tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2068681919545929122024-03-13T08:44:49.029-07:00The Fork in the Road
Publishing, academia, and the path forwardMDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-80444612408298165232018-02-07T20:18:00.002-08:002018-02-07T20:18:24.133-08:00Still sad, still angry, still compromised<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today was anniversary of the first women's march, in 2017. Spurred by Trump's victory and what that says about how the men and women who voted for him value lives other than their own (to wit: not at all), we gathered to assert our values, to shake him with our powerful outrage, to join together imagining a better future, and to feel less alone. There are millions of women and men who are outraged at the efforts by our leaders to reel us back to the bad 'ol days.<br />
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On a personal note, I have felt disappointed in myself that I am not living the values I espouse to the hilt. Today at the 2nd women's march that hit home. The speakers were calling for intersectional social justice -- what are we doing to help the homeless? How are we engaged in choices that thoughtlessly oppress, or which reinforce racial and gender disempowerment?<br />
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When we look out for ourselves first, and we engage in protecting ourselves, we use tools that are infused with capitalism and patriarchy. We own our house and we own a condo that we rent out. We are part of Oakland's changing face, and while we are not technically gentrifiers (we purchased our home from a family of color who owned and lived in the home, so we did not displace renters and we increased the personal wealth of that family), we benefit from gentrification.<br />
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I am currently working for a company whose ethics I am waffly about. It is entirely growth-focused, determined to produce more and more books, the rapacious extraction capitalism that says everyone needs to buy buy buy all the time. The books we do can prey on people's insecurities, promising health through fasting or juice diets. These books are pure content churn; there's not even the excuse that we are producing art when we produce these commodities.<br />
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I have written 5 reviews for the SF Chronicle this year, and one for the Women's Review of Books. That's all the writing I've done. Parenting and working full time has taken so much away from being able to do projects and events that make me happy that I'm putting having another child on hold. I have read almost no poetry. I have written no poetry other than scrawling depressed journalings. I haven't even had a chance to think about it. This is the first year that's been the case EVER.<br />
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I edited one novel and reviewed 300 queries for an agent friend for free. I was late on both projects. Severely late. Took 12 weeks when they were supposed to take 6 late.<br />
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I thought I'd be able to keep up with this blog, but I haven't. I'm working so much, but not prioritizing projects, or even reading, because when I'm not working weekends, I'm falling behind.<br />
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My work is not fulfilling in any kind of way other than to my pocketbook. It's fun, and the fast pace is actually a good match for me because I can't really get lost on over analyzing and delaying like I am wont to. But I continue to feel that I have completely sold out and screwed myself.<br />
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No one at Counterpoint is going to hire me, ever. That was my hope. I no longer have bonafides. I have sold out. I just internally keened when I read Yuka Igarashi's professional bio -- Granta. Catapult. Soft Skull. Prestige is the coin of the realm, and my skills and network I am developing at Callisto will have no value outside of this field. I've locked myself out, and no-one I care about cares who I am anymore. I have no time to attend readings -- or at least, I don't prioritize that or put it on my calendar.<br />
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I do get to bike to work, if the weather's good, and I spend more time with my son. But during the week it's still not any fun time: it's get dressed-feed-him-change-diaper-get-to-school-bike-go go go hustle hustle hustle, and same thing again at home. There's so little opportunity for connection. It's just me constantly trying to rein in my temper as he is so unable to do things for himself while able to only make messes and NOT want to do whatever I need him to do.<br />
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Not to mention that what I love about editing is being stripped away. I have the title of editor, but I am basically a sales person.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-4803744301527708472017-01-01T12:04:00.000-08:002017-01-01T12:04:44.435-08:00Taking Initiative<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's the first day of 2017, and it's a bright, quiet afternoon in Oakland. 2016 was a year of unexpected educations. My son was born, and I learned about myself that I can act only in his interests without feeling like I am gone or utterly changed. I took an ambitious job, and I did not succeed in it, closing down an avenue I thought was going to define my life.<br />
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December of 2013, December of 2015, December of 2016 -- all years in which I left positions, variously despondent and hopeful. Januaries are quiet winter mornings that open up possibilities.<br />
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What I would like for myself in 2017 is to move from possibilities to acting. From dreaming and ideas to purposeful action.<br />
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Taking initiative, not waiting for permission or approval. Being bold. I crave structure, but perhaps in the end that sense of making and completing checklists makes me complacent.<br />
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Moving from idea to action will be 2017. Whether in the political arena, or moving from to-do list to completing tasks, to pitching interviews and reviews and articles -- and then actually writing them.<br />
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To be a writer, you have to write.<br />
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And then, I am a mother -- and this year, with fewer barriers, a much more present and engaged mother. An engaged and active partner.<br />
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This will involve challenging myself to make plans, to look ahead, to strategize. To try to anticipate the unknowns, or at least build in buffers. More than just the "swallow the frog" of doing the hard thing first, this needs to be trusting myself to spearhead and develop ideas, to plan out and follow up.<br />
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This is more than informational interviews and gathering facts and knowing about things. It's synthesis and action and invention.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-6214906352894327442015-03-13T20:00:00.003-07:002015-04-24T15:17:55.266-07:00A Review I Didn't Write<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was supposed to write this for <i>The Rumpus</i>, but felt that I had to beg off since I was at such a loss to appreciate this book. I am sure it will find some sympathetic readers, but I just couldn't get on board with its efforts, and was mostly bored and annoyed as I made my way to the end. It doesn't help much to put pans and slams out there for books that aren't exactly raking in the readers anyway. I also felt like maybe my reaction revealed my lack of imagination, and was worried that it would undermine my authority as a reader if I were to write a review mostly consisting of "I don't get it." And maybe I am not the best reader of that kind of work these days -- I want fiction to be at least a little reader friendly, to be absorbing -- yes, to challenge and engage with formal adventures, to make you work a little, but still have basic elements like plot, and interesting characters, and setting. I did write out my puzzlement, which is what lies below.<br />
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Reading <a href="http://pharoseditions.com/">Pharos Editions</a>’s reissue of Jason Schwartz’s <i><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781940436173">A German Picturesque</a></i>, the big questions that immediately come to mind are, Why bring a book back from out-of-print? What and <i>why</i> is non-narrative fiction? How do I read a book that is all style, yet is not poetry? Why did <a href="http://benmarcus.com/">Ben Marcus </a>choose this as his one book to resurrect, and what light does that shed on Ben Marcus’s literary ambitions?<br />
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The context for the reissue Schwartz’s book matters, since it is the reason for its existence and part of its apparatus, beginning with Marcus’s brief yet abstract introduction. The Pharos Editions quirk is that the editors ask an admired writer – from <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780988172517">Sherman Alexie</a> to<a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781940436050"> Ursula K. Le Guin</a> – what one book would they rescue from obscurity, and then, on the strength of that recommendation, they republish it. A laudable task in the face of the tumult of novelty we face in these early years of the twenty-first century. But how do books that made such an impact in their first printing stand up years later – in this case, nearly twenty years after <i>A German Picturesque</i>’s first outing in 1996?<br />
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The story seems to be that one of famed Knopf editor <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/06/27/angry-flash-gordon-255491.html">Gordon Lish</a>’s last acts before being fired from the literary publishing house was to anoint Schwartz with a publishing contract, but upon Lish’s departure, Schwartz’s poor book sat on the shelves for two years. And Lish is certainly someone who valued formal derring do in literature and original voices, so I can see why this ended up with Knopf. And I can see why someone who loved this book would want to see it given a real shot, rather than letting it remain an irascible editor's leftovers shoved into the back corner.<br />
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All books <i>should</i> be introduced to new readers by someone who loves them – like the friend who presses a dog-eared paperback into your hand. The trusted recommendation of someone with good taste helps you let your guard down and trust what’s coming. <a href="http://www.europaeditions.com/">Europa Editions</a> tried this with <a href="http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/gfrangello/2011/09/new-directions-in-publishing-alice-sebold-launches-tonga-books/">Tonga Books</a>, a short-lived series edited by best-selling author <a href="http://barclayagency.com/sebold.html">Alice Sebold</a> – her imprimatur gave heft to otherwise unknown authors. Pharos strives to do the same here, helping us see Schwartz through the lens of Marcus, whose books are raved about by those who appreciate experimental, stylistic fiction.<br />
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However, coming cold to both Marcus and Schwartz, Marcus’s assurances in the introduction that I was about to embark on short pieces of fiction that are “pure feeling” and “unknowable,” and which “pretend at a kind of sense” while written in “an aphasic English cleansed of obvious meaning” made me…. trepidatious. These are terms I might expect to find assigned to poetry, or to lyrical essays. What happens when fiction is senseless? What’s the point of made up things in the shape of stories that don’t cling together and do not say anything in their inability to cohere? When meaning and signification is replaced by mood and sensation, what weight does fiction’s non-reality have? Why would we seek this in prose fiction, rather than, say in <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/6078/when-i-look-at-a-strawberry-i-think-of-a-tongue-edouard-leve">Edouard Leve</a>’s memoirs? His flat statements, since they are in a genre from which we expect a kind of "truth," are a fascinating indictment of the entertaining narrative imposed in memoirs upon the scatter of mundane events that make up our lives. But excising narrative from fiction doesn't tell us anything about fiction, that hasn't already been said decades ago. See: Gertrude Stein.<br />
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For me, what followed that introduction was a slog through a lot of pretty sentences whose main verb was “is.” After I got what the form was in the first several pages, it seemed pretty repetitious through to the last page. After I finished puzzling my way to the end of <i>A German Picturesque </i>(I should have known what was coming in the nouning of an adjective in the title) – I went to find stories by Marcus to see what exactly attracted him to this slim, nonsensical series of sentences.<br />
