Westbound

This summer has flown away-- I'm not sure where it went. But I do know where I've gone:

Gettysburg, PA
Washington, DC
Philadelphia, PA
Boston, MA (many, many times)
Worcester, MA
Wakefield, MA
Albany, NY
Manchester, NH
Walden Pond
White Mountains

And soon, it's back to Buffalo for me. I'm going with less trepidation, less nostalgia, and more hope this year. Last year was definitely a big transition, and I've dealt with many changes, losses (see Elegy for a Dog post), and anxieties. But I've realized that I have, indeed, dealt with them. I suppose I'm a real adult now, and whatever comes my way, I think I'll cope with it.

The Thesis, Part Deux

I wrote a thesis as an undergraduate student. When I finished my thesis (which had a rather embarrassingly stupid title when I turned it in to my advisor; I have since changed "Are You There God? It's Me, England" to "Looking for England: National Identity in Post-World War II Britain"), I was certain that I was going to study 20th century British literature, with a focus on Irish expatriates. I was sure of this up until halfway through last semester, when I realized that I kind of only liked Samuel Beckett and sometimes W.B. Yeats, and I had no desire to read James Joyce... ever. And I loved my 19th century American class. And I wanted to publish my paper on Washington Irving and Kierkegaard and include it in my thesis. I wanted to read more about the theater and its development in the United States. (And I wanted an excuse to write about Artaud again, because really, not enough people read him. Go read The Theater and Its Double. Right now.)

So, here I am, back at the American Antiquarian Society, reading obscure novels about actresses. I'm going to read more into Kierkegaard, education and seduction, and look up a performance history of Rip Van Winkle, and doubtless give myself carpal tunnel syndrome as I prepare to write another thesis.

The strange thing is, I'm starting to like research again. I really enjoyed the hours I spent in the reading room at the Antiquarian Society this afternoon. I think part of it is handling old books. I love leafing through a book that went out of print a hundred years ago, that perhaps no one else has read since 1920. Those books have lives and histories of their own, and I can take these flights of fancy wondering where they had been and where they would go next, how it is that I stumble upon them. There's a wonderful piece in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, "The Mutability of Literature." Crayon picks up an old folio from the 17th century, and it begins speaking in an antiquated tongue. It had been on the shelf for over a hundred years, and couldn't believe that Shakespeare was more widely read than any other author of the time. I know that the books I'm reading might wonder at Hawthorne's popularity, Melville's ubiquity in American education, and, what interests me especially, the dissipation of theatrics and drama into every aspect of American culture except for the stage.

I'm almost done with being a student. I am still resolved to stop at my Masters degree and not get a PhD, but I'm now starting to appreciate the rare opportunity I have to conduct this kind of research, to read these obscure books, and to resurrect a few names that no one remembers any longer, but knowing myself that these names have something to say, that I should listen.

Summer Reading

Since my last post, I've gone on a whirlwind vacation to Gettysburg, Washington DC, and Philadelphia, and then returned to Massachusetts for the summer. I'm still missing my puppy a lot; I have to catch myself to not call to her when I walk in the door, and the house is so quiet without her. But, I'm getting used to it and my mom and I are working on the yard to make an area for the dogs, where we'll bury their ashes.

I've also started reading for fun, something I look forward to every summer. Jarrod and I have a tradition of reading massive books all summer; our first was James Joyce's Ulysses back in 2008, then Anna Karenina in 2009, last year was In Search of Lost Time (Jarrod didn't really stick to that one...), and this year, we're reading War and Peace. This is my second foray into Leo Tolstoy's literature, and I'm just as captivated the second time around. I love Tolstoy's characterization; every character has the inconsistencies and imperfections, the ugliness and beauty of humanity.

In the first book, I found the death scene of Count Bezuhov most fascinating, especially in comparison to the death scene of Nikolai Levin in Anna Karenina. Nikolai Levin's death spurred a deep meditation on mortality and a revelation of the fragility and mystery of life in his brother, Konstantin, but in War and Peace, the final sufferings of Count Bezuhov brought out only petty, ugly, undignified bickering over a will. The difference between a poor death and a rich death is striking in these two books. Nikolai died in a filthy hotel room, penniless, surrounded only by his mistress, his brother Konstantin, and Konstantin's wife Kitty. He was desperate to live and his death was terrible and painful. Count Bezuhov does not cling to life so fiercely, and dies in his massive estate, one of the largest in Russia, surrounded by his large family. A greater difference lies in the reactions of the spectators to the death throes, however; where Kostya is inspired with awe and terror, and contemplates his own mortality and the secret knowledge of death, the potential heirs to Bezuhov's fortune elide the mystery and horror of death. They fixate on what will outlive the Count, his enormous fortune, and fight with each other over the will with hideous cunning and selfishness. Their behavior was shameful, far more shameful than Nikolai Levin's desperation to continue living, his refusal to accept his fate.

