Yeah, yeah. :rolleyes: So I'm destined for neurosis. My roomate is a Gemini, though, and he's far from neurotic.

he probably has a different ascendant

I have bile in my throat.

you may want to consider correcting that problem.

A bad teacher might. Otherwise, a total lie.



Fess up. Did you actually read the review, or are you quoting the fucking blurb on the back of every Vintage edition of Nabokov?



If I said, "It seems to me that only 100 people ever saw Velvet Underground, but each one started a band," I hope someone would call me on it. Well, I'm calling you on this. This is not your idea. Admit it. Paraphrasing someone else's idea doesn't make it your own.


re:Middlemarch


Well, I loved it, although a lot of people agree with Glice. Eliot's great; maybe Silas Marner would be an ideal place to test her waters.

Of course it's not my idea. I was showing off in a bid to get a girlfriend. And it might've just worked if it weren't for you darn meddling kids. Which i paraphrased from Scooby Doo, by the way.

Whoops. Sorry. I owe you a hand job.

lol. ah, it's all mental masturbation anyway.

the problem is that in any kind of literature "program" there will be

a) more bad teachers than good teachers

b) an aberrant emphasis on "critical theory" (or whatever fashionable name it goes by these days) over source materials.

c) more forced mandatory readings than voluntary readings. think compulsory sex with random persons. think having to listen to the complete creed discography, over and over, because it is of interest to some regional or historical culture or (worse even) some "critical" perspective.

i've had great teachers both at the BA and MA level and even on my PhD studies, but i ended up dropping out due to the market pressures from the MLA and the conference circuit which have nothing to do with "literature".

performance in that market (and its attending falsities) is the main determinant in an academic career of the literary variety. sort of like being a musician who only gets to be judged by their pitchfork score-- no, worse-- think NME or rolling stone.

in fact, most of the creatures who make a living in that market operate under the influence of the wanker frederic jameson when he claimed that "literature doesn't exist." the judges and arbiters of those markets demand that you write sociological papers & other wankery topics on wank.

so i quit the farce. after that, i stopped reading for 2 years and immersed myself in movies. quite therapeutic.

i'm enjoying books again, but my claim that formal courses of study at a university level are loaded with the potential to fuck you up still stand. sure, my statement made an absolute claim, but it was a quick one-liner, not a meditation on the subject. still, the kernel of my argument is valid to a great extent--from my perspective anyway. could i have a different one?

the problem with the formal study of literature as it is carried out today is that it requires that you practice a form of pseudo-sientific, pseudo-philosophical thinking that has very little or nothing to do with "art", and which has also very little to do with the random fortune or misfortune of running into individual "good" or "bad" teachers.

the fundamental problem of literary academia is the dysfunctional social system in which the study and teaching of literature occur. it is a profession that most blatantly rejects its own subject matter and immolates it in the satanic altar of career advancement, with the sacrificial dagger of whatever fashionable "theory" is in vogue at the moment.

sure, great critics always increase your love of art, but have you counted how many great critics are out there, publishing in the current journals? forewarned is forearmed...

and then there's the whole problem of compulsory readings, which i've listed but not discussed... i'll leave that one for another time.

my grandfather, whos a brilliant engineer intellectual jew type, gave me a TON of books on jewish thoughts and ideas. he does not believe in god or attend temple anymore (hes a man of science, and thinks of religion as war, thats it), but he still studies torah and studies judiasm as a philosophy. he gave me a ton of books by various jewish thinkers to read, ive read a couple, and though bored at times, found myself very interested, learing about my heritage and such. this one book he gave me, 'this is my god', ny herman wouk (one of my favorite writers anyways), has been sitting next to my bed for a year, and i still have yet to open it. anyways, im gonna try to read it now thanks to this thread, peace.

i keep on meaning to read Scott Heim's 'Mysterious Skin'.

read cat's cradle or player piano instead.

no way slaughterhouse 5 is awesome! so bleak! I love funny bleak shit!

cat;s cradle and galapagos next!

oh, i love slaughter house, but i love cat's cradle a little bit more.

Amen. Although, to counter that, I took a single Composition Pedagogy and Theory class that pretty much outlined that danger for potential teachers. Unfortunately it was a class required for LibEd (90% of which will teach elementary, ie not literature) and I don't know any other English major who's taken it. The whole subject is a mess.

And fuck MLA.

I can't disagree with a single thing in this post. Not a thing.

I teach at a university and while I hope that I'm one of the 'good' lecturers, the system in which I operate makes it very difficult for me to move beyond the banality of set 'readers' and theoretical orthodoxies.

My time is taken up on pointless bureaucracy and 'putting my ideas out there' via the conference circuit - which amounts to little more than an excuse to 'network'.

Good students struggle because their enthusiasm for the subject is hampered by an overly rigid course structure and a lack of willingness on the part of the department to wander outside of its ideological comfort-zone.

What is promoted instead is a kind of intellectual mediocrity, twinned with a desire to borrow ideas and frameworks from disciplines that rarely have much in common with what is meant to be studied. (I teach Art History, but to read my lectures you'd think I was dealing in some kind of bastardised hybrid of philosophy, sociology and cultural studies.)

The consequence of this is that students often leave an Art History degree well versed in the theories of Foucault, Deleuze and Lacan, but can't see anything in a Jackson Pollock besides some random splashes. They'll half digest some vogueish terms ('difference' is one that just won't go away) but are at a complete loss when actually confronted with a piece of art.

Someone might be very lucky and find themselves in a decent department, but they'll be just that: very lucky.

In the past two years I've known two lecturers that have suffered nervous breakdowns. Both of these were very good at what they did but found the sheer banalaity of the structure in which they were expected to operate ultimately impossible. Alcoholism amongst lecturers is also rife (I think we're just one notch below doctors in that respect).

So if i take issue with anything in your otherwise spot-on post, it's that there are some excellent lecturers out there. Unfortunately they work within a system that either forces them to conform or else destoys their spirit enough to make them leave, either through resignation or as the consequence of a breakdown.

Crap, isn't it.

Is it wrong that I find On the Road terribly boring?

No. It is. Terribly so.

Out of curiosity, how old are you? Well no, I don't really care how old you are. What I mean is, how well into that career are you? I'm going to be getting my B.A. in May (English-Writing), and feel like I'm kind of being shoved into a movie-production career that I don't really want, just because it's easy to get into and may have an easy outlet for my writing.

I'd much rather set myself up for teaching at the college level, but all the advisors I talk to make it sound impossible before getting a doctorate. I'm going to go for one, in time, but I'd like to go out and get into the field (and, well, you know, make some actual money to pay stuff off) in the meantime. I know I've had professors with B.A.s, though. In fact I wrote an article for the school paper defending a few amazing professors in this position that got a lot of positive feedback (and I think it helped one of them get a better position). However, I have no idea how they got the job in the first place and what I would need to do to follow.

Do you have any advice?

And On the Road isn't that bad. But it's not wrong to feel that way.