and sing to me.

This is a bit of a soap-boxy post, so if you do not want to hear me bitch about the state of literary critique and analysis, please go back to your regularly scheduled programming.



Those of you that interact with me on a regular basis know that I gave up most of my sanity and self-confidence over the last couple of weeks in service of writing my first seminar presentation for ENGL 501. For those of you that have not developed a taste for the particular insanity that is senior university English, allow me to explain what this means: I cranked out a ten page research paper. And then I read it to my seminar class, comprised of 4 Undergrads, 7 Master's students, one PhD candidate and the professor.

Read. My paper. To the class.

It was the most profoundly uncomfortable thing I've had to do in my academic career. And that's saying something, because I've done English presentations with Kris, and with little preparation besides discussing an introduction, brainstorming a handful of discussion prompts and arming ourselves with obscene art photos 20 minutes before we were due to give the lecture.

This was weird.

First of all, there is the deep uncomfortableness of having to read your work out loud. Giving a presentation is one thing; I've reached the point where I can have a set of notes and deftly direct a class where I'd like them to go with a discussion, and be fast enough to figure out what to do when they DON'T go where you want them to. Talking is fine. But putting your actual, academic work out there- particularly when you're none too thrilled with the quality of it- is an entirely different matter. Normally, you can write in a vacuum, hand your paper in, and that's the end of it. Whatever humiliation or admiration is granted stays between you and your marker. Reading out loud gives a shape and a weight to your ideas, form to your voice. You realize that you have writerly tics, awkward speech patterns, and particular patterns of logic that were brilliant at 1am, but look decidedly less sparkly in the light of 9am in a seminar room in the English department. Your writing is a thing, something that can be judged, and you get to sit in the chair while that judgement is being passed, in real time.

I survived that. I survived the discussion and critique that followed the reading and the response to my paper. But it was what happened afterwards that has prompted this entry, and now is the focus of my attention. As I was leaving the room, one of the other students (one of the Grad students) came up to me and said: "I really enjoyed your paper. I liked how you rooted your discussion in the text. It's really important."

I thanked her for the compliment, we parted, and I rode the elevator down to the main floor. And as I rode the 10 floors down to the lobby, the remark rattled in my head, poking and prodding tender parts of my brain.

"I liked how you rooted your discussion in the text." This was delivered as though it were refreshing. And it bothered me. Obviously, it's still bothering me if I'm taking the effort to discuss it nearly two weeks later. The compliment itself isn't my issue. However, I do have a problem with the idea that in writing a text-based paper, I had somehow engaged in a lovely and oft neglected form of literary analysis.

I had written about the text, what it says, and how it says it. The way characters are depicted and the way authorial choices inform how we receive the text, what we get out of it. I had rooted my analysis in solid, textual examples, dismantled their structure, paid attention to their phrasing and diction. This should not be radical, this should not be refreshing. This should be what good scholars, good critics and good academics DO.

Why don't we? Why, instead, do we recapitulate, compile, index and obsess? If sitting through this class has done anything for me, it's been curing me of a desire to do an MA in English, at least for now. There's a line between being academically curious and investigating peculiarities, and being an insufferable, insular twit. Whatever we do, be that as scholars or as writers, needs to have grounding, and a point of accessibility. I do not want to be That Person, who writes fabulously incomprehensible papers for the New Canadian Quarterly Journal of the Rhetorical Arts of Victorian Psychoanalytic Fiction and Pedagogy. This is not my schtick. Clearly, I do not have the academic hubris to carry off such a performance. I'm quaint.

So I'm going to take that compliment and run, because it means that I'm doing the kind of literary critique that I find useful and rewarding. And if other people enjoy that, AWESOME, and if not, AWESOME. But I think having the kind of conversations about text that are ABOUT the text, rather than the circus of criticism around them, isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's something we should try more often.

Some people get booty calls. I get alarm calls.

In theory, when you sign up to be a keyholder, you read the nice little piece of paper saying you're on call for alarm issues, you will answer your phone and respond when the alarm company contacts you, you will be available to go to the store if necessary to monitor the situation yadayada bingbing, and you think:

"Bah! Nothing will happen! I will never get a call because Fate is AWESOME and would never screw me out of sleep!"

And then one night, they call you! ADT calls you!

And when they do, it's like winning the Jackpot of Lame, because then you hang up the phone, and see your roommate standing in the doorway with the car keys, giving you the "You're buying me a BIG ASS COFFEE TOMORROW MORNING" face. Then you get to put on real pants. Then you get to call a very sleepy head of Resource Protection (who is likely passed out on his desk in Toronto, cursing himself for his turn at working the emergency pager, and you for calling) and explain that, yes the alarm has been triggered, yes you are going to the store to fix it, yes you will file the appropriate paperwork in the morning, yes, I'm sorry to wake you up, too. Then you get to chat to the very nice (and previously deeply mysterious) Giant Security Guard, who patiently waits while you yank on your store's doors and swear. Loudly. Because one door wasn't locked properly. And then you swear some more, yank on the doors some more, and re-set the alarm. And then you go home. But not before drag racing a truck on Shagnappi.

I'm charging Kate's coffee to the expense account.

Via text message, with friend who shall remain nameless (all of this is edited for anonymity/clarity, except for the last line, which is quoted verbatim).


X: Are you free tomorrow? I need to go shopping.

E: No, have to work. Why?

X: I need a good shirt for going out and don't really know where to go.

E: *suggests places* How fancy/expensive are you feeling?

X: Um- fancy enough to impress a cute date?

E: Ah, well then...*suggests better places*

X: How much is that going to set me back?

E: Eh, under $50 if you're good.

X: That should work then. He's $50 worth of cute, especially if I can use the shirt again. Then he only has to be $25 worth of cute .


Gentlemen, remember: when you're on a first date, it's virtually a given that the female in question had a conversation like this with one of her girlfriends. This is called Relationship Math. This is part of the vetting process, dudes. (My gold standard solution is still the Little Black Dress).

5043, This Morning:


Ellie: So, I had the weirdest dream last night...

Kate: Oh?

Ellie: Yeah. I dreamed I was walking on some random mountain trail, talking to my mom on my cell phone, as a blizzard was about to set in, and saying to her, "Yeah, I'd better go, blizzard's about to set in," and my mom was all, "Okay, well, you should probably stop talking," and then I promptly fell in a mountain lake.

Kate: Was it Lake Agnes? (see Hiking Adventures of Bunny and Moose)

Ellie: No, just a nondescript mountain lake.

Kate: Well, at least you had cell phone reception!



(Kate's defence of her response? "I was just stating the obvious!" My reply? "Most people wouldn't think that's so obvious!")