A more direct confrontation with death occurs among the soldiers in battle at the beginning of Book Two; the young Nikolai Rostov experiences war and the imminence of death for the first time. I'll write more about this after I finish the second book, but for now, I notice a pattern in Tolstoy's writing, that people will use any means possible to avoid a confrontation with mortality and death, and so the only way to face it is to strip away all the distractions and view it in its naked horror.

Elegy for a Dog

I used to say that I loved Heidi so much because no one else would. She wasn’t the typical golden retriever; she was high-strung, neurotic, loud, bossy, at time cantankerous. She had a penchant for rolling around in the lush green lawns of our neighbors and for leaping into puddles. She was obsessed with Frisbees and tennis balls, although she had a peculiar idea of what fetch meant—she was convinced it involved her chasing after the tossed object and then dropping it at her own feet, demanding one of her humans to pick it up and launch it again. She also had a peculiar habit of climbing on my head during thunderstorms. She spent exactly one night in the veterinarian-recommended dog crate, because she cried so pathetically that I couldn’t stand the idea of locking her in a cage—from then on, she roamed the house freely. She was kicked out of obedience school for talking back; every command the instructor gave her, Heidi responded with yips, barks, and yowls.

I was always happy that she never became obedient.

Heidi had personality. She was spunky, feisty, bossy, recalcitrant.

She was sweet and incredibly attuned to our emotions. I remember the morning my grandmother died. I came downstairs to eat breakfast before school, and I immediately noticed my mom’s red eyes, her tear-stained face. I asked what was wrong and she choked out, “Grammy died.” She started crying again, and Heidi, an anxious look on her face, ran over to my mom, jumped up to put her paws on her hips, and stretched her neck in an attempt to lick my mom’s face. Heidi did provide some comfort that morning, making us all laugh.

She was my golden girl, my Heidi dog, my goofball.

She didn’t know when to stop. She would swim at the lake until she was absolutely exhausted and slept for three hours when we got home. When she was two years old, my dad and I took her out in the back yard to run around in the snow. She played fetched for well over an hour, tossed herself into snow banks, and her reddish gold fur looked like lambskin by the time we dragged her inside. At some point during the outing, she tore a ligament in her leg. I have no idea when, because she would have continued playing if we hadn’t called her in. She had surgery, and that entire spring, I walked her up and down the steep cemetery hill to make her spindly leg strong. She often resisted and was afraid to go into the cemetery too near dusk, but twice a day, every day, for months, I walked her and for years, I couldn’t tell which leg she injured.

She seemed to think that I wouldn’t notice her trying to climb up on the couch if she moved very, very slowly. One paw on the cushion—sideways glance at me—the other paw up—quick, nervous glance at me—lean forward, not too fast, no one will ever notice. Within five minutes, she’d be sprawled across my lap.

She didn’t try to sneak her way onto the couch when I was sick. Heidi was sure she could cure me by staying by my side every second. Scratching those curly ears did make me feel better. I wish I could have been there for her at the end, to give her some comfort.

Heidi minded it when I left her. She was five years old when I left for college. She stared at my piles of bags and blankets with a despairing look: “How can you leave me?”
I came home a week later, just for the weekend, but Heidi greeted me with such joy that suggested she thought she would never see me again. I’m afraid I broke her heart every Sunday for four years, though.

Heidi, do you know how you’ve broken mine now?

I will miss her greetings and her unrestrained exuberance. Thump-thump-thump: tail spinning against her dog bed as I came in the door at midnight after dropping Jarrod off at the train station. The clicking toes, and sometimes sliding paws, as she ran to me when I came home for the first time after almost two months in Buffalo. The slower greeting I received this Easter, the last time I saw her, when I first realized just how sick she was. She was too tired to jump up, and had been sleeping in my parents’ room for most of the day, but when I said her name, “Where’s my Heidi?” her tail still rotated around and around, thumping against the dog bed. She still seemed to know when I was leaving that Sunday.

I didn’t know that would be our last goodbye. So I want to give you a better goodbye now, Heidi.