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I know Marcus primarily by reputation (his <a href="http://www.avclub.com/review/ben-marcus-inotable-american-womeni-6084"><i>Notable American Women</i></a> is perpetually on my bookcase’s “to read” shelf), and I admire his adventurous use of form as a communication and story-telling technique. But in everything of his that I read in an effort to reconstruct his choice of Schwartz for Pharos, style was deeply attached to meaning. When conceptual poets like <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/">Kenneth Goldmith</a> or <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/cheek/">cris cheek</a> make form all important, that choice of form becomes the meaning – it’s what we talk about, and think about and feel how it affects our understanding of genre, communication, and poetry as a THING.<br />
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When a fiction writer deliberately breaks all the rules of fiction (that there should be a plot, that sentences should connect to each other, that you shouldn’t use the word “is” as your only verb in every sentence), what is there left to talk about? There are no characters nor any setting in <i>A German Picturesque</i>, as such. Everything, human and nonhuman, is static. Reading this book feels like talking to a crazy person who recites sentences clipped from a historical novel. Sort of like a Victorian Beckett protagonist – but Lucky’s rant was just a piece of <i>Waiting for Godot,</i> not the entire play, and for good reason. His flow of illucidity is energizing in the context of Didi and Gogo trying their best to make sense of the pointlessness of their endeavor through the aimless passing of time. He is pure energy and logorrhoea in the midst of their silence.<br />
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I believe strongly in foregrounding form, and in shaking up genre expectations. But taping together sentences with arcane words in them and calling it "fiction" doesn't seem to me to push the form in any useful way. Maybe you could see it as a dead end, a genetic offshoot of American literature that didn't go anywhere, but remains important because it tried to find a new path. <a href="http://fictionadvocate.com/2015/01/15/the-county-houses/">Here</a> is a sample of the Schwartz book -- this is one of the better pieces, I think. There are also passages that seem like babble to me. The opening of "Situs" for instance:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The lock was white. Its parts were not exquisite? Let me acknowledge the marks at the edges. The blot upon the ward, it was said, was the color the lament. The pins were antique. As for the knives -- well, I suppose I have been rather indelicate on this score.<br />
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The ax had been saved -- dear me.<br />
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A certain narrative, as you know, depicts the visit -- the corridor, the room, the rooms -- and a leave-taking in the evening. The lamps -- these -- were lighted. It might be appropriate to note the sheet, moreover -- despite the coins, the clatter of them, and despite the child.<br />
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The coil sat below the salt.</blockquote>
I mean really. And what's the point of doing this over and over again?<br />
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Or this, from "Ox":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There is a way to fall down and die in a doorway, you see. Armstrong, Happy Valley, Stink River. Passing: track. The animals run on the river sand, one by one. Skulls on the siding are the real thing. This is the street with the house that looks like ours. This is a knot of the sort in the West, on the dog or the ox slipping on the ice, all that weight tied on. The head was wet. The hooves came through the roof. There were sticks on the railroad -- and a pick.</blockquote>
I can see this being incredibly worthwhile to try ONCE. To try to evoke only tone, slippery memories and incomprehension. To unhinge the reader's expectations by using a particular form and voice that sound familiar, but filling it instead with completely subjective, inaccessible information. It's a cool trick, but just repeated and repeated and repeated, it doesn't add up to much. Maybe if this was part of something cohesive -- a novel instead of lots of disconnected stories all using the same style -- it might add up to more. Reading 100 pages of Schwartz doesn't leave me with much more than reading just two of the brief pieces. They are so personal and inaccessible that, similar to the poetry of Trevor Joyce, if the point is for them to ever become legible to the reader, it requires lots of research as part of the reading. Or a personal interview with the author. But that's why I wrote a dissertation chapter on (Trevor) Joyce -- because there was 1) something interesting about his formal choices in "Trem Neul"<i> and </i>2) he actually had something to say about poetry in his choice of form as well. Maybe I just need someone to argue me into seeing that Schwartz is doing this too. But I'm not going to spend years researching this book, like I did with Joyce, and neither is anyone else.<br />
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Is doing something is new enough on its own? Is it even new? How is this different from the formally-innovative nonsense prose pieces of <i>Tender Buttons</i> and the long chains of flat statements in <i>The Making of Americans</i>? Even if we do consider Schwartz's work to be totally inventive, I don't think making a thing just to make it, and not having much of real worth to say with it, is enough. Is "it hasn't been done before" enough reason to write a book and then, more importantly, <i>publish it?</i> Why would someone want to read this -- perhaps if you are a writer, bored of the known tricks and of thinking about fiction in a single way, it's fun to wrap your brain around a new way of approaching the concept of "book" and "story." But that has to be a tiny audience. And why not just turn to poetry then? (and then I go down the rabbit hole of <i>but why even bother with genre if all the characteristics of a genre are totally inapplicable to something being called by that name</i>).<br />
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Anyway, this is the review I didn't write for the <i><a href="http://therumpus.net/">Rumpus</a></i>. I'd been so excited for this book, and was so disappointed. I got so much more out of the last book I reviewed for the site, Eimear McBride's formally experimental <i><a href="http://therumpus.net/2014/10/a-girl-is-a-half-formed-thing-by-eimear-mcbride/">A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing</a>. </i>I had strong feelings about the form, even negative ones sometimes as it seemed like the author couldn't quite handle the challenge she'd set for herself, but it added up to something, it meant something about religion, and the body, and how we understand the self in relation to others. It might even change Irish fiction. When I got to the end, I kept thinking about it, I had strong opinions about how its form related to its content, to literary history, to Modernism. Its chaos and incomprehension had a purpose (even if an <a href="http://www.full-stop.net/2014/10/30/reviews/daniel-green/a-girl-is-a-half-formed-thing-eimear-mcbride/">imperfectly rendered </a>one).<br />
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I just can't care about the Schwartz pieces. I do not have as in depth a history with American fiction (especially on the avant-garde end) as I do with Irish literature, obviously, but even as I tried and tried to use Schwartz's work as a launching pad upon which to at least think through other questions, I just couldn't muster the energy it would take. His work just seemed too thin to justify the effort.<br />
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And there you have it. 1800 words of a non-review.</div>
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MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-44034179708460025252015-02-09T23:13:00.002-08:002015-04-24T15:20:22.238-07:00A little backpedaling<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
[I edited this when I realized I had missed an entire person!]<br />
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I was at dim sum on Sunday with a bunch of Wellesley alums, most of whom were fairly recently graduated. And I start going into my bitter spiel about "don't go to graduate school, it just drains your twenties away and leaves you no better off, etc etc..."<br />
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Which, in many ways, was true for me. But was that graduate school, or me?<br />
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I look at my other friends from Wellesley who have gone into English doctoral programs (<strike>four</strike> [edit: five] other women from my class did, whom I know personally): <strike>all</strike> four of them are working in academia, either as tenure track professors at liberal arts colleges, visiting professors, or tenure track at community colleges. <strike>The only one who isn't is me!</strike> Two of us, the one who went ot the most top notch program, and me, are no longer in academia. Here's <a href="http://tiffanytsao.com/2015/01/06/yet-another-i-left-academia-story/">her story</a> of what her last couple years in academia we re like and why she left. So -- clearly my lack of success at hitting the benchmarks in grad school was not a lack of preparedness. All of my fellow grads did attend more highly ranked graduate school programs than I did, and every little bit helps. But if I'm the aberration, what does that mean? And despite the other alum also leaving academia, I think my lack of a foothold post-grad school does kind of make me an aberration -- or just someone who didn't "want it" enough to submit to all the instability that goes with being a journey(wo)man academic.<br />
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Perhaps what I should be telling people, especially young happy Wellesley alums immersed in their first year of research, instead of "Don't go to grad school," is, "Listen to your gut. If you despise the formulae of academic writing as it's practiced in English graduate school, and feel like a fish out of water in all your graduate school courses, reconsider your choices. If teaching requires all your energy and you hate having no money for almost a decade, don't be stubborn for the sake of it. If you fail your first quals once and have to revise your prospectus twice, think about what the professors in your department are trying to tell you. Find what you love and don't try to make yourself love something you can't quite do."<br />
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Starting out, I wanted to talk about poetry, not poetics. I wanted the option of being a cheerleader for writers, I started down the aborted path of researching the economics of publishing and the acts of gate-keeping around designating certain pieces of writing "literature." I even thought, early on, of writing my dissertation on love poetry, before I realized that was so passe as to be impossible within the expectations that a 200 page dissertation will somehow "change the field as we know it."<br />
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None of that really has a place in academia, and while I love the personal freedom of designating your own schedule, not having a boss in a conventional sense, and the wonderful hard thinking required of truly delving deeply into how a work of art comes to <i>mean</i>, I should have realized when I was so full of doubt about my place in grad school and academia, that yes, part of it is institutional, but part of it was just me.<br />
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I like writing fun pieces just because they interest me, not because they are going to "change the field." I like to think about how I react to poetry, not necessarily about the philosophical underpinnings of it. And I am so very far from writing at the level of prolificacy needed to succeed in academia -- the churn, churn, churn -- that I think for me, it was not the right fit.<br />
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I do still plan to speak long and loudly (whenever do I do elsewise?) to young people who want to go to grad school without knowing that only 25% of those entering the program will get TT jobs of any kind. That adjuncting is on the rise. That they need to experience teaching and writing before they dive into a profession based on that. That it's as much of a gamble as anything else. That undergrad experience bears the same resemblance to grad school as a potato to a shoe. That women, in particular, have a hard time in a profession that doesn't value balancing the demands of having a family and the achievements needed for tenure. That they have to be willing to move to the South. And then the midwest, and then Texas. And whatever coastal city they studied in will not be where they land in the end (unless maybe it was Boston).<br />
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But really, Wellesley women, you'll probably be just fine. Based on the tiny set of statistics of the class of '04, you have a <strike>80%</strike> 66% chance of achieving your dreams! Woohoo!<br />
