Category Archives: Books

Summer Readin’ (Had Me a Blast)

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If you’re like me, summertime is an excuse to catch up on some much-needed sanity.

There are no papers to write, no required reading for the week, no classes to attend, and the long days are filled with what seems like hours upon hours of free time because even if you have to work a real job, by cutting out the demands of the rest of your life (i.e.: school) at least you have several more hours in the week with which to play.  And your brain isn’t chewing on the most recent class discussion or assignment, so you’ve got plenty of free processing space.  This can only mean one thing: time for some summer reading.

I recognize that the vast majority of the world isn’t like me.  Despite that, there is something wonderfully nostalgic about summer reading.  As a culture, we are brought up to associate summertime with semi-assigned reading time that at least gives the illusion of choice.  However, once freed from the clutches of primary school, we find ourselves adrift in a sea of choices.  Too many, in fact.  Do we read what Oprah tells us to, the New York Times tells us to, our friends, the local bookstore, amazon.com?

As a regular person (and not a super geek), often times there are things that we know we should get around to reading but simply have not done so.  Classics, conversation pieces, bits of literati that we feel should have a place in our lives but for some reason don’t.

Based upon the precepts that you are a regular person, you like to read, but you don’t like ridiculously thick prose or buzz words the size of my forearm, today I am compiling a list of summer reading for you.  Obviously this is biased by my own personal tastes, but I have tried to include as broad a spectrum as possible.  The only rule which I strictly adhered to is Novels Only.  A novella or two snuck in, but there are no plays or pieces of poetry here.  My reasoning is that summer reading should be easy.  It shouldn’t take mental exertion to get through (though perhaps it does provide some food for thought).  Plays and poetry are different beasts from novels and thereby would require mindsets which definitely deviate from the sentiment of summer reading.

This is in no particular order of importance, though I tried to make it have some sense of progression wherever possible.

Book reports will be expected the second week in September (though I may not get around to grading them until winter break).

Enjoy!

1)     Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; Every.  Human.  Being.  Should.  Read.  This.  Book.  Period.  It has a broad smattering of topics: World War Two, Vietnam, Time Travel, Aliens, and heart-wrenching statements about humanity.  It’s a quick read, an engaging novel, and an interesting story.  It’s also one of Vonnegut’s most easy to digest pieces (his writing style can be a bit disorienting at times, but that works for this book).  Vonnegut is one of the great novel-writers of the twentieth century and I sincerely believe that reading a piece of his is pivotal to the modern American mind.  And there are several quotable catch-phrases from this book that you can whip out to impress your literary friends once you’re through.

2)      Pride and Prejudice … with or without zombies  by Jane Austen or Seth Grahame-Smith;  No, watching the Colin Firth movie does not count (though

Lizzy Bennet kicks some serious undead hiney

could get you bonus points if you read the book first).  Come on, you haven’t read this book?  You’ve sat through a Julia Roberts movie and you haven’t read this book?  Man up and take it like a champ.  You may just wind up being entertained.  The zombie version is a really cute bit of Austen-mania and totally worth the read once you’ve read the original.  Yes, you’ll get the humor if you haven’t read Austen’s version first, but it’ll make you feel morally superior to read them in sequence.  Trust me, a sure-fire way to make yourself feel smarter.

3)      Anything by Toni Morrison.  It may be worth having a look back at my thoughts on this most talented of American writers before you set out on this endeavor.  No, her books aren’t pretty.  They’re not pleasant.  They’re not polite, and they make you feel uncomfortable.  But they are literature at its best, folks.  Of the published authors alive today, Toni Morrison is (in my opinion) the greatest.

4)      Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift;  This is particularly prime summer reading since it is a travelogue of its own sort.  Swift’s sense of humor is generally shocking to a modern audience, so be forewarned about the immense amount of fart and poop jokes that you are about to encounter.  To me, they’re the highlight of the novel (YES!  Eighteenth century fart and poop jokes!).  This one also comes with a snob-rating since the story is so frequently re-told in our culture.  Wouldn’t you like to know what really happened to poor old Lemuel Gulliver rather than rely upon Jack Black to tell you?  If you’re in a Swift mood, you may also want to look up his essay “A Modest Proposal” and give it a whirl.  It’s easily one of my favorite short bits of literature…

5)     Dracula by Bram Stoker;  Since we’re talking Irish authors, let’s give good ol’ Bram a shout-out.  Another fantasy-travel-novel, Dracula is perhaps most famous for its portrayal of Christopher Lee… or perhaps the other way

eat your heart out, Robert Pattinson

around.  This novel’s epistolary form marks it as a piece of a definite literary movement (epistolary was immensely popular in the eighteenth century, so it marks this piece as having a definite “vintage” feel even for a reader contemporary to its publishing).  Best perk to reading this book: it makes you measurably superior to a Twilight fan.

6)      Frankenstein by Mary Shelley;  While we’re talking about epistolary Gothic novels, let’s throw this one in there.  Abandon all thoughts of Boris Karloff (and even Kenneth Branagh).  Film adaptations of this cultural phenomenon hit NOWHERE NEAR the actual thing.  Consider them utterly unimaginative bits of fanfic.  You don’t know Frankenstein until you’ve Shelley’s novel.  Extra literary factoid: there are two editions of this text which vary enough that literati have constant debates about them.  The 1818 edition (near and dear to my heart) is an edition which some say was heavily edited by Mary’s husband Percy Shelley.  Its introduction is written by him pretending to be her.  We do know that he looked over the manuscript, but the exact degree of his red-penning is difficult to determine.  The 1831 edition was published after Percy’s death and includes a preface from Mary herself (available at the back of most critical texts).  Mary claims that this edition is closer to what she first meant to write, but since the 1818 text received so much criticism when it was released it is hard to say whether Mary was simply bowing to that criticism or genuine in her sentiments.  Either way, do get your hands on a copy and read it!

7)      The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; This is an especially good book to read if you are in a time of transition.  It’s a novel-length allegory and is full of beautiful, inspiring thoughts.  Personally, I was resistant at first to a novel which (as I perceived it) tried to preach to me about what I should and should not do, but boy was I missing out on some lovely and wonderful new ways to perceive things.  It’s not a how-to guide, it’s a road map.  Think of it that way and it’ll make the entire experience more enjoyable.