I’ll miss you, my friend—your antics, the way you never got used to Jarrod’s sneeze, your firm belief that offering your paw would make amends for any wrongdoing and instantly grant you the treat you were seeking, your perseverance. You always were one to defy the odds, from the allergic reaction to your first vaccine to these last months of hanging on well beyond what the vet expected and what I dreaded. That dreaded time has come now, and neither of us would ever be ready for it. I’ll say goodbye the way I always did. You be a good girl, Heidi. You always were.

Summer, hurry up!

I am SO anxious for this semester to end. I have one paper due on Monday, then another due May 16th, and then I am freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Jarrod and I are going down to Washington, D.C. for a few days before heading back to Massachusetts for the summer, and I can't wait! We've both been so stressed this semester that we could really use a vacation. And it will be amazing to be somewhere warm! I'm usually not that into sticky summer heat, but after ten months in Buffalo, I want to wear shorts and flip-flops and swim in the ocean.

Gah, I need to focus and get these papers done!

Homeward Bound

I'm going home this weekend to celebrate Easter with family and friends! I have really missed New England, and all week, I've been thinking of places I want to go around my hometown, going to Mass with my nieces and then seeing Jarrod's family for Easter lunch at his grandparents' house. Although I have the specter of two final papers to write hanging over me this weekend, nothing can dampen my spirits. I can't wait to go home.

Home has a more complicated definition for me now, though. I've been in Buffalo for over nine months. While the city itself doesn't exactly feel like home, and can never feel like home the way Marlborough does since it contains my entire childhood, I realized last week just how much my apartment has become home to me. I spent Thursday through Sunday morning in another person's house, pet-sitting, and I was a little surprised to find how much I missed my apartment. Jarrod stayed in the house with me, which made it better, but we both felt displaced. It was more than just not having our things around or not knowing the layout of the house. It just wasn't our home, and I appreciated more deeply that our apartment is our home, not merely a place where we keep our stuff and sleep at night.

When I first moved here, I anticipated feeling the same way towards my apartment as I did towards my college dorm rooms; a place to stay, a space which becomes comfortable and welcoming, but which isn't really a home, just a pseudo-home, a temporary resting place. We will probably have a different apartment next year, somewhere closer to campus so we can save on gas money, so in that sense, it is similar to my college dorms. One year occupancy, then move on to another place. But this little second-floor, one-bedroom apartment feels more mine than my dorm rooms ever did, and I can't quite explain why. I do know, however, that spaces become meaningful because of the people that animate them, the memories that linger and follow you.

Memory absolutely fascinates me; I write and read a lot about nostalgia, perhaps because I'm very prone to this emotion. I'm interested in the ability to move yourself back in time emotionally, but only in part, returning to the same place and mental state, yet impossibly remote from it. Tonight I'll probably share my room with my sister for the first time since she got married six years ago. It will be a lot of fun and we'll probably stay up way too late, laughing and talking like we always have. But we're such vastly different people from who we were the last time we shared a room. There's something beautiful and sad and joyous in that, all at once.

Free Lunch

Buffalo is a very poor, segregated city with many homeless people. A lot of them flock to my neighborhood, which is in the wealthier, gentrified section of the city, and stand outside of the stores on Elmwood Ave (the main shopping area), begging. I encounter at least one or two every day, and I'm really torn on how to respond to them. Is it better to refuse the homeless person there before you in the flesh and donate to a charity or a shelter instead? I'm uncertain of that mentality, because it seems too abstract, even if it ultimately does more good than to give to an individual; that individual still matters, that person right before you, appealing to you for help. The endless obligation to the other, when confronted with the other face-to-face. The face-to-face matters, the reality and individuality of the other is far more demanding, and more difficult to respond to, than the abstract vision in the mind when donating to an institution. I feel really guilty when I refuse that, but I often do refuse. Most of the time, I apologize and say that I don't have any cash on me, which is true; I very seldom carry cash. This was the case yesterday; I was walking to the corner store to buy some oatmeal for breakfast, when I saw a woman leaning up against the side of the building. I've seen her multiple times before; mid to late 40s, heavy-set, disheveled hair, the same clothes every day, flagging down every person who walks by and asking for cash. She's not aggressive or threatening, like some of the other visible homeless who regularly frequent the area. I've given her cash before when I've had paper money on me. As I approached the entrance of the store, she asked me if I could spare any money; I only had my credit card on me, so I started apologizing as I thought of maybe asking for cash back when I purchased my oatmeal, when she asked if I could buy her food. I was a little surprised, because just a few days ago, Jarrod and I had talked about people begging on the street and how our responses are really constrained. Both of us wanted to buy something for the people-- food, a sweatshirt, something-- but didn't know how to offer it. The act of begging is inherently uncomfortable in the overt recognition of class differences, a stark demarcation of those with excess and those with nothing. There's instantly a tense dynamic between the beggar and the other, an accusation of being selfish if you refuse to give some of your excess, an accusation of being wealthy. Granted, as a grad student, I don't have much excess, but my very position as a grad student designates me as privileged.


