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Aug. 28th, 2012 03:33 pm52. The Essential Emily Dickinson, ed. JC Oates (all Nth)
53. Tragedy of Mariam Queen of Jewry
54. Oroonoko
55. A Sentimental Journey
56. Heart of Darkness
Reading fell apart during a sleep adjustment but I'm trying again - having lost too much time to part 2 of The Sound and the Fury, which requires more untiredness for progress than any other significant text I know of; with Finnegans you can at least go with the flow. Well, the beginning of Sound, since you have enough to go on by halfway through, and Quentin's wanderings get fun by themselves.
Heart and Sound 2 are both quite strong in McCarthy so I thought about him a lot, and of course Salinger for Sound. The relationship of Sound to Heart seems too complex to trace, though it's surely there - maybe Waste Land looms too large between them, or the assimilation to Stephen on the beach is too complete. Perhaps influences melt rather than tangle in Faulkner.
Curious how the difficulties of Part 1 could be resolved by like eight footnotes, whereas 2's you really only get past by continuing to read 2. 1's are designed to help put you into a state as unmoored as Benjy's, then once they've spent themselves because you know what's up, that all this renaming's occurred, you're supposed to brood on the significance of the epidemic of renaming. For what it's *trying* to do this procedure is remarkably clumsy, unmimetic and annoying, like many of Joyce's, but also like many of Joyce's it's ridiculously successful as a way to draw the (persevering) reader deeper into the text than one's used to going. Enhancements of pathos, which, given the subject matter of 1 and 2, render them close to unbearable wherever they're not estranging you. Which of course was the main point of those other things, but it's almost like they provide their own shortcuts. I guess in art it helps to set up your alley such that lanes and gutters flow in and out of each other, what-you're-doing and what-you-must-have been-trying-to-do chasing each other productively in the reader's impressions.
Hated the Sterne at first but was slowly won over, enough that I'm more curious about Tristram. Mariam and Oroonoko weren't very good, but the latter had some glimmers of historical interest in the Surinam parts.
Dickinson reminded me of what I should actually be doing with my time: reading Dickinson.
They have me grading for the American survey course again this year. Among longer works there's Franklin and Douglass again, for the Fall, joined by The Scarlet Letter, Benito Cereno and Huck Finn; then Gatsby and Baldwin again in Spring, plus Albee, The Awakening, The Bluest Eye and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Haven't so much as glanced at that last one but I'm looking forward to the Morrison and various rereads - Who's Afraid and Scarlet Letter I haven't read since I think high school.
53. Tragedy of Mariam Queen of Jewry
54. Oroonoko
55. A Sentimental Journey
56. Heart of Darkness
Reading fell apart during a sleep adjustment but I'm trying again - having lost too much time to part 2 of The Sound and the Fury, which requires more untiredness for progress than any other significant text I know of; with Finnegans you can at least go with the flow. Well, the beginning of Sound, since you have enough to go on by halfway through, and Quentin's wanderings get fun by themselves.
Heart and Sound 2 are both quite strong in McCarthy so I thought about him a lot, and of course Salinger for Sound. The relationship of Sound to Heart seems too complex to trace, though it's surely there - maybe Waste Land looms too large between them, or the assimilation to Stephen on the beach is too complete. Perhaps influences melt rather than tangle in Faulkner.
Curious how the difficulties of Part 1 could be resolved by like eight footnotes, whereas 2's you really only get past by continuing to read 2. 1's are designed to help put you into a state as unmoored as Benjy's, then once they've spent themselves because you know what's up, that all this renaming's occurred, you're supposed to brood on the significance of the epidemic of renaming. For what it's *trying* to do this procedure is remarkably clumsy, unmimetic and annoying, like many of Joyce's, but also like many of Joyce's it's ridiculously successful as a way to draw the (persevering) reader deeper into the text than one's used to going. Enhancements of pathos, which, given the subject matter of 1 and 2, render them close to unbearable wherever they're not estranging you. Which of course was the main point of those other things, but it's almost like they provide their own shortcuts. I guess in art it helps to set up your alley such that lanes and gutters flow in and out of each other, what-you're-doing and what-you-must-have been-trying-to-do chasing each other productively in the reader's impressions.
Hated the Sterne at first but was slowly won over, enough that I'm more curious about Tristram. Mariam and Oroonoko weren't very good, but the latter had some glimmers of historical interest in the Surinam parts.
Dickinson reminded me of what I should actually be doing with my time: reading Dickinson.
They have me grading for the American survey course again this year. Among longer works there's Franklin and Douglass again, for the Fall, joined by The Scarlet Letter, Benito Cereno and Huck Finn; then Gatsby and Baldwin again in Spring, plus Albee, The Awakening, The Bluest Eye and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Haven't so much as glanced at that last one but I'm looking forward to the Morrison and various rereads - Who's Afraid and Scarlet Letter I haven't read since I think high school.