8)      A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; The first Sherlock Holmes novel both sequentially in the timeline, and that Conan Doyle wrote.  If you never read another of the stories (and I highly recommend that you do), you must at least read this one.  Otherwise, you are banned from ever saying “elementary!”, smoking a pipe, or even thinking about deer-stalker caps (which incidentally appeared nowhere in any of the books but rather were introduced to the Holmes mythos by artist Sidney Page in his illustration which accompanied  “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”  in 1891, a good four years after Holmes’ introduction as a literary character).

Page's sketch of Holmes and Watson

9)      The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams; If you like quirky British humor (and really, who doesn’t?), MUST MUST MUST read this!  I will forgive you if you don’t get through the entire series (I’ll admit that I have not), but at least give this first one a good read.  It’s funny, it’s engaging, and it’s a classic!  Okay, maybe you’ll never discuss it in an English lit class, but you’ll definitely be discussing it with your nerd friends.  ALL THE TIME.

10)   On the Road by Jack Kerouac; Yet another travel narrative, but this time American and beatified!  Kerouac is perhaps the most poetic novelist I’ve ever read (and that I can stomach to read… I’m not a huge fan of poetic novelists).  It’s a slim book, but I wouldn’t call it a quick read simply because his style demands a bit more attention than your average bear.  Still, well worth the extra effort.

Now find yourself a sunbeam, pour some lemonade, and get busy!  If you finish all these before the summer is out, I’ll be more than happy to provide more suggestions!

BOOM!

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The fourth of July always makes me think of Gandalf.

This is probably the direct response to several things in my life:

1)    My family has never ever been anything even remotely resembling patriotic.  As such, the Fourth of July was never celebrated in any regard in my household.  It was just another day except for…

2)    The fact that my father is a pyromaniac.  The sale and use of fireworks is illegal in New York without a professional license, but the house I grew up in was very close to the Connecticut border (where the sale and use of amateur fireworks is quite legal) and in a lake community.  You do the math.

3)    It was my father who first introduced me to the wonderful world of J.R.R. Tolkien and, thereby, fantasy literature (thanks, dad!).  He read me The Hobbit as a bedtime story when I was a kid, then we worked our way through The Lord of the Rings.

4)    My dad loves wizards.

Today, my father is a professional pyrotechnician (though not a full-time one).  He may never make flying, fire-breathing dragons come out of mortar and cannon-fuse, but he

Shot of my Dad's show from last year

does put on one hell of a show.  As you can imagine, July fourth and its surrounding environs tend to be busy season for the hobbyist pyro.

So, in honor of blow-stuff-up-for-your-country-day, let’s talk about Gandalf.

Tolkein’s inclusion of fireworks as one of Gandalf’s many talents was meant to hint at the well-roundedness which made Gandalf the Gray unique amongst the other wizards within Tolkein’s universe.  Remember how Sarumon and the White Council were continually perplexed at Gandalf’s interest in Hobbits?  I always had the impression that Gandalf’s talent with fireworks was another of his dirty little secrets that the Council would have frowned upon.  Despite that, Gandalf continued to innovate with fireworks and always brought at least one new trick to his shows in the Shire.

What this all boils down to is that Gandalf was one hip wizard.  He knew, even though no one else did, that Hobbits were more resilient than perhaps any other sentient race in Middle Earth.  His knowledge of the arcane was something which he mingled with gunpowder, an advanced bit of technology in the sword-swinging Middle Earth (yes, technically China was making fireworks and gun powder since the seventh century here in the real world, but this knowledge would not migrate to Western Europe until the thirteenth century which is a good long time after Lord of the Rings was supposedly set… remember that Tolkein wrote it as a series of pre-European-history myths and thereby it would have pre-dated Arthur in the late fifth century).  This makes Gandalf not only a wizard, but also a scientist (and probably an alchemist, though we could debate the extension of that meaning until next Tuesday).

Gandalf and his fireworks (and, of course, Sir Ian McKellen)

This is an interesting move on Tolkein’s part.  Though writing from deep inside the Modernist movement, Tolkein’s work harkens back to Romanticism.  The motifs on display within Lord of the Rings (i.e. the fading of an old world, anxiety created by technology (see especially the scourging of the shire), and lengthy/idealized portraits of the natural world) are themes directly out of Wordsworth.  The Romantic rejection of modern technology as a device which leads to an ugly, impersonal world (see: “The World is too Much With us”) seems to be one which Tolkein would have upheld (at least within Rings).

And yet, here we find one of the book’s most powerful, influential, and sympathetic characters as a proprietor of this modern technology.  At this juncture, we must again recall that Gandalf did everything he could to keep the War away from the Shire.  It was because of his efforts that the Shire was able to remain so pristine and innocent through the vast majority of an otherwise middle-earth-shaking cataclysm.  The Shire, the ultimate site of the novel’s pastoral, was also the primary enjoyer of Gandalf’s technological deviancy.  So it wasn’t that Gandalf was working to keep technology entirely away from the Shire (if he was, he wouldn’t have brought fireworks), but it also wasn’t that he wanted technology to be a way of life amongst the Hobbits either.

If this isn’t a mixed message, then I’m not certain what is.

Despite the complications of this analysis, the literary function of the fireworks is very simple.  Tolkein very clearly set forth to create a visually stunning world (as made abundantly clear by Peter Jackson’s breathtaking films).  This is no small feat for a novel-writer (though perhaps was made slightly easier by the not-so-film-centric WWII era which spawned Tolkein’s most famous work).  Gandalf’s fireworks, like the white horses he creates at the Ford of Rivendell, are an aspect to this world; a writer’s flourish which adds character and depth to an already imagery-laden universe.

Happy July fourth, everyone.  Now go find yourself some wizardly technology to ogle!

>The Twilight Zone

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>As you may have noticed by now, I am slightly pre-occupied with vampire fiction. As such, the Twilight phenomenon has utterly fascinated me. I’ve thought long and hard about it. I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the movies. I’ve blogged. Repeatedly. And I’m still not certain that I entirely grasp it.