I agreed; she asked me if I could buy her food and I said, sure and she followed me into the store, clearly surprised and pleased. The dynamics of this encounter weren't aggressive or threatening, but it was still strange. She disappeared into the aisles of the store as I went for my oatmeal, and for a minute, I thought she had gone back outside and was expecting me to choose her meal. Then I thought about it, and she was probably embarrassed by my acceptance, even though she was clearly happy that I had agreed to buy her a loaf of bread and sandwich meat. I was self-conscious myself, looking around for her, wondering if she was going to thrust the items into my hands and leave the store. I thought of the reversal of the physical discrepancies between the privileged and the poor in the 21st century; this woman easily outweighs me by 60 lbs, but heaviness no longer indicates wealth and the ability to feed oneself to excess. It's because she's forced to eat convenience store food, buying bags of Doritos and 99 cent donuts with the spare dollars she collects, while I walk another block to buy fresh produce at the local co-op. I rounded the corner and headed towards the check-out line and noticed her standing off to the side, holding a loaf of bread and a package of bologna. I made eye contact, and she placed her items on the counter before me. The cashier, a grim-faced older woman, asked me gruffly if I was paying for her things and I said yes. The homeless woman requested a separate bag, I paid, and headed for the door; she thanked me again and I just nodded and said no problem.


Did I handle this well? I obviously helped this woman; the loaf of bread and sandwich meat would probably make 10 sandwiches, so maybe she wouldn't have to stand outside and beg for the rest of the afternoon. I didn't look back to see where she went; she was still inside the store when I left, and I sort of didn't want to know what she did after. I had the impulse to disengage, to slip back into anonymity and have no one else confront me, recognize me, ask of me. I think I did something good, but am I obligated to do this every time I encounter a homeless person? Is it my personal responsibility to triple the cost of my order to buy food for others when I'm rationing that container of oatmeal so it lasts for the last month or so of the semester? I'm not sure if there's any good solution, if it's my responsibility to take on, but I also feel like I couldn't have refused. In total, it only cost about $10 for my food and hers, giving her $7 that she just didn't have, $7 that I could spare. Perhaps that's the difficulty of all of this-- what, exactly, can you spare?

One paper down, one more to go

I finished my paper on Kierkegaard and The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Now I only have to write one more major research essay (plus a three-page abstract for my Greek drama class) before May. So it's time to start thinking of some potential paper topics.

The class is on mediation and dictation, and all of the literature is from the modern period with a heavy emphasis on Irish literature. I think I want to write my final paper on The Poor Mouth by Flann O'Brien. This novel was originally written in Gaelic and parodies the Irish obsession with reclaiming a Celtic identity. The Poor Mouth was first published in 1941, and this especially intrigues me; I wrote my undergraduate thesis on post-WWII British literature, and love Irish literature. Ireland's neutrality in WWII is also interesting to me, and I think I understand it better now after reading The Poor Mouth, even though the novel never mentions WWII directly. The obsession with a mythicized Celtic tradition, of Irish lords locking themselves in a stone tower to wait out the Viking invasion, untouched by the foreign aggressors, played a big role in Irish neutrality, and that spiritualized national identity is mercilessly lampooned in this novel. Another aspect of Ireland's neutrality was its self image as a small, poor nation; the Irish prime minister at the time stated that small states like Ireland should stay out of the affairs of the grand powers. Ireland was a very poor nation, especially in the south; I don't dispute that, but what The Poor Mouth elucidates is the peculiar approach to poverty in Ireland (by the upper classes, of course), the pride in abject poverty, the identification of poverty and parochialism with true Gaelic-ness.

I loved the acerbic wit of this book and I'd like to read it again (it's short, only about 180 pages) and think more about the fetishization of the Gaelic language, referred to in the book almost exclusively as "sweet Gaelic," contrasted with bitter English.

Grad Life

I had an unexpected day off today; the one student I usually advise on Thursdays is travelling with his sports team, and my professor cancelled class. And as I was clicking through fashion blogs while eating my oatmeal this morning, I realized that I seriously don't get dressed when I don't have work or school. And it would be hilarious if I started a fashion blog myself. You'd see that I many, sundry patterns of pajamas and put the sweaters Jarrod doesn't like to good use.