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And maybe my fellow flee-er from academia and I will have a new kind of story to tell in a few years....</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0Oakland, CA, USA37.8043637 -122.271113737.603596200000005 -122.5938372 38.0051312 -121.9483902tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-46408098501650276482015-01-29T01:25:00.000-08:002015-01-29T01:32:27.122-08:00Down the thrifted book rabbit hole<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am working on a craft project that ended up overlapping with my professional interests pretty significantly, as I should have predicted it would.<br />
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I <a href="https://houseonhaddonhill.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/thrifted-books-decoupage/">wrote about the project</a>, decoupaging pages for old books onto the back of bookcases, on a new blog I began in order to practice my wordpress skills and have space for non-work related writing.<br />
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But then, it clearly spilled over into work life, because as soon as I started getting intrigued about the book we'd found (a letter was tucked into it!), I discovered so much more about it and its author and the beautiful network of connections and information that the digital archive allows us to learn these days.<br />
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The author of the book we chose was Adrien Stoutenburg, who lived in Marin and died in Santa Barbara (just like me!... except I didn't <i>literally</i> die in SB). What I learned, with a little bit of googling (thanks Wikipedia -- I diss you a lot, but you're pretty awesome actually), was that not only did Adrien Stoutenburg write poetry, but she was also an editor. Also, likely gay (lady companion/housemate to whom she dedicated her first book...). Stoutenburg was an editor (the editor?) for Parnassus Press, which published children's literature. There's a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sA02qcRy2x0C&pg=PA128&dq=slavitt+adrien+stoutenburg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8_nJVMXXHM-wogTG74L4BQ&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=slavitt%20adrien%20stoutenburg&f=false">lovely chapter</a> on her as a writer by a fellow writer and literary gadabout that helps contextualize her (though his view of Adrienne Rich's work as political and therefore "bad poetry" needs, ahem, questioning, to say the least), and especially why she faded so quickly from the poetry scene in the 1960s and '70s (tl;dr: Culture Wars).<br />
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Curious, since there's no Parnassus Press in existence in the Bay Area that I know about today (and now my small press interest has been piqued), I looked that up (and I tend to use google books, scholar, and news for this kind of archival material). Turns out, they were in Berkeley and published Ursula K. Le Guin's <i>Wizard of Earthsea</i>, her first ever Earthsea novel! That's the kind of success that should be able to keep a small publisher afloat for decades. Le Guin was living in Oregon by then, but having grown up in Berkeley (the Maybeck house on Arch St. she grew up in sold a few years ago and I got to tour it during the open house: it's <a href="http://berkeleyplaques.org/e-plaque/alfred-and-theodora-kroeber/">the dream Berkeley house</a>.), clearly she knew these folks personally, I thought. Maybe she did them a favor.<br />
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Then, a little more searching, and it turns out that Le Guin's mother, Theodora Kroeber, had published<i> </i>the popular and famous children's book <i>Ishi: Last of his Tribe</i>, the children's version of her book about the tragic story of the last man from a tribe of Native Californians to survive repeated waves of colonization and retain his culture, with Parnassus in 1964!<br />
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[Sidenote: if you want your heart to break, <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Ishi-last-wild-Indian-found-refuge-in-S-F-5737149.php">read about Ishi</a> -- it wasn't even his name -- in his culture, no-one says their own name, so for his last years as a living exhibit, he was simply known as "Ishi," which means man in the language he spoke to the anthropologists who sheltered him.]<br />
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Kroeber's book for adults sold millions, and the kids' one was turned into a movie. So what happened to Parnassus? Did it simply close shop? Did they sell the rights to Le Guin and Kroeber's work and all retire to the Bahamas and Santa Barbara?<br />
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<i>The International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children's Literature </i>(have I said yet how grateful researchers oughta be to Google Books' drive to make all of our written record searchable? They should be. It's awesome.), edited in 2003 by Peter Hunt, says that Parnassus was founded by someone named Herman Schein to support Californian writing (rather like Heyday Books today, also a Berkeley-based press) "overlooked by the eastern establishment" in 1957. I couldn't find anything on Schein online. Stoutenburg's letters are held in the archives at Cal, and I'd bet that the papers of Parnassus are as well. I'm so curious about the life and death of this small publishing house with a huge reach, all because I picked up a book of poetry by its editor at a thrift store in Oakland.<br />
<br />
I still want to know <a href="https://houseonhaddonhill.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/thrifted-books-decoupage/">who Derry is,</a> and who the unimpressed anonymous neighbor is who wrote the letter folded up in the book we found... there's no way to find that out, even with the power of the internet, I'm afraid. Are you out there, Derry? Did your kids give your books away after you died? You loved Adrien Stoutenburg's book so much you read it aloud and pressed it on a neighbor. Thank you for being that kind of reader.<br />
<br />
I'm having huge guilt over using this book as decorative fodder now, too.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-6691643891454508772014-12-30T03:46:00.003-08:002015-01-05T02:08:05.726-08:00On Homes and Grading and California<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Early this morning, I entered the grades for my second set of classes taught at the Fall Program or Freshmen. Done!<br />
<br />
My course is focused on writing about place and how we connect to it, which resonates with these students who are often leaving home for the first time, though the typical freshmen experience doesn't really apply to Berkeley freshmen -- at least, not the ones in my classrooms.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
So many are the striving, and the children of strivers... people who have moved their families over borders, over continents. One of the challenges for me, as someone who grew up in close connection not the natural world, is that the students are often puzzled that we begin with Muir and Thoreau and Snyder -- to me, the idea of learning your ecology as a way of knowing your home place is so ingrained that I have to remember that these kids grew up swimming in backyard pools, not the ocean, driving on freeways, not Hwy 1 and dirt roads. But over the course of the semester, they get it, or at least consider what it means to feel a place's weather, climb its hills, and rest beside its streams.<br />
<br />
I've structured the semester so that reflection is an inherent part of the ending, both for the students and for me. I look back over their reading journals and their observational journals. They reflect over the course as a whole to pull out the threads that became most meaningful. I love reading their reactions to the readings, and their own changing relationship to their new home in Berkeley.<br />
<br />
A few times now, I've had students write about how meaningful this course became as a space in which to process their own sense of being lost and alone in a sea of driven pre-med, pre-Hass, pre-whatevers, surprised that books and writing could help them think through their own life.<br />
<br />
I love these moments of teaching -- connecting through books, hearing students' earnest sense of their own growth, introducing them to Ondaatje, Adichie, and Toibin. I wish I could just sit with them and talk earnestly about their ideas one-on-one as their final exam, Oxford style -- though having ground my teeth to nubbins over my own oral exams, perhaps this concept would strike fear into the students.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
I've also come to realize that I am using Irish Lit, Brit Lit, and ideas of exile and hybridity, etc etc to think through identity and belonging, but so much of the impetus of this course comes from my own fascination with origins and rootedness. Not surprising, I suppose, considering I wrote my dissertation about the literature of the place that my great-grandparents called home.<br />
<br />
We're moving to Oakland, where my grandfather was born. We live in Berkeley, where my parents both lived. But I can't shake feeling that Bolinas is my home, that special, soothing, perfect feeling of being in my home, the smoke from the fireplace, the sea air, the rustling grasses, the stove I know exactly how to work, the basement I know exactly how to duck into. Everything else is a pale substitute I try to shape as much as possible to resemble my childhood home.<br />
<br />
I feel like I'm always pining. But I've always been leaving. After school every day as a child, for gymnastics. High school in MV. College on the East Coast. Sloughing friends who knew me too long.<br />
<br />
Is searching for home always trying to reclaim the past? Trying to pin back together those scattered leaves?<br />
<br />
I remember how unsettled I was going to Dublin in 2006 -- just a year, and everything had changed. Green's bookshop was closed. St Stephen's Green's traffic pattern was reversed. No-one and nothing was where I'd left it.<br />
<br />
Bolinas is always the same, or just slightly improved. I never have to worry about the erasure that happens in cities.<br />
<br />
But if I can't reconstruct this past, can't even move home, where does that leave me? It seems pitiable to think of someone living an hour away as in exile from their home.<br />
<br />
But it reminds me of the stories of fisher villages in Ireland and the coffee farms in the Western Ghats. Children leave to work in the cities. I left to work in the city. And the old places wither, aging into uselessness and ghost town memories and vacation homes.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I think the worst thing to become is a tourist attraction, a place acting out parodies of real work for eager watchers.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
I'm not sure when I became so obsessed with my home. I wrote my college application essay about the beauty and heart-sickness of my drive home to Bolinas, knowing I'd soon be leaving. I remember my English teacher suggesting I tone down my attachment to home as I applied for colleges on the east coast, concerned it would make me look unformed, immature, and attached to what was, not looking forward to a future of bracing, snow-carrying winds. I remember feeling like I could be at home in Ireland too, a real home, one that belonged to me through blood. Maybe it was after I gave up my idea that I could really live in Ireland that I took that yearning I'd attached to ancestral origins and attached it to Bolinas.<br />
<br />
And, as always, what is it that I really love about it? Am I really that at ease there? Everyone my age is gone from there, and I have nothing in common with those left.<br />
<br />
Will I find a place that feels this real and known and solid and settled? Will Van Dyke come to mean as much as Larch? When do we finally feel like we're no longer in orbit and have finally landed?</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-66068592684205155602014-12-03T07:03:00.001-08:002014-12-03T22:27:22.674-08:00In Which I Have Thoughts about Irish Publishing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Responding to <i>Publishing Perspectives</i>: <a href="http://publishingperspectives.com/2014/07/irelands-publishing-strength-is-in-tradition-small-presses/">Ireland's Tradition of Small Presses</a><br />
<br />
This came out in July, but I was busy writing, editing, and prepping for my course this fall (in which I taught a novel by <a href="http://www.colmtoibin.com/content/brooklyn">Colm Tóibín</a>, another lauded Irish writer who has moved to the US and who is not published by an Irish house [though a quick search indicates that his first two houses were now defunct small Irish presses <a href="http://www.dermotbolger.com/raven.htm">Raven Arts </a>and Pilgrim Press, back in the '80s, before he moved to being published in England].)<br />
<br />
I did an MA at UCD on Irish lit and a PhD on Irish poetry at UC Santa Barbara (so there are my bona fides), and one thing I became entirely fascinated by was the role of the publisher in Ireland. I can't recall the exact numbers off the top of my head, but the <a href="http://www.artscouncil.ie/home/">arts council</a> report during the boom years showed that about 30% of what was in Irish bookstores was from Ireland, and that only about 30% of Irish authors were published in Ireland.<br />