My midterm for Jack’s Gothic class was a piece connecting Twilight with the vampire genre as a whole and attempting to fasten it to the greater issues at stake within vampire fiction. My attempt was only slightly successful, mostly due to the fact that I was juggling the impending MA exam at the time, but also because there seems to be a dearth of serious scholarship on the matter. I would say “you can’t really blame them”, except for the fact that I’ve unearthed a plethora of Buffy scholarship. Why should Twilight be so different? Same genre, similar demographic, granted Buffy has been around a bit longer so it’s had longer to be kicked around by the requisite minds… but eight years isn’t all that long. Something about the situation didn’t sit right with me, and it took me some time to realize why.

I never really thought about the major difference that a good, solid piece of literature makes to a paper as opposed to shallow drivel. Because really, let’s face it folks, Twilight ain’t Finnegan’s Wake. It wasn’t until I was deep within my paper’s crafting that I realized how difficult it was for me to write anything truly meaningful, insightful or original about it… even though it wasn’t a scholarly village horse like Frankenstein or the Shakespeare stuff that I’m used to working with upon which everyone’s had a go and thereby much less likely to be shocked, awed, or otherwise affected by your own turn with it.

What I’m really getting down to is a simple fact: Joss Whedon can write. Stephenie Meyer can’t. Whedon makes something deep and engaging, Meyer makes brain bubblegum that will do nothing but rot your proverbial mental teeth. It may taste good, but trust me, it has no caloric or nutritive value whatsoever.

Anyway, I cranked my midterm out, thoughts of publication only vaguely floating through my mind. Yes, there was a place for the scholarship but A) did I really want to be that Twilight girl and B) the paper itself wasn’t really up to my usual par. I blame the literature. Wait, no, not literature… book. It’s just a book.

Suffice to say that Stephenie Meyer and I haven’t really been on speaking terms since that midterm paper. Imagine, then, my surprise when I walked into Jack’s office before Gothic this week and saw, sitting proudly upon his desk, a paperback copy of Twilight. I arched my eyebrow at him, trying to formulate a suitably smart-ass remark.

Flash back to earlier in the semester when Jack had been poking around for suggestions for the last week of class; a time he wished to devote to the “modern Gothic”. I believe the first thing out of my mouth when he suggested that perhaps Twilght would be a great option was “Please don’t willingly subject people to this.”

Wavy lines and funny music bring us back to Jack’s office, present-day. He looked at me slightly sheepishly, “Yea, I decided that it’s the most popular example of Gothic out there these days so… I’m assigning a chapter.”

I sighed, “I want it on record that this was against my advisement.”

“Duly noted.” He said, and we began talking about much more consequent things.

Flash forward again to the last ten minutes of class. Jack reaches over to the ubiquitous stack of copying that has been lurking on the table in front of him for the entire class period as he launches into an explanation of the class for next week. “So, there are some songs on blackboard and we will be watching some film clips, and Danielle told me that you should all be reading a chapter from her favorite book so… here you go!”

He passed the dreaded pages down and my colleagues groaned as they saw the title. “Jack!” I said, “What are you doing!? I’m going to get beat up in the alley after class!” … I didn’t remind him (or them) that this was the second time the syllabus suffered at my hand. The first, of course, was a fight to the end for the inclusion of The Mysteries of Udolpho which (by the by) is the foundational text of modern Gothic… it’s also a six-hundred-page-slow-moving-book-from-hell. I think my colleagues have finally forgotten about my role in their being forced to read this thing so far be it from me to freshen their memories.

That didn’t stop them from being upset about the Twilight thing. “Hey, Danielle, I hear there’s a dumpster out behind Robeson…”

It’s a good thing that I do a lot of cardio.

In any case, I’m sitting here now attempting to read this chapter and, for the first time, I’m actually having trouble getting through it. I am pleasantly surprised by this fact, and would be more happy about it if I didn’t have to get through said chapter for class next week.

This is the first time that I’ve returned to any of the Twilight books since the midterm debacle. I would like to say that demystifying their allure has helped to break their uncanny spell upon me, but I’m pretty sure that it’s mostly due to end-of-semester mental gridlock.