Evidence:

This is from St. Patrick's Day, during spring break, and an accurate representation of what I wear around the house. Yes, I'm wearing leggings. I put those on when I figured that 3 PM was a little too late to still be in pajamas. Hey, at least I don't leave the house like this.

Oh, grad school. Eating a banana with peanut butter because you're out of bread. Substituting coffee for adequate hours of sleep. Leggings count as pants. Lowering standards all around.

My Spring Break: Dutchmen and Danes

It's spring break wooooooo! In my grand tradition of taking tropical vacations and getting drunk off my face for spring break, I am writing an essay on Soren Kierkegaard and Washington Irving. (For the record, the bit about drunken spring breaks... in the past few years, I have spent spring break: taking the MTEL, preparing to defend my senior thesis, and visiting prospective grad schools. Yeah.)

Anyway, I wanted to write down a few of my main ideas for this paper, kind of sort things out here and then get cracking on secondary research.

While Irving predates Kierkegaard by a few decades, and there is no evidence of Kierkegaard regarding Irving as an influence on his writing or thought, what first got me thinking about reading these two in conjunction with each other is their use of pseudonyms and fictional sources. This is interesting to me in terms of authorial distance and textual authority. Kierkegaard's pseudonymous "editor" of Either/Or, Victor Eremita, is very careful to emphasize that he did not write these papers and functions in the text as little more than a reader, interfering as little as possible with the papers he "found" in a second-hand writing desk. Similarly, Washington Irving's narrator Geoffrey Crayon frequently references the posthumous papers of Dietrich Knickerbocker as the source of much of the New York Dutch folklore in the Sketch Book. Like Victor Eremita, Crayon regards himself primarily as a reader and an observer, not as the authoritive voice in the text, but a facilitator of a conversation between many texts. Rather than an all-seeing, detached, authoritative author capable of giving final meaning to the text as a whole, in both Irving and Kierkegaard, we get a multiplicity of voice, numerous and contradictory points of view that are impossible to reconcile. For Kierkegaard, this is very much the point, to have irreconcilable differences between texts so that the reader is forced to make an ethical choice between two mutually-exclusive absolutes. I think Irving employs numerous authorial voices and points of view to evade choice, so as to preserve the cultural multiplicity that he saw was dwindling in nineteenth century America. Irving counters the idea that there needs to be a single narrative for the nation; instead of the great American novel, he gives us a series of sketches that stretch across the Atlantic and across hundreds of years. Irving fights against homogenization of American culture by weaving together fragments of other cultures; he is especially fond of Dutch New York, perhaps because the Dutch were the first European settlers in America and he disdained the anglicization that began after the Revolution.

Geoffrey Crayon and A, the author of the first section of Either/Or, both refer to folklore frequently. Folklore and fairy tales are not authoritative texts; they come from the voices of the common people, coming to us from the indistinct, remote past. No one can identify a precise origin, a single author, in folk tales; rather, they are the result of multiple authors, each changing the myth slightly every time it is told, yet preserving something as well.

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard describes the poet as the spirit of remembrance, and this is a very apt description for Irving's Geoffrey Crayon. Part of what makes Rip Van Winkle so comical is that he only slept for twenty years, yet in merely a generation, everything has changed so drastically that it is no longer recognizable; his community is alienated from the past, and as such, the individuals in it are alienated from each other. Rip Van Winkle, however, serves as a gathering point as the spirit of remembrance; he preserves the past that everyone has already forgotten. Rather than leaving a legacy of wealth for his own children, Rip Van Winkle leaves his stories to the community's children; he is not a father in the particular, insular family, but a patriarch of the entire community, initiating the liminal (children and travellers) into the society through his stories.

Authorship requires some distance, then; in order to be a storyteller, Rip Van Winkle abandons his domestic and work duties. He is not a man of business. Victor Eremita's name implies his distance from society as well; eremita is Latin for recluse, hermit. A also writes that he does not spend much time in society. Instead, he swoops down and retrieves pieces of it from time to time, bringing these scraps back to his nest to weave a tapestry of them.

There's a lot more that I'm going to write about this, but I need to do some more research first. I'm really enjoying this paper so far, though!

Cough Cough Wink Wink

I'm sick and I'm failing to concentrate on reading at the moment. So I thought I'd post.

I'm working my way through Either/Or and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm using it for my research paper (due in two weeks, good grief!!!) in my class on American literature, read in conjunction with Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. I know, it's a weird combination-- an early American short story writer and a Danish philosopher. But it makes sense (I swear); I'm writing about authorship, the writer's contentious relationship with larger society, aesthetic distance and pseudonyms. It's going to be a good time.