<br />
I spoke with the publisher of a great poetry press back in 2006 about this, and I remember that he -- and later, others -- told me that he felt the problem was not lack of demand, but lack of distribution for Irish titles in Ireland. <br />
<a name='more'></a>I guess there used to be an Irish distributor, but that went out of business, according to the sources I spoke to and read. And, as in the US, where if you're not distributed by Ingram, you basically don't exist to bookstores, a lack of someone pounding the pavement with your catalog in hand, making it easy to order and return your books (a topic for another day), erases you from booksellers' consciousnesses.<br />
<br />
In my research, I also discovered that British presses were blatantly ignoring the fact that their contracts with Irish writers who were also published by Gallery or Salmon did not allow them to distribute that work in Ireland. They just assumed that they had the right to sell British versions of Irish books in the Republic, as if it wasn't a different country. Infuriating, especially from a Republican standpoint!<br />
<br />
One of the things I also discovered was just how key governmental support of writers and publishing is -- not only the <i>cnuas</i> for the most celebrated writers, but the grants given to publishers of poetry, the bursaries, etc. Ireland's a small island, with a population that doesn't buy much in the way of books (and never has -- it's more of a newspaper culture, seemingly [probably due to a couple centuries of a scraping along sort of economy]), and where, according to the Arts Council report from 1994 (when Heaney was alive) about seven in one hundred had <b>ever</b> bought a book by a living Irish poet (source: <a href="http://www.artscouncil.ie/uploadedFiles/The_Public_and_The_Arts.pdf">Arts Council Report</a>). So without an audience, the government steps in -- or audiences+publishers in the US and Britain do. It's either go to London or go to the Arts Council.<br />
<br />
In other words, small presses can make it because there isn't room for big presses, and also because the government supports them (well, some of them -- that's another story), not because there's such a large reading public.<br />
<br />
There's such a pride in the tradition of Irish literature, which is truly a grand tradition and which I truly believe continues to be spectacular, yet I wonder now who the audience is for Irish books, especially the more literary (less Binchy, more McBride [who lives in England and was published in England but nevermind, apparently, according to this article?])? Is it an European audience? An American audience? British, even?<br />
<br />
I am hoping to write up an academic article on my research into the valuing and funding of literature in Ireland at some point, though it doesn't seem right for a journal of lit crit --maybe one about media and culture would be a better fit.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-73606461151649591042014-10-31T11:59:00.000-07:002014-11-17T13:25:21.679-08:00Conceptual Memoir -- is this a thing? In France, apparently<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Recently ventured back into literary criticism a bit for the Two Lines blog.<br />
<br />
Since my dissertation discussed constraint in poetry, and that meant lots of reading in the conceptual poetry arena, I was pretty familiar with the approaches and goals of Georges Perec and Édouard Levé as conceptual writers. I'm very intrigued by the question of how one disrupts expectations of litrary grandeur and meaning, and uses ordinary things instead to create art, playing with audience expectations of entertainment or enlightenment (blame Beckett and Joyce for dragging me down this road). Perec's<a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/07/30/i-remember-georges-perec/" target="_blank"> <i>I Remember</i> </a>came out this year from the beloved small press <a href="http://www.godine.com/author.asp?first=Georges&last=Perec" target="_blank">David R Godine</a>, and Levé clearly saw himself in a line of descent from Perec's experiments with narrative forms in prose. So I proposed writing a blog post on both in anticipation of our November event as a way of contextualizing Levé's work and responding to a book newly available to American readers.<br />
<br />
Also, I'm <u><i><b>SO</b></i></u> excited that the Center for the Art of Translation's <a href="http://catranslation.org/events" target="_blank">Two Voices</a> events program is hosting <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/tag/lorin-stein/" target="_blank">Lorin Stein</a> of <i><a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/about/" target="_blank">The Paris Review</a></i> in conversation with our marketing/online editor Scott Esposito (also an <a href="http://conversationalreading.com/" target="_blank">editor and critic</a> in his own right) and the talented translator <a href="http://conversationalreading.com/seven-questions-for-translator-jan-steyn-on-edouard-leves-suicide/" target="_blank">Jan Steyn</a> on Wednesday 10/5. Both Steyn and Stein translated Levé for the <a href="http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/" target="_blank">Dalkey Archive</a><i>, </i>and Scott's written a ton about <a href="http://www.zero-books.net/books/end-oulipo" target="_blank">Oulipo's influence</a> on literature. I'm just squealing in girlish nerd joy (on the inside) that I get to meet the editor of one of the foremost, most canonical literary journals in print.<br />
<br />
So, here's the link to my brief essay (about 1200 words) about the connections and differences between the two authors: <a href="http://twolinespress.com/connecting-the-dots-leve-and-perec/" target="_blank">"Connecting the Dots"</a><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
I also conducted <a href="http://twolinespress.com/thoughts-on-translation-with-margaret-jull-costa/" target="_blank">an interview</a> with<a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/margaret-jull-costa" target="_blank"> Margaret Jull Costa</a> this summer that was posted on the Two Lines blog -- she's quite the force (translated any and every important Portuguese or Brazilian author you've heard of [<span style="font-size: x-small;">Saramago <i>ahem ahem])</i></span> -- and has been given an OBE for her service to English literature!</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-5088365279068389732014-10-17T14:35:00.000-07:002014-10-31T12:00:18.926-07:00A Cautionary Tale? Or an Inspiration? Both?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was asked to discuss my career path by the career center at my undergraduate institution. Since I feel like a scrambler more than a planner at this point, I found that quite funny, but tried to answer their questions truthfully (if optimistically).<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogs.wellesley.edu/mycws/tsatris/" target="_blank">Here's</a> the result! </div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-68900784359347998132014-10-10T09:50:00.000-07:002014-12-03T22:26:16.377-08:00Fall: The Academic Job Season<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I let my <a href="http://www.mla.org/mla_membership_benef" target="_blank">MLA</a> membership lapse this year, stopped going to conferences a year ago, quit pursuing academic publications in favor of writing ones for places that paid. I gave the job market three tries, and never even got a request for an interview. Which, looking back, makes plenty of sense -- despite the importance of doing so, I never published a peer-reviewed article. What was I thinking? But in the end, that pushed me back out into a life that might turn out to be a better fit.<br />
<br />
I got a new job that I love, as associate editor for the literary magazine and eponymous press <a href="http://twolinespress.com/" target="_blank">Two Lines</a> (look how pretty our covers are!). How lucky is that? What a dream opportunity to work with incredibly well-read colleagues who genuinely care about poetry and avant-garde literature. I'm working out this life that's part reading and writing, part editing, part adjuncting for the best program on the planet for adjuncts: the <a href="http://fpf.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank">Fall Program for Freshmen</a>, run by UC Berkeley Extension for spring admit Berkeley freshmen. Teaching smart kids, editing literature, writing for fun and money -- all good. I even teach and hold office hours in Wheeler Hall, which is also the home of the English dept at Berkeley.<br />
<br />
Then I opened an email a month ago about local <a href="http://www.higheredjobs.com/" target="_blank">jobs in higher ed </a>. <br />
<a name='more'></a>I usually glance at them, see if there's any good admin or adjunct spots opening up. This time, I saw, ahead of the <a href="http://www.mla.org/jil" target="_blank">JIL</a> being open, ahead of when I should have had to actively avoid the job announcements so as not to cast loving, longing glances at the career that won't be mine, the job that would be the most perfect, perfect job for me: <a href="http://english.berkeley.edu/employment" target="_blank">20th/21st Century British, Assistant Professor</a>, at UC Berkeley. The department that occupies the building I teach in. The best English department in the US. The one in my backyard. It's 1000 PhDs' dream job. But you know who doesn't hire adjuncts teaching their own freshmen into tenure track positions? Three guesses, and the first two don't count.<br />
<br />
By turning so resolutely away from academia, though, I was in an even weaker position than I would have been at this point last year. I'm pretty sure my dissertation wouldn't stand up to their sharp eyes anyway, and I'd have to revise my diss during the same semester I am teaching and working at the publisher 20 hours a week. And believe me, with wild eyes, I contemplated that. I thought of back-pedaling and asking for letters of rec and just going in whole hog, without a care for the almost certain failure that would result even if I were fully prepared to actually enter the academic job market again.<br />
<br />
And I got that idea into my head again when the OTHER perfect job showed up in my inbox, emailed by a kind and well-meaning friend who snagged a good postdoc this year, after a couple years of adjuncting. The job's at a pretty decent big public university in a more than decent location -- and they are looking for someone who does contemporary Irish lit with an interest in poetics and trans-atlantic focus. Which is exactly how I would describe my focus, and last year I think there was maybe one Irish job, overall, so this is a fucking unicorn. I mean, maybe that means they want someone who studies both Heaney and Braithwaite, not five barely published avant garde poets inspired by the LANGUAGE poets in the US . But I could believe that at least it would just be me and 20 other folks, instead of 1000, but it would mean uprooting and making my cats and husband leave their home, saying goodbye to my parents and sister, and enduring snow. Lots of snow. LOTS of it. And you can't just drive away from it like you can when you're tired of skiing in Tahoe. In any case, my CV being stagnant doesn't show much gumption and get-go, and there was plenty I was happy to say goodbye to in academia (like... academic writing and the crushing feeling of being terrible at my chosen path and the two years of writers' block and the dissertation-sponsored-by-whiskey).<br />
<br />
But my plan to resolutely avoid thinking of the opportunities I'd lost by leaving academia was ruined. I could been someone else entirely, with an actual office, and graduate students, and a full time salary with benefits, and the pride of knowing I'd accomplished my goals and fulfilled my potential by achieving the hard-won dream of being a professor. Running into a professor I'd worked with in grad school in the halls of Wheeler -- he was attending a gathering of professors concerned about the state of the American university, I was coming out of my writing-intensive English class for freshmen -- who asked after my job market plans and offered any help I'd need didn't exactly salve the wound.<br />
<br />
But that's not who I am now. and I'm watching the days tick down to the deadlines of those two jobs -- I haven't looked at them since they first showed up in my inbox, but I memorized those due dates. Once that due date is past, that's another door shut on the alternative future.<br />
<br />
Each decision we make closes down another future. When I took four classes a semester in college, that closed down hundreds of other opportunities and paths that taking a different set of classes would have led me down. When I chose to get married, that closed down alternative paths. When I committed to the Bay Area, that closed down other paths. I can imagine so intensely those other paths -- my childhood friend who loved writing as much as I did and has her first novel (<a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/laura-rose-wagner/hold-tight-dont-let-go/" target="_blank">starred review in Kirkus</a>! YA novel set in Haiti!) out while she finishes her grad degree in anthropology (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20702041-hold-tight-don-t-let-go" target="_blank">go buy it</a>!) -- we wrote the first part of a novel together at 15, but I wandered off while she seems to have held tight to that path. The friend of my sister's, from our small town (our fathers are surfer buddies), who writes for the New Yorker now -- I can see, when I follow their paths, how they got to where they are. Boldness, certainty, trust in themselves, and maybe some luck.<br />