>Happy Thursday

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In the world-weary words of everyone’s favorite homosexual Disney villain; “Life’s not fair, isn’t it?” (Scar, by the way folks.  Scar.  The Lion King.  Yea, I know, figuring he was gay was a mind-blowing event for me, too).
I very frequently describe my workload as an ocean.  It is vast, uncountable, uncontainable, and the best I can ever hope to do is tread water within it.  At a certain point in the semester, this treading water becomes strategic drowning.  Where can I take a break?  How long can I hold my breath?  Where do I really need to break the surface, how much is that going to take out of me, and in the long run will the effort to do so equal the greatest rate of return?
Generally, this feeling begins right around midterms time.  If I’m lucky, I can keep it at bay until I begin research for my finals.
Well I’m two weeks out from midterm number one and already I’m gasping for air.  I blame the common reading exam.  You see, usually when my work is done for the week I have a few hours with which to relax with the knowledge that I have nothing to do (unless I want to be an over-achiever and start on next week’s reading).  With the exam, however, all that time is diverted into (gasp) more reading.  It never ends.  As soon as I think I’ve caught a break, another wave comes by and shoves me right back under the water.
So I’m tired.  And stressed.  And my brain feels like oatmeal (maybe with little chunks of bananas because there are still a few bits that haven’t liquefied yet).  I’ve started getting the stress-headaches and all the wonderful things that erupt from them (tired eyes… migraines with aura are AWESOME let me tell you), my traps feel like someone stuck a fist in them and clenched and has refused to let go, and of course there is the ever-lurking threat of becoming sick yet again.
With that in mind, I’m having trouble being coherent this week.  Here’s a list of random stuff that has crossed my desk recently.
1)    I’m reading Northanger Abbey for aforementioned Best Professor Ever’s Gothic class.  I love this book.  I LOVE this book.  Have I mentioned how much I love this book?  I wrote a paper about it for my Austen class last semester which then became my PhD writing sample and I’m hoping to whip it into publication shape as soon as I have a moment to breathe.  I have to say despite everything reading this book feels like coming home again.  Shhhh.  Don’t tell Will I said that, he may be jealous.
2)    I’m giving a talk Saturday at the inaugural Rutgers Newark MA Consortium.  I haven’t looked at the paper I’m giving in months.  I haven’t looked at the notes on the paper I’m giving in months.  Luckily, I have a presentation written up I just have to brush the dust off of it and remember my Nietzsche.  Easier said than done I think.  Hey, by the way, come to the Rutgers Newark MA Consortium on Saturday!
3)    In a month, I will be past the roughest spot of this semester.  I’m torn on whether this is an awesome thing or a horrible one.  According to www.thegradcafe.com, Columbia’s decision letters usually come out the first week in March (or at least they do for my program).  My first midterm is due 3/9 (I will be begging an extension though so that I have Spring Break to work on it).  Spring break is 3/12-3/20.  MA exam is 3/21 and 3/22.  After that, I’m not gonna say it’s all smooth sailing, but at least I can ignore the extra reading that keeps weighing me down like a big regency dress on a chick who was forced to walk the pirate plank into some exotic gulf in Bermuda. 
4)    I am not where I want to be with my short story that I’m writing for my writing group.  I have a draft.  I want to have several drafts.  Pens down on this story is in three days.  Several drafts is so not going to happen.
5)    First stack of grading came to me yesterday.  I both adore and loathe the first stack of grading.  I am always eager to jump back in with my red pen in hand and learn them undergrads good.  On the other hand, putting a grade on the first assignment innately limits the potential of the students.  Before that first grade, they are all A students.  As soon as I mark this paper, lines are drawn as to the quality of the class and the work which should be expected from them.  This point of view may grant me, the grader, a little too much agency in what is really a problem precipitated by them, the students, but I can’t help but see things this way.  I want them to do well.  I don’t want anyone to do poorly; there’s no reason for them to do poorly.  The assignments aren’t mind-bending hard, we have resources for students who aren’t stellar writers to get help, and it’s not like they didn’t have warning about the workload for the course.  With proper time management skills and resource utilization, there is absolutely no reason why these students should do poorly in the class.  And still, I can nearly guarantee, at least a third of these papers will exhibit piss-poor quality (possibly poor enough to fail).  Sigh.
6)    I would very much like a massage, an honest-to-god day off, a good-looking man to come feed me chocolate-covered strawberries, and a pony.  Is that so much to ask?

>Fangs for the Incite

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I am mad.  No, not mad, angry.  No, not angry, seeing red, flames on the side of my face, steam coming out of my ears livid.  What, might you ask, is the cause of this anger?  The source of this towering inferno of rage?
Flash back to yesterday.  I made a trip to my local Barnes and Noble to pick up the next book in my current bedtime reading series (it’s nothing literary, just some awesome urban fantasy writing… I need a very specific kind of book to lull my brain into slumber at the end of a long day).  I rode the escalator up to the fiction section of the store, inhaling the wonderful scent of mass-market paperbacks and coffee (I love LOVE the smell of books).  My mind was idly tapping itself against the actual reading I was doing for the CRE that is creeping up on me faster and faster every day.  I was fairly zoned out of my surroundings, still warming up from my short walk from car to store, excited to peruse the shelves that I was headed for… maybe I would even go look at the Neil Gaimen books and thumb lovingly through them!  Maybe I would take a field trip to the Shakespeare shelf and glance over it to see if there were any new books! 
And that, my friends, is when it happened.  Staring me in the face on one of those “buy these books if you like that book” tables in a display of gothic teenage macabre were stacks and stacks of the Twilight series.  That wouldn’t bother me so much.  After all, they are best sellers (for more info as to why, head on over and read my assessment of the series as a whole).  What really bothered me was the sign on the table.  This sign, in mock-blood-dripping script, read “The books that started it all”.
Woah.  WOAH.  First of all, no.  Secondly, HELL NO.  “Started it all”?  What, the vampire genre?  Because that was John Polidori with The Vampyre in 1819.  Vampires as the subject of the novel?  Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897.  Vampire as a popular mass-market genre?  Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire,1976.  Vampire as a book-to-film dark fantasy extravaganza?  Also Anne Rice, Interview, 1994.  Made the vampire story something told in first person PoV by some mortal acquaintance who somehow magically is wrapped up in the otherworldliness of vampires?  Laurell K. Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures, 1993.  Made the vampire the equivalent of a modern rock star oozing sex indiscriminately and conquering mortal women as they have to struggle through their hum-drum lives without becoming a vampire?  Charlaine Harris, All Together Dead, 2001.  This is not even to bring into account the multitudes of vampire films, TV shows, and role playing games that did more for the genre than (arguably) some of these authors did. 
I will say the one thing that Meyer did add to the vampire: safety.  Her vampires may as well be unicorns or some other shiny mythical beast.  They are innately dangerous (as dangerous as any other carnivore) but, as I’ve contended previously, they have been de-fanged.  By being able to survive off of non-human blood (and actively pursuing this lifestyle), the complications of being a vampire are taken away from them.  They need not live with the guilt of death in exchange for their own mortal existences, they can go eat a cow like a normal person.  Not only may they walk in sunlight, but it makes them sparkly!  SPARKLY!  Half of them aren’t even dark and brooding characters!  They are not killers, they are not Satan’s minions, they are no longer creatures of the night. 
If Meyer’s vampires have been de-fanged, they have also been unsexed.  Sex is a vital piece to the vampire and the original vampire stories were no more than thinly veiled euphemisms for intercourse (come on, hard fangs puncturing soft flesh and an exchange of bodily fluids?  Sound familiar?).  Meyer has denied her vampires their very essence and, by doing so, made them into something that is undeniably inhuman, but simultaneously unvampire. 
So yes, she opened the “vampire” reading audience up to individuals who would otherwise never have cracked a vampire novel in their lives.  But what does this really mean?  It is difficult for me to imagine that a Twilight teeny-bopper would ever read and/or enjoy a real vampire story.  Reading Twilight is nothing more than a pale excuse to say “yes, I’m misunderstood and brooding!  Look at me, I’m suuuuch a vampire groupie!”  It’s like wearing black eyeliner and pale makeup because it’s cool; these actions say nothing about the individual and everything about their attentiveness to trends and fads.
Flash back further to a middle-school-aged Danielle.  She is socially trod upon, downcast, and geeky.  She clutches a book to her chest which she reads because it makes her feel better.  The title of the book is Interview with the Vampire.  As if the popular kids didn’t have enough to make fun of her about (she’s not skinny, she doesn’t wear makeup, she has big plastic-rimmed glasses, she doesn’t play sports, she would rather spend an afternoon with Magic cards than at the mall… need I go on?) they see this book.  It stands as a testament to why she will never fit in with the “cool” kids.  Anyone who reads “that vampire stuff” clearly is far too dark and weird to ever fit in.
So it’s not that I’m bitter that kids now-a-days can read a “vampire” novel and have it speak to their coolness as opposed to their awkwardness, but if they’re gonna read one, at least it could be a real one.  I’m not saying they should dive right in to Interview or Anita Blake stuff… but can’t there be some happy middle ground between not-a-vampire-vampire-novels and actual hard-core-blood-sucking?
And really, Barnes and Noble, I’m curious.  What did Meyer start?  Christmas bonuses for your CEOs?  Because surely whatever it was had nothing to do with the genre that she is only vaguely and begrudgingly associated with. 

