my memory entirely. I no longer know what a villanelle is, and suspect it is either (a) a drag queen with a black mustache who ties young ladies to train-tracks, or (b) a poem of a specific length and line structure, but whose structure currently evades me. Some sort of mnemonic device will almost certainly help, if I can think of one. Knowing these forms, incidentally, will help with the third exam question, in which one is given two poems to read, analyze, and discuss in their composition contexts (authors and dates are not given for the poems, so I was really afloat on this one!)
As far as poetry goes, I’d like to do a quick review of the Victorian poets, Browning in particular. I really like Browning. “My Last Duchess” is one of his best-known works, but certainly not his only narrative portrait, and not even his most subtle. Many of his works are similarly ironic, such as “The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church”, which begins in an exclamation of the poem’s central message– “Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!” The study of literature, unfortunately, affords me little space to delve into the authors whose work I genuinely enjoy for their entertainment value, and forces me instead to consider the works of authors whose works I must grudgingly accept as “great” even though their “greatness” does not result in any particular enjoyment or inspiration on my part.
I’d also like to focus in on G.M. Hopkins, whose poetry does actually inspire me, despite having been over-exposed to it in AP English. Then, move on into some of the 19th century American poets a bit, to kind of round things out in preparation for the exam (invariably, the exam asks you to evaluate one or more each of 19th, 20th, American, and British poets in the context of some statement about poetry or philosophical truth.
My weak areas are 19th century American poetry and 20th century British. And where does T. S. Eliot fit in, anyway? An early 20th century poet, certainly, and born in the U.S., but so disdainful of our country that he actually affected a British accent and adopted various British mannerisms? A friend of mine once described Samuel Beckett (I think it was Beckett) as an Irishman, living in England, and writing in French. Eliot seems to me much the same– an American impersonating an Englishman and writing in Greek.