<br />
This is probably where mumblings of "fate" help people out -- I can't have other lives, other jobs, because this one is the one I was destined for. But I am too much of a dedicated atheist and vehement materialist to see a large guiding hand in all of this -- it's all on me, my decisions, my abilities, my limitations -- that's what got me here and will bring me forward -- or sideways, who knows.<br />
<br />
I just hope I can hear who those two departments hire without getting that wincing twinge of opportunities missed. Or maybe I won't hear at all -- maybe by the time they announce the hires next spring, I'll be so far away from this whole world, so wrapped up in writing and editing, that I won't even think to look. Maybe.<br />
<br /></div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-59158060470613254252014-02-24T13:22:00.002-08:002014-12-03T22:40:05.114-08:00My goal for 2014: Write and Submit Weekly<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="p1">
In order to challenge myself to write, and set deadlines, and then abide by them, I am using <a href="http://stickk.com/">stickk.com</a> to hold me to my promises, as well as friends in charge of checking on me.<br />
<br />
One of my goals is to write and submit SOMETHING every week. I need a fire lit under my butt, and I also need to get my confidence back. And the fun I used to have writing.<br />
<br />
So I decided to give Medium a try (despite my <a href="http://thetrepidatiousphd.blogspot.com/2013/11/writing-for-free-reading-for-free.html">reservations</a>), to see what happens, after <a href="https://medium.com/in-six-words/78e60ba156da" target="_blank">a fun writing prompt</a> asked for flash fiction and I came up with a raging set of lies about journalist Joel Stein. </div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
See the 1500 word story (7 minute read, according to Medium) <a href="https://medium.com/p/53afa12c0458" target="_blank">here</a>! It was too long to submit to the contest, but I am going to try to go shorter and sweeter for the next one, due in three days.<br />
<br />
[ETA: So yeah, only wrote the one, but it was chosen as an editor's pick! Got the taste of what 1.5K views feels like. "Exposure," they say these days, when you ask folks what they pay for material, but I can see the lure of that kind of attention. Almost feels like money.]</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
There's also a <a href="http://www.ttbook.org/3-minute-futures" target="_blank">flash fiction writing contest</a> at To The Best of Our Knowledge asking for "Three Minute Futures" -- short hard sci-fi. I'd like to try my hand at that!</div>
</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-65128262987579739982014-02-12T16:11:00.003-08:002014-02-12T16:11:37.992-08:00Abuses of Hand-Lettering in Book Jacket Design<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This should be a much longer post, with many more citations.<br />
<br />
But basically, as I have been immersing myself in book jacket design, and paying hawk-like attention to the look of literary novels everywhere I go, I've noticed a trend for illustration on covers, and especially hand-lettered titles.<br />
<br />
I first noticed it after seeing the <a href="http://ohsobeautifulpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Campaign-Inspired-Baby-Shower-Invitations-August-Blume-OSBP-114.jpg" target="_blank">exact</a> <a href="http://ohsobeautifulpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Campaign-Inspired-Baby-Shower-Invitations-August-Blume-OSBP-1.jpg" target="_blank">same</a> <a href="http://ohsobeautifulpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Black-White-Moving-Announcements-Lauren-Chism-Fine-Papers.jpg" target="_blank">trend</a> in <a href="http://isa2.stylemepretty.com/submissions/uploads/scott@omalleyphotographers.com/51656/900/omalley_photographers_style_me_pretty_001$!400x.jpg" target="_blank">wedding</a> <a href="http://ruffledblog.com/wp-content/upLoads/DIY-enveloper-liner-dots-07.jpg" target="_blank">invites</a> to an overwhelming degree <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(maybe because I'm getting married and am designing my own invites, which, yes, I set in lead type and hand-printed, so I am a bit of a luddite and a hipster don't judge me)</span>. I love the look, but it seems layered in that postmodern, hipster irony of reproducing the nostalgia for the thing using the very <a href="http://cache.trustedpartner.com/images/library/NaplesIllustrated2010/News%20&%20Blogs/Contests/Sept%202011/moshi-moshi-handest-w-iphone.jpg" target="_blank">technology</a> that has replaced it. Especially when the hand-lettering is then printed using letterpress, but rather than using lead type (as is PROPER), using a photopolymer plate. Double layers of obsolete technology!<br />
<br />
But I digress.<br />
<br />
I do love the look, but the book world is getting a bit saturated with it. It make zero sense to me, for example, for Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel to have a parchment cover and watercolored words:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17262100-the-lowland?from_search=true" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="watercolor illustration as book jacket" border="0" height="320" src="https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1366930267l/17262100.jpg" title="The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lahiri's most recent book, <i>The</i> <i>Lowland</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Seriously, what does that tell you about the book? Other than that the graphic designer who made the jacket likes to underline things. It has no connection with her previous work, even though <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1608601.Unaccustomed_Earth" target="_blank">her last book</a>, with its gorgeous cover, was published by the same house.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Anyways, I do think that it can be used well, but I think it's interesting that it's being used across so many genres, whereas oftentimes typeface choices are so genre-limited. I noticed the following books in particular because they use a hand-lettered title, but it seems to jar with the genre, content, or audience one would think the publisher and author are trying to convey. Is this a case of graphic designer revolt?</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://d1ldy8a769gy68.cloudfront.net/180/038/547/454/7/0385474547.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Achebe" border="0" height="200" src="https://d1ldy8a769gy68.cloudfront.net/180/038/547/454/7/0385474547.jpg" title="New Cover Art for Things Fall Apart" width="130" /></a><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13573517-the-boy-kings?from_search=true" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/t/the-boy-kings/9781451668254_custom-6e6654b2aec6b9659578e02583ac55a8bb906444-s2-c85.jpg" height="200" title="The Boy Kings" width="129" /></a> <span style="text-align: center;"> </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10725578-the-tree" target="_blank" title="The Tree by allison saltzman design, on Flickr"><img alt="The Tree" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4003/4387200087_1835d5aa4a.jpg" height="200" title="New Cover for Fowles's The Tree" width="132" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHiq0OauQGgL4-0tqNAdIzgaj0nUPJSM4jPHXCEaS2CSyK8gMJKdcgveb3bi6zEVU51i8bH8GYq_k4VBAr_DnaxIA412mA6doO7pvwvjmV6aFvMuY2KEUc9E6Vl66OWba9IYJO65Az3Ag/s1600/tumblr_lj4s6vRbNX1qzpio9o1_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Waugh" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHiq0OauQGgL4-0tqNAdIzgaj0nUPJSM4jPHXCEaS2CSyK8gMJKdcgveb3bi6zEVU51i8bH8GYq_k4VBAr_DnaxIA412mA6doO7pvwvjmV6aFvMuY2KEUc9E6Vl66OWba9IYJO65Az3Ag/s200/tumblr_lj4s6vRbNX1qzpio9o1_400.jpg" height="200" title="Brideshead Revisited" width="122" /></a><a href="http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/23/7e/22/237e22c09b41ec9009e52eec742acd81.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/23/7e/22/237e22c09b41ec9009e52eec742acd81.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQqWaHF3EbCmXxu5rCqloPuP0EbJO216P2U2yXMhGS05ETtF0z85-v0Mmu0rEHxsnUMcHstecc9JV_n7sGoVni3VpO6bVY4tKFIcHtjGmUZVTY0jlFW721EWMii4FrJckLSqH3ZSPNsok/s1600/BCdoyle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Roddy Doyle" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQqWaHF3EbCmXxu5rCqloPuP0EbJO216P2U2yXMhGS05ETtF0z85-v0Mmu0rEHxsnUMcHstecc9JV_n7sGoVni3VpO6bVY4tKFIcHtjGmUZVTY0jlFW721EWMii4FrJckLSqH3ZSPNsok/s200/BCdoyle.jpg" height="200" title="Oh, Play That Thing" width="161" /></a> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijj4p0NQVmO1pp-HsVM-GObZM2m0jYEzURJO9V6C7hgYZZq0VtZWLhKviZQJXTjTSuD1uP9WZsGqPSUWlKqOmqFmMaPBQUi89NpUNi2FaCwNTuRRlAuwWuC2h8UKGyHgjJCUc9z-gpjgFc/s1600/dinner-a-love-story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Rosenstrach" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijj4p0NQVmO1pp-HsVM-GObZM2m0jYEzURJO9V6C7hgYZZq0VtZWLhKviZQJXTjTSuD1uP9WZsGqPSUWlKqOmqFmMaPBQUi89NpUNi2FaCwNTuRRlAuwWuC2h8UKGyHgjJCUc9z-gpjgFc/s200/dinner-a-love-story.jpg" height="200" title="Dinner, A Love Story" width="160" /></a> <a href="http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/t/the-goldfinch/9780316055437_custom-8387e636d286aa86fc16d49b6a17f95c8558d406-s6-c30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span id="goog_1875633781"></span><img alt="Tartt" border="0" src="http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/t/the-goldfinch/9780316055437_custom-8387e636d286aa86fc16d49b6a17f95c8558d406-s6-c30.jpg" height="200" title="The Goldfinch" width="130" /><span id="goog_1875633782"></span></a><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51eeGcpKY7L._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Powers" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51eeGcpKY7L._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" height="200" title="Twelve By Twelve" width="130" /></a></div>
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I am sure these are all lovely books. Who could turn their nose up at Achebe? Roddy Doyle will have you laughing your head off. But WHY use the same signifiers for fiction and non-fiction? The answer has to be the aura of the handmade object, and the attempts of fine books to look not mass-produced, to look special, to look like you really need to buy and own this precious, hand-made just-for-you object. And to update classics to look fresh (Achebe and Waugh just won't resonate with current marketplaces otherwise, I guess?). As paper books war with ebooks for customer dollars, the materiality of the object is becoming emphasized as a positive. Ebooks aren't chipping away at hardbacked sales, but they've destroyed the <a href="http://publishingperspectives.com/2013/08/good-enough-literature-and-the-beauty-of-the-mass-market//">massmarket, rack-size paperback</a>. If you want to buy something a machine made, you'll download the digital version, and all the books in your pocket library will have the exact same font (typeface), the covers won't matter, and you'll likely delete or remove the book once you're done instead of passing it along to someone else and starting up the oh-so-desired word-of-mouth campaign. So I get the inspiration. It's possibly also behind the emphasis on chalkboards and personalization <a href="https://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2012/from-etsys-merchandising-desk-july-2012/">Etsy has been hammering</a> for years. But you can't apply the same idea to everything! It's the cheap easy way to connect to current trends, but is it servicing the book or just demonstrating the in-the-know-ness of the designer?</div>
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OK, to pull my cranky pants all the way up, the worst offender in design, overall, bar none, of recent books in this trend is, in my opinion, <i>Cartwheel</i>. </div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">Holy crap I don't want to ever look at this jacket again (I got like three in their publicity carpet bombing exercise and have been trying to give them away). It makes no sense. I mean, I like the subtle curve in the actual title, and the spokes radiating from the center do evoke </span><a href="http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/Bangladesh/South/Khulna/Jessore/photo625151.htm" style="text-align: left;">an actual cartwheel</a><span style="text-align: left;">, but overall it just feels scattered and totally, totally unrelated to the novel -- and doesn't even have the excuse of echoing </span><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781400069774" style="text-align: left;">her previous book</a><span style="text-align: left;">. There's a bird, and what seem to be post-its with rough-pencilled scrawl -- but as described in the jacket copy, the novel is basically a ripped-from-the-deadlines fictionalization of the </span><a href="http://www.mylifetime.com/movies/amanda-knox-murder-on-trial-in-italy" style="text-align: left;">Amanda Knox</a><span style="text-align: left;"> story. What the heck is the connection of this pinwheeling cover to an international tale of lurid crime and uncertain guilt? How does this stylishly designed cover tell me anything at all about the book? The cover is a vital piece of information to help a reader engage with a book, and this one, I believe, does a horrible disservice to book and author. It feels like a designer got fed-up with feedback and <i><a href="http://www.ifc.com/fix/2011/01/if-you-like-it-put-a-bird-on-i">Portlandia</a></i>ed the jacket.</span></div>