>I Want you to Hit me as Hard as you Can

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Since Austen has been so high on my mind lately, the world has become a hazy rose-hued place of beauty and sensationalism coupled with the grayish-pink normality of daily life.  Things taste of earl grey and smell of violetwater.  I resist the urge to say “Oh my!” and fan myself daintily with a glove-clad hand.  The practice of reading novels is something I must think twice about before engaging in lest I become one of those women who thinks too much and thereby shall never land a husband.
Apparently, I am not alone.  Over this past weekend, this video was brought to my attention.
First and foremost, let me articulate how hilarious I find it.  The following analysis comes not from any lacking in my sense of humor, but rather an over-exaggeration of my sensibilities as a reader of Austen.  Honestly, if I wasn’t wading hip-deep in Austen criticism currently, I probably would have laughed the entire thing away and failed to put a second thought to it.  It is, truly, a funny piece of work.
That disclaimer out of the way, as a theorist I can’t help but note that Lizzie Bennet is likely miscast in her role of Tyler Durden.  Lizzie is most certainly the most famous of Austen’s women and for good reason.  She has a staring role in Austen’s most well read novel.  She has a bright, intelligent, strong personality that a modern audience absolutely connects to.  She is smart, beautiful, and gets the ultimate tall-dark-brooding-handsome-rich man in the end.  If I was stuck in some bizarre and world-altering literary cataclysm and had to choose one of Austen’s women to live as, it would be Lizzie Bennet.  Her story is relatable, desirable, and utterly romantic.
However, one of Lizzie’s most important characteristics is that, despite her brilliance and wittiness, she never outwardly performs any action of social impropriety.  Her barbs are measured, counted, and always reserved for the correct place at the correct time.  There is no unhealthy oppression in Lizzie (that is all left to her father, poor soul).  She says what she wants and needs to, but only does so at moments in which she knows she can get away with it.  Most importantly, Lizzie’s careful application of tact ensures that even her rebellion attracts the most desirable suitor.  Darcy is drawn to Lizzie precisely because of her rebellious streak.  This streak, thereby, goes to re-enforce social norms and the institution of male power within the novel despite its assertion of female agency in the acquisition of that power.
There is undeniably another woman, however, who would be more appropriately cast in this role.  To me, Marianne Dashwood is a much more likely candidate for the institution of such an organization as depicted in this little vignette.  Marianne famously is of a passionate and over-brimming heart, and acts precisely as she feels when she feels it.  She is unable to succumb to the boundaries of social propriety, and though her mind is sharp she cannot tame it to the demands of a society woman.  She, it seems, would instigate such fights.  She would lead the other women into the same lack of restraint that she exhibits throughout the course of her novel.
That being said, Fanny is the perfect candidate for the role of unnamed-Edward-Norton-narrator.  Quite, reserved, constantly told that she is inadequate, unable to stand up for herself, insistently put down by the book’s higher-socially-ranked characters, if anyone required a means of blowing off repressed anger it would be Fanny.  More importantly, the weak and measly push-over that Fanny is is the text-book definition of “beware of the quiet type”.  It would be of no surprise to me that Fanny should imagine herself an alternate person which, once donned, would allow her to act out.  More importantly, Marianne Dashwood would fill that persona swimmingly; wild, romantic, carefree, unbounded; the perfect fantasy for the mousy Fanny to enact in her attempt at conquering her own meekness.
….and perhaps it’s just because my most recent paper is on Northanger Abbey, but where is Catherine Morland?  Don’t satirical Gothic heroines get to beat people up too?
In any case, this certainly inspires further thought.  In recent years, Austen’s works have provided the muse for a series of adaptations which has brought them center-stage in the eyes of the reading masses.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the first (and perhaps most famous) of these.  It is hard to say whether these appropriations should be grouped into literary fan fiction, or legitimate attempts to make these texts speak to a modern audience.  Having done no lengthy study upon them, it is a difficult distinction for me to make.  I suppose it begs us to first answer the question of how far one can go from an original text while still maintaining its integrity.  Do the zombies make this book another book, or should it still be shelved with its predecessor?  Are we talking about one thing, or two things?  Where does something go from “classical” to “absurd”? 
Rather than proposing any immediate answer to these questions, I’d rather pull a Professor move and allow them to ruminate in your minds.  As per usual, thoughts upon them are always welcome…. Especially if accompanied by beer.