If only I could stop coughing.

:-(

What I'm doing in Grad School

So I haven't written about a single thing I've read in grad school. I've read a lot of books (about one per week per class) since this semester started, but I want to throw back to last semester to what I think is one of my best pieces of writing to date. This is a shorter version of the 30-page final paper I wrote about Artaud and Beckett last semester.

Bad Romance: Love and Violence in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

In his 1931 essay on Proust, Samuel Beckett describes habit as “the guarantee of a dull inviolability.” [1] Habit is a defense against the suffering of being, the experience of life as precarious, painful, fecund, and mysterious, and a guarantee of the mechanical repetition of existence. The life of habit is inscribed within conventional narratives, which impose an illusion of order over the chaos of living. Winnie, the “well-preserved” protagonist of Beckett’s 1961 play Happy Days, uses romantic narratives to anaesthetize herself to her bizarre condition of sinking into the earth, her increasing hysteria, her farce of a marriage and sexual frustration. Her act of self-preservation commits violence against the singularity of events. This hegemony of conventional narrative comprises the crucial problem of contemporary theater, according to avant-garde dramatist Antonin Artaud. In The Theater and its Double, Artaud claims that the domination of dialogue, realism, and psychology in contemporary theater has reinforced the tendency toward self-preservation and alienated theater from its purpose: to remind us that “[w]e are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads.”[2] Artuad promotes a theater of cruelty; this Artaudian cruelty is not necessarily physical violence, but overwhelming, superfluous intensity. Happy Days uses saturated, minimalist phenomena, fragmentation of narratives, and dehumanization to construct a dark mythos of dangerous but fragile cruelty and chaotic freedom.

In the past fifteen years, Beckett scholarship has shifted from strictly philosophical readings toward a focus on the mythical, mystical, and anti-rational. Several recent studies view Beckett’s work as an inversion of the quest formula, undermining the heroic ego and dramatizing a psychological journey into darkness, quiescence, and the unconscious. Much of the critical body has traditionally emphasized the failures of language. But language is not merely a failure in Happy Days. Phyllis Carey observes that Winnie’s mechanical use of language normalizes and reduces to cliché “[w]hat once struck humans with awe, elicited primitive worship of the supernatural, and seemingly endowed words with magical, transforming power.”[3] Winnie destroys fear and wonder through her adherence to and elaboration of the static narrative formulas of romance and religion. Christianity fosters an illusion of a merciful God and an orderly universe, and the courtly love narrative forces sexuality into an orderly, controlled, and thus distorted form.

Marriage is a point of juncture for Winnie’s two narratives of romance and religion. The Catholic catechism justifies the sexual bond between husband and wife as an image of God’s love for humanity. This metaphor is fragmented and distorted in Happy Days. Sexuality has become perverse, not in the transgressive excess of Sodom and Gomorrah, which I argue is the prevailing biblical allusion in the play, but in the narrative of courtly love, which spiritualizes sexuality, negating the body through language rather than risking the body’s integrity through an excessive, theatrical act.

Much like Beckett’s increasing austerity in Happy Days, Artaud discards the conventions of plot, character, and dialogue in favor of creating a new mythology based on cruelty. Artaud writes that “all the great Myths are dark, so that one cannot imagine, save in an atmosphere of carnage, torture, and bloodshed, all the magnificent Fables which recount to the multitudes the first sexual division and the first carnage of essences that appeared in creation”[4]. Creation risks destruction, a danger that appears throughout Beckett’s work and provokes the characters’ anxiety, especially their fear of procreation, resulting in sterile, non-productive, and alienated sexuality. Winnie responds to this fear by sublimating sexuality into narrative.

Winnie’s sterile marriage to Willie is comprised of rituals in which love and sex are represented linguistically: she recites clichéd expressions of affection throughout, and in the final scene, her sentimental song replaces sexual union. The force she represses is dangerous and linked closely to her dark fantasies of apocalyptic destruction and the consuming, transgressive sexuality Artaud describes in The Theater and its Double. Artaud commends John Ford’s 1629 drama ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore for its spectacle of Eros, which transgresses every principle of normative sexuality. The central love affair is extramarital, violent, and incestuous, between brother and sister. The main character displays his intense passion and refusal to abandon his beloved by tearing out her heart “as if to feast upon it in the middle of a banquet.”[5] Superfluous, transgressive sexuality is experienced as an essential force in the aftermath of Sodom and Gomorrah as well, and Lot’s daughters commit a theatrical act driven by metaphysical fear, a response to chaos with greater chaos like the shrieking victims of the plague. In contrast, Winnie and Willie’s marriage is a mechanical, habitual devotion that fails to consume them and bring them to the edge of complete decimation.