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MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-78473670631300446872013-11-19T14:33:00.000-08:002014-12-03T22:36:41.053-08:00Writing for Free, Reading for Free: The Economics of Academia and Publishing Today<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 33px;"><i>Academics entering the media world tend to move from one exploitative arena (low-wage academic work) to another (unpaid freelance writing). But writing must never be an act of charity to a corporation. Ask for what you are worth—and do not accept that you are worth nothing. Insisting on payment for your labor is not a sign of entitlement. It is a right to which you are entitled.</i></span></span></blockquote>
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-Sarah Kendzior, <a href="http://chroniclevitae.com/articles/should-academics-write-for-free/?cid=chp" target="_blank">"Should Academics Write for Free?" </a></div>
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<a href="https://www.medium.com/" target="_blank">Medium</a> -- a new iteration of publishing/sharing writing/writing for free. Medium offers us all an audience because praise should be pay enough (though now, apparently, <a href="https://medium.com/medium-writers-guide/7838df60bab2" target="_blank">they are paying some writers decently</a>). Medium was founded by Evan Williams (also, a liquor), who also founded Blogger (write for free -- for yourself and your friends), and has been in charge (possibly a founder? multiple stories abound) of Twitter (write for free, briefly, to the world, your friends, and clients). On <a href="http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/10/16/evan-williams-medium" target="_blank">Here and Now</a> recently, Williams was asked about his new venture, and he described the year-old platform as providing journalism and stories to a wide audience who just can't find it elsewhere, apparently. He also emphasized the ability to share one's writing with the world, which writers just can't do elsewhere, apparently. Those darn editors and gate-keepers -- I thought that the internet was supposed to have knocked them down already? Williams evaded the interviewer's question of what void he was trying to fill, explaining that, really, this was a longer twitter. However, what he is actually replacing is the curated, edited magazine.<br />
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Medium allows you, the reader to curate , and filter so that you are following particular writers or particular topics. Very useful. Rather like Google Reader allowed you to aggregate content. It allows the author to associate their writing with other writing in similar topics. I can see the benefits, but I don't see how this can pretend <i>not</i> to be a web-substitute for the magazine. Especially with the title "medium" (which is a bit arrogant, perhaps -- there is no longer a media, just a singular medium?), and the purchase of long-form host/platform <a href="https://www.readmatter.com/" target="_blank">Matter</a>, it seems like the mags are clearly in their sites. Not to mention the hire of GQ's editor and the frequent publication of professional journalists (<a href="https://medium.com/medium-writers-guide/7838df60bab2" target="_blank">some of whom actually do get paid</a>..... but it's not guaranteed -- like all else in this contemporary world of words, you do the work for free and then hope.)<br />
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So, you (me), the Joe Schmo author, don't get paid, but if you keep trying, you can accumulate a portfolio of writing so good you <i>should</i> have gotten paid for it. It's as if we're pretending that publishing as a business doesn't exist. And that the companies hosting the words aren't getting paid by investors, or eventually, by some other system (ads, subscribers, etc -- the same way publishers always got paid). The only way this is an improvement is if you actually think you'll be able to exchange cultural capital for actual capital in a quicker or larger way than you could before, when companies had to pay to publish your work, or you went all Emily Dickinson, hoarding your poems for the future.<br />
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But folks like me who are academically trained are <i>used</i> to thinking of our writing as something we do for free -- for pleasure -- for the sake of it. For seven years, I researched and wrote for free (or got writer's block for free) while I was paid to teach, or to build a website, or to grade papers. But, you might argue, the university paid for your tuition. For what classes? I took 1.5 years of classes, and spent the next half-decade in a cubicle or at my home office (ahem, my dining room table). And what about those of us who luckily end up skating along the tenure track? Their pay, one could argue, is for both teaching and writing. Again, that's after how many years of apprenticeship and reams of paper (MBs of pixels? I dunno) produced for the chance to one day get paid for what you already giving away.<br />
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Open access advocates are already disrupting (<i>shiver</i> -- that techno-utopian word) the traditional academic publishing world -- which I think is actually great, since academics were already writing journal articles for free, and then journals were selling them to libraries. I'll write a whole 'nother post on that. But in any case, the increased numbers of former grad students trained to see their writing as valueless and who have been pushed out from/left the academy means that there are only further hordes of trained, willing writers swarming the potential outlets for their writing, willing and able to give their work away.<br />
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We'll see how Medium shapes up. And Matter. And all the other new inventions of ways to distribute good writing to the hungry masses. But is this just another way for the money to get concentrated at the top, and to leave the writers hungry, so hungry they'll keep eating scraps, and shoe leather when there are no scraps?</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-84120687146766136072013-06-02T07:30:00.000-07:002013-06-04T18:13:04.145-07:00Book Covers I Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I am super into the silhouettes and paper cut outs I've seen all over the place lately, and I love the ways in which people are using those on book covers now, as seen in the next two images:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F2ZG-ZH-Jtg/UTmBSVgZJ0I/AAAAAAAACCg/xuLAHF6Q-wU/s1600/monsters_templeton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F2ZG-ZH-Jtg/UTmBSVgZJ0I/AAAAAAAACCg/xuLAHF6Q-wU/s320/monsters_templeton.jpg" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401340926" target="_blank"><i>The Monsters of Templeton</i> by L Groff</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LN8urloO6fY/UTmB8r1XqyI/AAAAAAAACCo/N9CljNs1X50/s1600/SnowChildpaperback-banner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LN8urloO6fY/UTmB8r1XqyI/AAAAAAAACCo/N9CljNs1X50/s320/SnowChildpaperback-banner.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316175661" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Snow Child </i>by Eowyn Ivey</span></a></td></tr>
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<i>Mr. Penumbra's</i> combines my favorite things: books, San Francisco, and something slightly magical. For a girl whose first job was selling books in a little indie bookstore on the CA coast, this book is irresistible And the cover's use of neon that looks like highlighter --<i> and which glows in the dark --</i> is a fabulous wink at the <i>shadow</i> of "Penumbra" (*polishes her high school Latin*) and the fluorescence of a 24-hour bookshop.<br />
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<i><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13538873-mr-penumbra-s-24-hour-bookstore?auto_login_attempted=true" target="_blank">Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan</a></i><br />
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<i>Flora</i> feels super-traditional, but with the edge of the initial letter of the title falling off the front cover, there's a bit of an edge. I love the grace and drama of the title, which looks like a signature, and the bright punch of the author's name against the blue of the dress.</div>
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<a href="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349734667l/16034245.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349734667l/16034245.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16034245-flora" target="_blank"><i>Flora</i> by Gail Godwin</a><br />
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Also, I want to read all the books.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-21335294426984416892013-05-30T09:00:00.000-07:002013-05-31T17:54:25.879-07:00Money and Motivation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One of the ways in which spending your twenties as a grad student in a humanities department warps your view of yourself and your world is with regard to self-value. Not just "I must be a shitty person and scholar because I don't get this 'body without organs' " deal, but the work we do for which we are not paid, and the work for which we get paid so very, very little.<br />
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In graduate school, I planned events, I entered data, I taught myself software programs, I compiled webpages, I proof-read, I managed other graduate students, I researched, I read, I wrote, and I taught.<br />
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And for few of these gigs was I paid, and then, it was not well. This translates well to academia, where service and research are the <b>perqs</b> that you earn by teaching. You are grateful to be able to have the time and space to voluntarily, on your own time, research, serve on committees, mentor students, etc.<br />
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But this mindset, I am finding, is counter to everything outside of academia. I do not think the importance and value of a job can be measured by its salary. I do not think that those who earn $30,000 must or should work less hard than those who earn four times that. So that's good. But this belief in dedicating all to a job -- and in editing and writing "on the side" of the "real" job -- is not always helpful to getting ahead. I ask myself, is my genuine wish to work longer hours than I am paid fair to me and my partner? Really, I should be compensated for all time worked, so am I being a sucker by gladly bringing work home with me? Or since I am young and trying to build a career, should I be grateful for everything and anything I can get?<br />
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What's the difference between an underpaid, part-time editor working harder than s/he's being paid for and a young engineer at a startup sleeping at the company HQ and dedicating him/herself to their launch date? Is it just money? compensation? prestige? Or are they both naive, in fact, and should be rallying with other workers to demand fair wages?<br />
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One of the consequences of our new economy seems to be both flexibility and instability. If we are all eminently replaceable, we each must always be working harder than we are being paid in order to be the most valuable person to the company, it seems to me. Maybe all of the American economy is just catching up to a trick that academia's been playing on its citizens for many decades longer.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-41928218448572457062013-05-28T00:21:00.000-07:002013-05-30T02:39:00.690-07:00Where I am today<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I finished my dissertation at 10 AM on March 28th, 2013. I was so worn out by the end that I am not sure that finishing was either a relief or a moment for celebration. It was more of a "This? This is what I had to do? All those years of paralysis and confusion and all I had to do was this?"<br />