>A Confession

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I have a confession to make.
I wasn’t going to say anything about it, especially in so public a forum as this, but it’s been eating away at me.  I’ve been living with this secret weighing upon me day after day and I just don’t think I can bear it any longer.  I hope none of you will think the less of me for it, but I simply cannot remain silent anymore.
I am having an affair.
A steamy, torrid, passionate affair right under the nose of the man who I am eternally bound to.  I have secret trysts in the library after lectures.  I leave my apartment constantly peering over my shoulder for fear that My Man won’t buy the lame excuse of “lunch with the girls” again.  I creep into my armchair with my sordid companion knowing that someday my Beloved will look out from his perch on my bookshelf and see, his vision suddenly cleared.  Those little “homework sessions” weren’t so innocent.  The time I spent thumbing through pages was perhaps a bit too tender, too enthralled, too loving.  The hours of research weren’t just for class, they were for something more, something dangerous, something that perhaps could be a huge detriment to our relationship. 
I’m cheating on Shakespeare with Jane Austen.
At first it was innocent.  That class reading wasn’t going to do itself.  I had to spend quality time with Jane, my syllabus (Lord High Ruler of my life), demanded it.  But then, somewhere midway through Northanger Abbey, it changed.  No longer was I just doing class reading.  No longer was I taking notes to keep myself awake.  I began to enjoy her company.  I was enraptured, captivated by her wit and charm.  Mesmerized by the research prospects and the impact it could have on my greater sphere of work.  I became a woman possessed, slave to the wiles of another author.
I deluded myself for a long time.  It’s easy to do.  “It’s okay to think whatever I want to think, it’s just a crush, it’s natural.”  “Everyone has urges to stray, the important part is that they don’t follow them.  Fidelity is achieved by action, not thought.”  “It’s just one cuddle session, it doesn’t mean anything.  I bet Will has them with other girls all the time.”  “We’re like SISTERS, we can totally spend time together!”
I didn’t realize how serious things had become until I picked up Pride and Prejudice.  I opened the novel, breathe bated.  I eagerly anticipated that infamous opening line.  Those words that were just so funny, so re-assuring, so much like home that I wondered why it had taken me so long to return to one of my favorite books.  I prepared, primped, projected… and then… they were there.  In front of me.  “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”  I smiled and felt Her bubble up from the pages to embrace me and I fell into that embrace contented, comforted, keen.
There was no doubt about it.  This was going to be a serious problem.
It’s not like you can’t love two people at once, right?  Juliet herself says it, “My bounty is as boundlesse as the Sea,/My Loue as deepe, the more I giue to thee/The more I haue, for both are Infinite…” (Romeo and Juliet, 934-936).  Love doesn’t run out.  It’s not like I’m taking anything away from Shakespeare by loving Austen.  He can’t miss me that much, there are so many other scholars still talking about him… I’m sure he’s barely noticed that I’m gone.  And besides, I’ll be back.  This is just for a semester… just for this one class… or maybe a year if I wind up conferencing with my paper… or maybe two or three if it gets published….
Oh god.  I’m going to have to tell him.  That’s all there is to it.  It’s been going on too long, I’m sure he sees that something is wrong, I just hope he realizes that it’s me and not him.  And that, once this is all over, I’ll be back to him.  He has my intellectual attention now and forever and nobody can take his place in my heart.  Not even a women who wrote such funny prose about some amazing characters and whose works offer a plethora of opportunities for…
No.  Stop.  I’m telling Will.  And I’ll do something nice for him.  Maybe pay him some homage by lecturing the kids at fight call this weekend about the bad Hamlet quartos…

>Society for the Promotion of Ethical Treatment of Vampires

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In my last entry, I briefly tackled the warm fuzziness which marks Meyers’ vampires as utterly distinct from the vampiric genre.  I would like to take some time to unpack this notion at greater length, so for today’s Twilight-themed essay we’re going to continue the discussion of sparkly vampires.
Picking up from where we left off, the sparkly vampire introduces a newer, softer vampire into the literary world.  A more socially acceptable vampire.  A vampire you can take home to mom and pop.  The Meyers vampire is a Mormon vampire, and this is reflected in many aspects of the Twilight story.
Sparkly vampires come in packs; families.  Large families.  The Cullens, for instance, are a family of eight by the end of the series.  Sparkly vampires also seem to be pre-destined to find one eternal soul mate.  This individual is a person the sparkly vampire cannot live without, a partner.  The sparkly vampire is incomplete without this partner, tragically flawed in some way until this partner arrives to complete him (or her).   In the case of all mentioned partnerships within the Twilight universe, this partner is a member of the opposite sex.  No Gay Mormon Vampires.  These vampires have values, they recognize the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family despite their inability to bear children, a factor that comes into play greatly in Eclipse as well as Breaking Dawn.
As a semi-related notion, I would like to add that the incessantly strong anti-abortion message present in Breaking Dawn really offends my sensibilities as a reader as well as a member of society.  By the time Breaking Dawn was released, the world (and one would presume the author) had some inkling of the scope of the Twilight phenomenon.  This was a series widely popular amongst impressionable age groups.  Including political messages in such a series is bad form and simply distasteful.  We have already established that Twilight is popular in part due to its appeal as a role-playing fantasy.  Suddenly, the title character of the series (the individual from whose mind the reader experiences almost all action of the story) begins spouting extreme views about highly controversial political matter garbed in the guise of storytelling.  Against the counsel of her doctor, husband, friends and family, Bella refuses to abort a fetus which is killing her.  To make matters worse, once the baby is born she is the pride and joy of everyone she meets.  Take that, all of you who told me to abort it.  Look what you would have been missing out on!  I’m not going to argue either side of the abortion debate here (this isn’t the time or place for it), but I am going to say that propaganda has no place in a children’s book.  Especially a children’s book as widely read as Twilight is.  /end public service announcement.
And now we return to our discussion of the sparkly vampire.  The sparkly vampire is a vampire who wears his heart on his sleeve, or more specifically in his eyes.  In Meyers’ world, the type of blood which a vampire drinks (human or animal) determines the color of his eyes.  There are no gray areas for the sparkly vampire; evil vamps have red eyes, good vamps have amber eyes.  A vampire has either made the choice to be “ethical” (and thereby good), or is a blood-sucking lunatic.  It is not until late in the series that we are introduced to red-eyed vampires who have any semblance of sanity.  By removing gray areas, the vampiric genre becomes simplified.  Part of what makes vampires so unique as literary figures is their innate grayness.  A vampire cannot be entirely good simply due to his cardinal attribute: he drinks blood.  He kills things to survive.  The sparkly vampire defies this convention, as really one of Meyers’ vegetarian vamps is no worse than a human who eats meat.  Kill an animal; lead the ethical life.  The sparkly vampire’s ability to walk entirely in the light (both literally and metaphorically) lends to his overall acceptability.  He is hardly different from you or I.
The sparkly vampire is not a creature of blood.  Never in the Twilight series are we actually presented with a vampire in the act of feeding.  It is something taken care of off-screen, something unsightly and thereby hidden.  In the vampire mythos, blood is generally a stand-in for sexual acts.  An interchange of body fluids combined with the vampiric act of appearing before a victim when she is alone in her bed at night constitutes a literary euphemism.  In Twilight, the actual sexual acts (as well as the euphemistic ones) are kept entirely away from the eyes of the reader.  Even the euphemism is euphemized; more frequently is the vampiric imbibing of blood referred to as “hunting” over “feeding”.  Moreover, this cardinal unpleasantness of vampiric nature is made palatable by its absence.  We know the vampires drink blood, but as the adage goes, “out of sight, out of mind”.  Have you ever seen fan art of Edward Cullen bent over the jugular of a profusely bleeding antelope?
In fact, most of the violence of the Twilight saga is kept offscreen.  One of the largest fights in the series, the great culminating battle of Eclipse involving the Cullens, the La Push werewolf pack and Victoria’s newborn army, is only vaguely described to the reader second-hand via Edward’s mind-reading abilities.  Violence, like sex, is too unsightly for the sparkly vampire.
The sparkly vampire has also been defanged.  Among all the wonders that Bella notices about her eternal “family”, she never once describes their teeth.  The sparkly vampire, a beautiful creature undoubtedly, has thus lost his bite.
Perhaps this distancing from common vampiric mythos is part of what has enraged hard-core vampire fans so much about the Twilight series.  Teenaged girls may go gaga over Edward, but Edward isn’t a traditional vampire.  He is a popular icon, an idealized and softened version of a beast created from the shadows.  

>Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend

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Alright, that’s it, I’ve had it.
After years of reading, watching, and being utterly horrified at the current popular trends in literature, after wondering what had gotten into the minds of young people and middle-aged-soccer moms, after enough time grumbling and mulling from the shadows; I have made a decision.
I am weighing in on the Twilight debate.
This is going to take more than one blog entry.  I’m sorry, I really am, but I just cannot allow this to continue without putting my two cents into the universe.  I can promise you a few things: this will be as unbiased as I can possibly make it, as interesting as I can possibly make it, and as entertaining as I can possibly make it.
Before I begin, let me clear up a few cardinal facts and set a few rules about this exploit.  Yes, I have read the Twilight series.  Yes, I have seen the movies.  No, I don’t pay any attention to the tabloids and I have no idea what Robert Pattinson does in his spare time (be that Kristin Stewart or Taylor Lautner…).  I am going to try my best to write this as much as possible without giving you my direct opinion about the franchise in hopes that perhaps the arguments will be more academically persuasive (you know, as academically persuasive as you can be about Mormon vampires).
On that somber note, let us begin.
How about we start with the big question that has been plaguing troubled minds of the vampirically inclined: why is it that people like this series so bloody much?  You can’t deny it, people either love Twilight or hate Twilight.  There is no in between.  I would argue that Twilight apathy is simply a lack of exposure; find someone who says that they could take or leave Twilight and then sit him down and make him read it and/or watch it.  Then ask him again.  I nearly guarantee that his answer will prove different.
First and foremost, I would like to say this.  I think that little video is a good base point for this conversation.  Yes, it’s true, horribly true, horribly and vividly true.  But what this guy says is true of a great deal of other stories as well.  Any escapist reality written for women pretty much follows this same formula, especially if the story is written in first person PoV.  Honestly, the best example I have (and the closest to the Twilight style) is a romance novel.  Take Karen Marie Moning’s The Immortal Highlander (yes, her name is Moning… she writes romance novels… this is hilarious).  Same PoV, same he-man + superman + Jesus = male lead formula, same story of frustrating and semi-requited lust/love between gawky mundane and perfect immortal.  Bing, bang, boom, you have a female fantasy.
So what makes Twilight different?
Well, vampires.  Vampires are the epitome of all things teenager.  I mean really, a creature that is beautiful, powerful, emotastically different from everyone else, secret, self-loathing, utterly sexual, and eternal.  Anyone who has ever thought “nobody will ever understand me”, anyone who has ever wished bloody revenge upon her enemies, anyone who has ever wanted something more than the mundane humdrum life of a normal person is prey (literally and metaphorically) to the vampire.  The world of the vampire is the world of intrigue, darkness, passion, lust and extremes.  It is a world of misunderstood good guys and hauntingly lovely bad guys.  It is a world of creatures who have a concrete reason to hate themselves, despite any good they may do.
When you become a vampire, your gangly awkwardness is transformed into perfect beauty and primal ferocity.  Your financial troubles vanish, your boundaries disappear.  So what if a small case of sunlight or stake-through-the-heart kills you?
Never before Meyers have vampires been so accessible.  Read Anne Rice or Laurell K. Hamilton and you are a black-eyeliner-wearing goth freak.  There is an edge to these other vampires, and the stories surrounding them are darker, more violent, more intensely sexual.  Meyers’ vampires are… well… Mormon.  They are still dangerous, but for the most part their hard edges become soft.  In Meyers’ world there are no mangled corpses, no people going crazy, anything too intense for polite company is kept almost entirely offscreen.  Yes, there is the requisite blood and sex, but it’s more alluded to than directly addressed.
Meyers’ vampires are fuzzy vampires.  They civilized, more human than monster (even the evil ones).  I mean ferchrissakes they SPARKLE.  No longer are they banished to the night, the darkness of dungeons and crypts, but they become even more beautiful and perfect in the daylight.  Their stories may be slightly disturbing, but never freakish.  If anything, the disturbing back-stories go towards highlighting human traits over monstrous ones.  This creates a vampire story that is accessible to younger audiences, and moreover is acceptable to the parents of said younger audiences.
The Urban Fantasy genre is seductive.  It allows stories to enter the mundane world, causing lines between what is real and what is imagined to blur nearly past any visible recognition.  Rather than a mirror up to nature, the fantasy becomes nature.  Meyers’ use of this genre to tell her stories contributes to its nature as a role-playing fantasy.  These stories become possible because they are so deeply rooted in a world that we already know and live in.  Rather than take us through history, as Rice does, or take us to a slightly tweaked contemporary world, as Hamilton does, Meyers sets her stories in the all-too-mundane world.  Aforementioned teenager, already feeling awkward and out of place, is able to believe herself into Meyers’ story because it so closely mirrors her own life. 
Moreover, the Cinderella story, time and again, is a magic vacuum.  I don’t care what the feminists say; every individual of the female persuasion is (to some extent) waiting for her prince charming.  An extra dimension of allure is added to the Prince Charming when he sparkles (literally). 
Everyone wants to be desired.  How many industries make millions of dollars trying to augment a person’s desirability, especially to the opposite sex?  Here is a story of a girl (or “shell” as my friends at The Oatmeal and Epipheo Studios so aptly contend) who is so desirable that supernatural creatures start wars over her.  This seemingly average person, someone who anyone could be, is the epitome of desire.  As a result, the readers want to be her.  Since the readers want to be her, they will buy her.  In any form they can.
So that’s my addition to the popularity debate.  Tune in next time for another Twilight-themed discussion, though I promise it will be as painless as this one was.