Traces of uninhibited passion persist, despite Winnie’s aestheticized narration. In the play’s final scene, Willie attempts to climb the mound in which Winnie is buried. Winnie reads this gesture as a recapitulation of his marriage proposal—he’s come begging for a kiss again—but she cannot dispel the “something else” he may be after, the gun. David Alpaugh suggests that Willie puts forth an “attempt at communication, sympathy, and love.”[6] Alpaugh reads the violent potential as Willie’s desire to end Winnie’s suffering, but I suggest that his intent to kill may be the unleashing of sexual energy as an uncontrollable force. Winnie and Willie do not need preservation, salvation, or the word of God. Only an Artaudian act of cruelty would allow them to feel again, live again, and be again—even if only for the spectacular moment of their deaths, in total rebellion against their plight. The possibility for such release is fleeting and quickly denied. Willie fails to reach her; his act is incomplete. Winnie responds with clichéd expressions in a “mondaine” tone and “her” song, “I Love You So,” a duet from The Merry Widow. Here, Winnie is at her most unoriginal and mechanical—her song is a music box tune—as opposed to Willie’s spectacular, desperate endeavor of superfluity and passion. Winnie ultimately preserves her cherished words from disintegration by destroying Willie’s theatrical gesture and inscribing it within her narrative. Order is restored. Another happy day will undoubtedly follow.

Outside of Winnie’s torrent of words, the divine operates as a capricious, inhuman force, and sexuality is something dark, threatening and intractable. Happy Days is cruel in its theatrical excess of saturated images and affects. In my full-length paper I discuss the dramatic techniques that engender cruelty, especially its dehumanizing irony and anti-sentimentalism, thus foregrounding turbulent, uncontrollable forces instead of characters’ psychology.
Winnie fantasizes about darkness and destruction, for the “happy day to come when flesh melts at so many degrees and the night of the moon has so many hundred hours,” [7] but then qualifies her wish for the purgation of a fiery death: “I do not mean necessarily burst into flames, no, just little by little be charred to a black cinder.”[8] She inscribes death into her stabilizing narrative, removing its finality and arbitrariness. Winnie muses, “There always remains something. (Pause.) Of everything.”[9] Her burned parasol will return the next day, her medicine bottle will become whole again, and Winnie herself will never melt, only fade into oblivion little by little, like those “unforgettable lines” she cannot remember. Rather than committing a theatrical act of total rebellion, which is ephemeral, unrepeatable, and singular, Winnie guards against the plague of the theater, theater as an overwhelming, disruptive force and harbinger of chaos, and the suffering of being. In the end, Winnie and Willie fall into silence; the effects of her linguistic violence are irreparable and the play ends with a cruel sense of the impossibility “to break through language in order to touch life”.[10]

Works Cited
Alpaugh, David J. “Negative Definition in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days.” Twentieth Century Literature 11.4 (1966): 202-210.
Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and its Double. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958.
Beckett, Samuel. Happy Days. New York: Grove Press, 1961.
Carey, Phyllis. “The Ritual of Human Technē in Happy Days.” Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett. Ed. Katherine H. Burkman. London: Associated University Presses, 1987. 144-150.
Gontarski, S.E. Beckett’s Happy Days: A Manuscript Study. Columbus: Publications Committee, Ohio State University Libraries, 1977.
[1] S.E. Gontarski. Beckett’s Happy Days: A Manuscript Study, 17
[2] Antonin Artaud. The Theater and its Double, 79
[3] Phyllis Carey. “The Ritual of Human Techne in Happy Days,” 147
[4] Artaud 31
[5] Artaud 29
[6] Alpaugh 210
[7] Samuel Beckett. Happy Days, 18
[8] Beckett 38
[9] Beckett 52
[10]Artaud 13

Life is Beautiful

I think this is on my "Words of Wisdom" thing on the side of my blog, but it deserves repeating:

"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a yes-sayer."
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

I have been too much an accuser and negator lately. I've had a rough couple of weeks with a lot of presentations and more reading than I could handle, and while I got it done and performed well with my presentations, I wasn't satisfied. I think it's because of my approach to them, my orientation towards these challenges. One of the things that I love about Nietzsche is his approach to failure. It does not matter if you fail, it only matters that you strove for greatness. What paralyzed me and made me so frustrated, and ultimately feel empty and unaccomplished regarding my presentations and such, was that I fixated on the potential for failure. It's incredibly hard to do, but I should throw that concern aside and rise to meet my challenges. Failure is only possible if you strive for something greater than you are, and that reaching toward greatness should be my focus.