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I felt let down by myself and, to be perfectly honest, by my advisors. I'm very proud of three of my chapters and I am glad I finished the last one and the intro. But, I am disappointed that despite my grand, ambitious ideas for the shape of the dissertation, it ended up being 200 pages, intro + 4 single author chapters. What a yawn. I don't want to know how many errors were in the bibliography. I still feel like as much of an impostor as I did throughout the process, only now I have a degree I feel like I earned through sheer forbearance rather than skill or knowledge. I don't think I know more now than I did six months ago, I just finally put my thoughts on paper. I feel like I wandered blindly for so long and spent so long worrying about their responses that I wasted years. One of my committee members apparently did not know when the submission deadline was and gave me feedback to totally revise my intro three days after I had submitted the document. I don't blame him at all -- I hadn't given him much time in the end to respond.<br />
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One of the unconscious reasons behind procrastination, for me, is that by cutting down on the time given to my advisors, and limiting the time I had left, I knew that they couldn't ask me to do huge revisions. Even if that would have been better for the scholarship. There simply wouldn't be time, so we band-aided the poor diss and shuffled it off stage.<br />
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I decided to embargo my dissertation for the maximum time allowed, two years, partially because I am telling myself that I will publish better versions of my chapters, and partially because I am deeply ashamed that it isn't better. I had the chance to really study under my advisors, and I never took it because I was too afraid of their criticism and felt too stupid to engage them in real, deep conversations about poetry, literature, and theory. I never even read half the books I wanted to, and what is a sadder take away from eight years of graduate study of literature?<br />
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I hope to revise my intro over this summer, and maybe tack on that last conclusion I intended to write, and correct any glaring typos or bibliographic problems. I also would like to turn some of the lost material into articles -- the chapter on the state of the poetry-publishing industry in Ireland and my Heaney/Boland chapter that never materialized.<br />
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I want to apply for academic jobs this fall, even though I got nowhere last year. But my current editorial job is looking shaky -- the publisher is in some financial straits, and I'm not sure my direct boss is going to stick it out. I feel very nervous, and I need to find some work immediately in case everything goes pear-shaped, which is pretty hard to do when you are new-ish to both an area and an industry. We'll see.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-40391828284613031442013-03-15T01:55:00.001-07:002013-05-31T17:57:56.397-07:00Mad Dash<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have had about ten days to work on my introduction, and got about fifteen pages written -- all of which summarized Irish history -- which took a lot of work. Then I had a meeting with the helpful professor at the local campus, who strongly suggested that this was going to be too broad and too long and wasn't a real introduction to <b>my</b> project.<br />
<br />
So, what I need to do instead is explain my argument and the reasons for it. In other words, do exactly what is <b>so</b> difficult that I do everything I can to avoid it. I would much rather just summarize Irish history for a while and hope that explains why I am doing my study. That meeting was on Tuesday, and I've just been clenched up in anxiety and frustration since then. I think I've written half a sentence since. I was supposed to turn this in yesterday, and instead it's almost two and I've got half a sentence done. I feel sick to my stomach with how hard this is going to be and how little time I have to do it in. My main argument is "this is different! and cool! just like Ireland!" and I've been repeatedly told this isn't a good enough thesis, which is one of the things that disenchants me about academia. Why does a close reading + historical context-based reading have to say anything other than "look at what I found"?<br />
<br />
Tomorrow is full, too: I had a sealant recently applied by the dentist crack so I had to make an emergency appointment. My back hates me spending 12 hours at my deck, so I need to get a massage, and I was supposed to have lunch with a colleague tomorrow, but I didn't realize we had a dinner scheduled with friends. My boyfriend doesn't want me to skip out on our regular dinner with friends, so pushed me to cancel my lunch instead. I strongly do not want to attend this dinner. I want the hours to work or sleep. I don't care as much about these regular dinners as he does, probably because they are more his friends than mine.<br />
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I tried to get up early today to work, and I did read an essay that was great, but I really didn't sit down to write until 6 PM, in my usual fashion. I genuinely don't know what happens to me during daylight hours.<br />
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I've taken the last two weeks off from the publishing gig to work on my diss, and apparently there have been numerous crises. I am looking forward to digging back in, but having these two weeks off has also been great. I am not exhausted at 5 PM, I don't have to show up anywhere at a particular time, my boyfriend is also working from home, so we get to hang out, and I haven't had to negotiate once. Back on Monday, though.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-4482857245842985792013-03-11T21:57:00.000-07:002013-03-15T01:57:37.848-07:00Typography and Book Design<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am mostly an amateur enthusiast when it comes to book design and typography. I have handset letterpress and made my own very tiny book, I have read guides on typography (for fun, mind you), and have studied the material construction of books of poetry as part of my dissertation. So, I know the terminology, but I have not worked with inDesign, I've never worked with commercial printers, nor have I worked within comercial constraints.<br />
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Still, I have OPINIONS -- of course I do. And when our galleys came back with a half inch, max, of margins, 12-point Times New Roman font, and single spacing, I nearly flipped. I've already explained several times that you can't use a regular old serif typeface (ahem, "font" so I don't sound like a ponce) as your typeface for a title. And that you should match your title page and chapter headings closely in spirit to the typeface used on the cover. All you have to do to know that is look at literally ANY decent book.<br />
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These galleys looked like someone just took a Word file and printed it -- which was basically what was done. I felt bad, because it had looked fine as a PDF, so I OK'd it. It was astonishing how different it looked on screen and in print. Amazing how cramped and dense 35 lines per page looks compared to 25.<br />
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I think one thing my grad degree has taught me is how to learn the conventions of one's genre, and how to appear to belong. And how to teach yourself everything, since no-one else will do it for you. So I get frustrated when people don't do that.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-28455639114374612052013-03-07T21:36:00.000-08:002013-05-31T18:02:26.607-07:00Three Weeks to Go<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
All of February, and the first five days of March, I was working on a chapter about the elusive, creative Irish poet <a href="http://hardpressedpoetry.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Catherine Walsh</a>. I find her asyntactic, paratactic writing to be extraordinarily challenging to make an argument about, because to me, it could be so easy to prove wrong. This, I've realized has been a huge problem of mine in grad school: I can always see the holes in my own argument, and that not only paralyzes me, but I keep inserting caveats and undermining my own claims. In high school I was an attorney in our Mock Trial program for three years. I was very good at it, but partly because I always felt that I was lying because I could see all the holes and gaps in my argument and the strengths of the oppositions, so I frantically tried to fill those gaps in as much as possible. Yet, the feeling of telling half-truths was always there.<br />
<br />
But, in any case, I finished writing 40 pages. I sent it off, despite the fact that I knew there were huge problems in it (like.... not having a convincing argument), but I had to move on, so I let it go. I promptly received feedback from one of my committee members to the effect that he loved my close-readings, but did not perceive a strong structure holding it together, and wants me to rewrite/revise. Which I expected. I <i>didn't</i> expect the praise for the readings, nor for him to get back to me so quickly!<br />
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I'm trying to move forward to writing the intro now. At this point, sans intro, I believe I would estimate my dissertation to be about 140 pp. A bit light, but that doesn't include the interviews I'll be including. I've been looking at tons of intros -- they vary from 15-50 pages, and I've even heard of a 95 page one! I am just hoping mine will be 30. I am excited about it, partially because it requires mostly a literature review and historical background for the project. I think it should be a matter of positioning myself among the other scholars. My dissertation is light on footnotes, especially this most recently chapter, which I am afraid might be symptomatic of a lack of deep contextualizing reading. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to make it up in the intro.<br />
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I am taking time off from work to finish this project -- thank goodness my boss is OK with that. Only 1 more week, though, and then I'm back. That means 7 days to write the intro, then, as quickly as possible, address issues with the first chapter, add another 10 pp to turn 1 chapter into 2 shorter ones, and rewrite my 3rd chapter. I hope the latter Herculean tasks can be accomplished in 10 days.<br />
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Simultaneously, I am trying to oversee production, acquisition, editing, etc for the publishing company, Right now, I am taking a backseat, but that doesn't stop the publisher complaining to me of costs (maybe he shouldn't have an amateur do the typesetting and maybe he should pay his printers) and the authors complaining to me about missing checks. The only thing I can do abut either of those is nag the people with money.<br />
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I joined a website called <a href="http://versatilephd.com/about/" target="_blank">Versatile Ph.D</a>. recently. Great forums and support for making a career outside of academia. My only concern is how many of the English Ph.D.s are now either dissertation editors (perpetuating the very system that they left) or are freelance editors. Both seem like unsavory choices, to me, but maybe I only see the instability of freelance work and not its upsides.<br />
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OK: I need to get a page or two written today, and then I will be on the right track! 5 pages every day for the next 7 days will sort me out!</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-31214338016787583322013-02-25T02:10:00.004-08:002013-03-07T21:44:44.814-08:00So much to say, so much to do...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A few dashes....<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>The<a href="http://ecopoeticsconference.blogspot.com/"> Ecopoetics Conference</a> at Berkeley this weekend blew my mind. I didn't even get to meet all the folks who inspire me so much who were there -- Jed Rasula, Jennifer Scappatone, etc. -- but the talks and the people I did get to meet and the conversations I had with new friends and old were amazing. I was baffled, frustrated, excited, challenged, bored, intrigued, well-fed, comforted, and I scribbled down so many names of poets and writers and theorists I had never heard of before. This is exactly what I value in academia. If this were what being a professor is, I would embrace it wholeheartedly. This is what I thought academia would be. However, as everyone was getting ready to leave today, I kept hearing about grading papers, prepping classes, etc. Teaching takes so much of my energy and effort just to be middling at it, and I have not missed it for an instant. I told several people that I was planning on leaving academia, and while my reasons seem flimsy sometimes (I don't want to move! Uncertainty!) and the financial prospects seem weak, I feel happy (mostly. sometimes. will they let me back in to their conferences?)</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I have to write the 2nd half of my Catherine Walsh chapter this week. I took last week to write about parking lots and thirdspaces for the ecopoetics conference (and I honestly think I'll get a paper out of it!), and now I am deep in the weeds, folks.</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I am so fucking obssessed with Arcade Fire right now. Their album <i>The Suburbs</i> was my soundtrack for researching and writing my ecopoetics paper, "Why Walk When You Can Drive?: Parking Lot Landscapes in Contemporary American Poetry." PLEASE do yrselves a favor and watch their "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHWColYQ90">Sprawl II</a>" video over and over.</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>My god, this advice from <a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-ultimate-guide-to-writing-better-than-you-normally-do">Mr. Nissan</a> never gets less relevant: <b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro-1, adobe-garamond-pro-2, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">DON’T </span><span class="caps" style="font-family: adobe-garamond-pro-1, adobe-garamond-pro-2, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">PROCRASTINATE</span></b></li>