>The Graduate Student Conference and You

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>I’m back.

First and foremost: an apology. I have been neglectful of you, dear blog. I have left you abandoned for upwards of a week when I promised I would be faithful to my bi-weekly updating. Between midterms, conferences, a show at work and interjections of my personal life, I have been negligent of this promise, but hope to find myself back on track in the coming weeks.

This past weekend, I attended the University of Montreal’s EGSS conference. The conference’s theme was Performance and Performativity and it was more than interesting to meet my Canadian Colleagues and hear what they had to say on the topic at hand. My paper was again well-received (Act I Scene I: Performativity and Theatricality in The Canterbury Tales) and I left the conference with a fount of new ideas. Intellectual stimulation at its prime; a wonderful way to spend any weekend.

It occurred to me as I sat in the University how very many things I had seen in the past few weeks that I wished someone had prepared me for. Indeed, before my first encounter with the conference circuit I had looked for some sort of FAQ or “guide to conferences for the inquisitive Graduate Student” and come up surprisingly short. I had so many questions, so many things I wanted to know, but due to my lack of information was forced to enter the endeavor blinded. Though my experience thus far has been limited (and very pleasant considering how lost I felt upon initial introduction to the experience itself), I am determined that another Graduate Student need not be plunged into the murky depths of conferencery without a guide. So, I present to you a bullet-pointed list of “things I wish someone had told me about Graduate Student Conferences before I left home”, or “How to Succeed in Conferencery Without Even Trying”, or “Everything you Ever Wanted to Know about Conferences but were Afraid to Ask”.

*Dress code at these things is business casual. I have seen many a conference-goer in jeans and a sweater vest/oxford shirt number. I myself have worn a suit, but I was definitely one of the few who put such effort and polish into my appearance. You will not be out of place in slacks and a nice shirt. But please, for everyone’s sake, wear nice shoes and not sneakers. You will look better and won’t give prim-and-proper-fogies like me headaches.

*They will feed you. Breakfast and lunch usually, dinner is on you. Breakfast will be bagels/donuts/pastries and coffee, and lunch will usually be some kind of sandwich platter and fruit salad. There will be abundant amounts of bottled water, so don’t worry about bringing your own.

*Everyone wears a nametag. Therefore, don’t worry too much about remembering names because you can just glance at it and have your answer. Instead, try to ask questions about your colleagues’ programs, areas of interest and primary research concerns. Remember that this is networking and not social hour, though having personality and things to connect about is a good thing. What would be better is connecting over intellectual concepts rather than computer games.

*Conferences. Are. Boring. I cannot emphasize this enough. People sit and read their papers. If you are lucky, they will be good at reading aloud and will have practiced their paper a time or two beforehand. If you are extraordinarily lucky, they will have pretty slides to look at. If you want to stand out in a crowd, be one of those people with pretty slides. If you are a kinesthetic learner like me, abandon all hope ye who enter here. I take copious notes at these things just to keep myself following the arguments. My notes also tend to prove amusing reads after the fact (the gem of this weekend being “phenomenologon… do do do do do” no doubt intended to be sung to the popular muppet ditty).

*If you are one of those awesome presenters who give a break from the tedium of reading academic mumbo-jumbo, ensure to have your presentation on both a laptop and a thumb drive. I have yet to be somewhere where I did not need both.

*Also have copious notes about the longer version of your paper readily available. It will come in handy when you are asked questions.

*Practice your presentation and time it. Come in at least one minute under requested time limit, more like five if you need to leave room for questions and such time isn’t worked into the panel for you.

*Academics run on caffeine, determination and fifty-cent words; not sleep. If you are like me and require eight hours to function, do not intend to go out after day one of the conference.

*Being at these conferences requires much more energy than you would think. You will be wiped afterwards. Go back to your hotel, grab a glass of wine, and decompress. Sleep well, you will need it.

*Don’t pay to get into a graduate conference. It’s not worth the money and there are plenty which will let you in for free. All-level conferences are different, you will be batting with the big boys there and should expect to pay for the privilege (yes, even if you’re presenting). This can get costly. One way to alleviate conference costs is to make friends in places where you think you may return; do not be above couch-surfing (especially if you have a couch in order to repay the favor in kind).

*Know, at least in the most basic terms, who Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and Bakhtin are before you attend. It will save you from intellectual humiliation and give you something to joke about with the other snobs. Also know who the big names in your field are and the basics of their work, it will help you follow papers being given.

*You are at this conference to witness the exchange of ideas amongst your peers and take the temperature of your work in comparison with and in front of same peers. Use that opportunity to its fullest extent. It’s not often that people let you look over their shoulders at their research.

*If there are panels you are not interested in, don’t go see them. The panelists would rather have an alert, awake audience than people snoring in the back row. Give yourself a break, grab a cup of coffee, or even leave early if you want to. There’s nothing wrong with this. Do not feel obligated to attend panels because the presenters will not feel obligated to attend yours.

*Don’t be shy; nobody knows anybody. Especially if you are visiting from far away, the locals are happy to have you and would love to tell you about the university and surrounding environs.

*Have fun. Seriously. If you’re not having fun, how do you expect to spend the rest of your life doing this?

….I am certain I am missing a thing or two. Further questions can be directed at this post and will be answered post-haste (please insert rim-shot sound effect here).

Goodnight, everyone.