I feel like a Twisted Sister music video:WHAT KIND OF A MAN ARE YOU? YOU'RE WORTHLESS AND WEAK. YOU DO NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. YOU SIT IN HERE ALL DAY AND PLAY THAT SICK, REPULSIVE, ELECTRIC TWANGER. I CARRIED AN M-16, AND YOU, YOU CARRY THAT THAT GUITAR. WHO ARE YOU? WHERE DO YOU COME FROM? ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?
And although I carry no ideological commitments to the liberatory potential of "Rock 'n Roll," I do feel some existential pressure in the sense that it's time to figure out my exam and committee lists, and I don't have the slightest clue what the fuck I'm going to do. It doesn't help that every time I think I have a good idea, someone (smarter) has already written about it. Lame.
In other news, I'm reading Moby Dick right now. I don't know why it gets such a bad rap. Ishmael is actually kinda funny. Ahab of course is insane, but he's a force of Shakespearean magnitude (some of his tyrannical ranting is even written in blank verse). The chapters very from tracts on natural history, to drama, to first-person meditations on the virtues of sleeping in the same bed as cannibals. And yet, no one ever even tried to get me to read it as a undergraduate. Makes me wonder what I'm missing.
We're not gonna take it. No! We ain't gonna take it. We're not gonna take it anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think the length has something to do with why no one ever made you (or me) read Moby Dick as an undergrad.
1) Moby Dick is bombshit-- except for all that bull about Norwhals. That shit was just shit.
ReplyDelete2) I'm getting prelims/list stuff together too-- it's taxing but doable. If you want someone to look over a list, holla. I'll pretend I've got more than an MA in Lit and give it a go.
3) As for the 'someone else having written it already' thing-- yeah, no solution there...