</ul>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Procrastination is an alluring siren taunting you to Google the country where Balki from <em>Perfect Strangers</em> was from, and to arrange sticky notes on your dog in the shape of hilarious dog shorts. A wicked temptress beckoning you to watch your children, and take showers. Well, it’s time to look procrastination in the eye and tell that seafaring wench, “Sorry not today, today I write."</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-70731736365589833202013-01-29T20:58:00.000-08:002013-01-29T20:58:05.004-08:00Facing the Reality of a Two Month Deadline<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I had a long conversation (like, 4 hours) yesterday with a prof here at Berkeley who has been very supportive of my project. He pointed out that with 2 months to go, the most important chapter to write is the Catherine Walsh chapter, not the Seamus Heaney chapter (since Walsh's work is directly part of my argument, and the Heaney chapter was insisted on by a committee member who is concerned about me getting jobs). I've been loath to listen to this prof's advice to leave out the Heaney and Boland chapter entirely, because I had done a lot of work on it 2 summers ago, and I feel like I need to throw together as many things that I already have as possible. That, and without that chapter, my dissertation starts to feel slight and narrow.<br />
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So, I just need to check in with my other committee members about this, and then just commit to Walsh. And maybe Mills, a poet whom I really love but the other committee members who know the field are less interested in.<br />
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This dissertation, because I cannot afford to continue after March 28th, will not be what I wanted it to be. I simply do not have time to make it the comprehensive, in depth work I wanted it to be. I just have to accept this. The part I hate about this is that the only people who will read this dissertation and judge it in its current form are my committee members and any job search committees. In other words, the people who determine my academic future. If I have one.<br />
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Got stuck doing publishing work today (on a dissertation day). Spent the day using Amazon, Goodreads, Books In Print (Bowker), and Bookscan (Nielsen) to look up books people who like our books might like and their sales figures. Amazing how long it takes.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-71308905812020673472013-01-28T02:35:00.000-08:002013-01-28T02:46:30.411-08:00Woman Meets Perfume: Life after grad school<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was stopped by a stunning book jacket in <a href="http://www.pegasusbookstore.com/">Pegasus Books</a> today:<br />
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<a href="http://alyssaharad.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/CTMS-hc-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://alyssaharad.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/CTMS-hc-cover.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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Isn't that gorgeous?</div>
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I literally was only paying attention to the jacket and title page design (which was a flawless interpretation of the jacket) as an example of the way in which the typeface on the title page should echo that of the cover (well done Random-Penguin)....</div>
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.... but it turns out <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780670023615">Harad's book</a> is the story of a UT Austin Ph.D. in English who takes a bow and whisks herself off the academic stage to another life! I am inspired! After the million books on lyric, Irish politics, and publishing I have to read, and the towering pile of MSS, this is next on the list.</div>
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MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-52330979396094431362013-01-28T02:26:00.001-08:002013-01-28T02:47:08.396-08:00What not to do when trying to finish a dissertation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
1) misspell a <b>key word</b> known by ALL members of your field in your goddamned dissertation precis.<br />
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2) drink. Or do. But probably not whiskey. Or most of a bottle of wine.<br />
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3) have a boyfriend.<br />
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4) have a job.<br />
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5) slyly and nostalgically guzzle <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=puWnnyUPrWgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+future+of+us&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tVYGUaHvMObS2gXlk4CwCA&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA">a YA book about teens in 1996</a> (when you were in high school, ohmigawd) who come across facebook as kids and subtly alter their futures. <i>Brain cand</i>.... uhhh, I mean <i>market research</i>.</div>
MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-40312120198869614012013-01-26T21:14:00.004-08:002013-05-31T18:05:47.368-07:00Dissertation Saturday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have been exhausting myself in preparation for the publishing company's marketing meeting on Monday -- felt sick and feverish last night, but i think I got it out of my system today. I spent 5 hours yesterday basically on data entry -- just entering in marketing information and sales copy for our reps at our distributor to read. It was important for me to do, since I needed to understand the different copy and its different purposes (catalog vs back jacket vs whatever), but certainly for next time, I will simply put it all in a Word doc and have an intern do the actual entry. Painful stuff, and frustrating. Also, found a major typo on the title page of one of the books about to go to print. *headache*<br />
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Today began slowly, which was nice. Got some still-warm pastries from a wee French bakery and had tea this afternoon with an old friend and her daschund. Lay on the couch and read <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/john_mcphee/search?contributorName=john%20mcphee">a piece by John McPhee</a> about structuring non-fic while my adorable cats curled up nearby. He resists chronological order for thematic or other forms of organization I feel that writing about poetry should always really be thematic -- otherwise you are just doing a slow-ass line-by-line reading that shows none of your own impetus, and let's the poem dictate the reading entirely. I have been struggling with organization, but one of my committee members complimented me on the structure I used in the chapter I sent him! He said he felt the braiding and weaving was responsive the poems I was reading, which also involved the interweaving of texts. Hard to write a straightforward, A-B-C chapter about two poems, neither of which move in a direct fashion.<br />
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Reading a great <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=yStKdxP7x3EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=jeffreys+lyric&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jLEEUa6VFsTkqAHkyYHADg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA">book on lyric</a> today edited by Mark Jeffreys. I'm trying to think through these two poems by Heaney and Boland, and how they might go with the rest of my dissertation. I am also incredibly behind -- I was supposed to have this chapter done by the end of this month, and instead I realized I have to totally rewrite it and that means starting from scratch on the research/theory/framework side of things. So, thinking about subjectivity and community, separation of the poet, etc. I also had a tiny epiphany that the poems I am looking at are actually both from sequences, which gives me much more to talk about with regards to form! Because clearly both are attempting to expand the lyric, which, as Jeffreys writes in his intro, is seen as removed from history (and possibly in opposition to it). Heaney's "Tollund Man in Springtime" is clearly a narrative composed of sonnets, while Boland's "Domestic Violence" (first poem in the sequence <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180326">here</a>) is more like a multi-faceted approach to a single topic (basically her own backlist, pardon my cynicism).<br />
<br />
So, I am going to try to finish this chapter by the end of the first week of February. How? Magic, of course. I like a quote I read recently, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” ― E.L. Doctorow. I just have to keep moving. And writing. Tonight my plan is, after dinner (and wine, so we'll see), to chop up my existing chapter, finish the book on lyric, and maybe get started on a book about politics in Ireland. I am concerned about this chapter, but I also don't want it to drag down my last chapter AND INTRO that I have to write in February. Holy crappola.<br />
<br />
I am skipping out on a major convention for the publishing job, but I told my boss before I started that I couldn't do this event. I'll be giving a talk at the <a href="http://ecopoeticsconference.blogspot.com/">ecopoetics conference</a>! So ridiculously excited about this, even if it does cut into my writing and work time. I have been anticipating this for a year -- and it's in my own backyard, and I think I already know a quarter of the people going. Lucky me. This is what I'll miss.<br />
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MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206868191954592912.post-75714555491976915162013-01-20T20:52:00.002-08:002013-01-20T21:37:53.570-08:0039 working days left (including today)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was supposed to spend yesterday working, but instead I read, took a nap, got my nails done, and went out to dinner with my boyfriend. That turned into a 3 hours long discussion about our future and my future in academia. I feel that I am being asked to choose between fulfillment of a long-held personal dream and my personal needs, including kids and not being a ball of stress all the time.<br />
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Is it just stubbornness to hold out for the 0.5% chance of a perfect job? What am I losing if I make a tenure-track job my first priority?<br />
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I am worried that I'll end up with a job rather than a career, and doing so will devastate me. My ambition and drive to succeed has always been a huge part of me, and I worry that putting personal desires ahead of professional ones will mean giving up a huge part of myself and what I take pride in doing and being.<br />
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I am constantly torn and fear making the wrong choice, closing off options forever. Becoming a failure.<br />
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****<br />
<br />
Dissertation goals for the rest of the day: Figure out argumentation for 3rd chapter on Heaney and Boland.<br />
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As is, this is a chapter that described Heaney and Boland's representations of Irish society through the metaphor of the earth. It is simplistic and under-theorized, even if the readings are good. But this chapter was written when I was trying to make this an ecocritical dissertation, which is not where it has ended up going,<br />
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Idea: to make this chapter into a meditation on the lyric and Irish identity. Not saying "this is bad and old" compared to the experimental poets I work on, but exploring the relationship between identity and form in a postcol state. Using the same poems, "The Tollund Man in Springtime" and "Domestic Violence" as an example, I hope.<br />
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To that end: I am revisiting all the books and articles I have on Irish identity, the self, lyric, postcolonialism, and globalization. I hope this won't take too long, because this chapter needs to be done in the next 2 weeks. Luckily I have MLK Jr day to work on it.<br />
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MDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04664007262047544839noreply@blogger.com0