I think this mindset should help me power through these pages and pages of Bourdieu that I have to read now!

Masks

I've been writing this blog from an impersonal perspective. The premise was to write about books I've read, and then these last few posts have been attempts to keep myself on-track in other areas of my life, but I've kept my writing vague and distant. Both of these subjects, reading and maintaining a balanced life, are intensely personal, and these bland updates are not helping me with the unspoken goal here of reflecting thoughtfully on my experiences.

So let me begin again. I'll introduce myself. I'm in my second semester of grad school, working towards a Masters degree in English with the intent of teaching high school in two years. This summer, I moved over 400 miles away from my hometown and I'm now living on my own for the first time in my life (a college dorm 30 minutes from my parents' house doesn't count as living on my own). I live with my boyfriend, and my decision to go to school here was largely based on wanting to be together; he got a PhD offer here, I got into the Masters program, and I can say unabashedly that love led me here. People go to grad school for the humanities for a host of irrational reasons, and I say that being with my boyfriend is a perfectly valid one. Three years ago, that notion never would have made sense to me, when I was bent on earning a PhD even if it took me 20 years and a monomaniacal level of focus. Scholarship and learning are still very important to me; I'm in grad school and want to be a teacher, after all. But they're not everything, and since Jarrod came into my life, I've realized that there is much, much more to me than being a good student, although he certainly encourages me to be a scholar too (he wants me to apply to the PhD program here, but I have a lot of reasons why I don't want to). Yes, I love him.

Moving far from home has been a complex experience with a lot of highs and lows. Some days, I love my new city. Sometimes I feel inexplicably nostalgic over something random and weird, like the roads I used to run on in my hometown or the way the morning sun fills the kitchen of my parents' house. I occasionally hate grad school and threaten to quit. Other times, I love it and get excited about what I'm reading and writing. It's an undulating tide of emotions that I'm trying to sort through, but I'm thankful to have this experience. For a long time, I avoided all risks and didn't challenge myself beyond what I knew I could achieve with reasonable effort. Now, for the first time in my life really, I know that I could put everything I have into some of my endeavors and still fail.

There's life after failure, and I'm a deeper person because I've failed. There is tragedy in life and I don't try to turn away from it. There is a great deal of comedy too. I'm trying to be brave enough and smart enough to recognize both.

Wouldn't it be loverly?

(To explain the title, I just read Pygmalion. Songs from My Fair Lady have been stuck in my head all week)

A couple of weeks into the semester, I feel like I'm doing fairly well with staying balanced. Last weekend, Jarrod and I played music (he plays bass, I'm a clarinetist), I painted during my mid-week snow day, and I've talked to my parents and my sister on the phone/Skype. I've also been working out more frequently, using the gym on campus even though I hate gyms. I like to run outside. That's about it. I loathe treadmills and elliptical machines with a passion. I'm hideously awkward on them; I can't figure out my usual running speed in miles per hour, I hate all the mirrors (who really wants to see what they look like when they run?), and I don't like indoor tracks because I feel like a hamster on a wheel... but no one plows in Buffalo so running outside is still too hazardous. Therefore, the gym One benefit is that I am getting better about mixing up my workouts. I tend to focus exclusively on cardio with either running, swimming, or biking, but now Jarrod is helping me with weight training.

I think I'm going to quit coffee for a while too. With the early, early mornings we have to put in this semester, it's tempting to start the day on campus at Starbucks, but I don't want to become dependent on caffeine or spend more money than I need to, so coffee is out. Presently, tea tastes better to me now anyway, so it won't be much of a sacrifice. Yes, I know tea has caffeine too but it's about a third of the amount of caffeine in coffee, so I'm not getting bent out of shape about it.

That's all for now. Back to homework before hopefully doing something fun tonight.

First Semester Re-Cap

Happy 2011! I'm back after the most grueling five months of my life. That's right, I completed my first semester of graduate school (I'm getting a Master's in English).

A lot has happened since I first started this blog about a year ago; I started off by posting about the books I read as a way to keep myself in a semi-academic mindset in the gap year between graduating college and starting graduate school. Now that I'm here in grad school, academic exercises do not require the kind of extra exertion that they did when I was out of school. Academics now take up a large portion of my life-- in this first semester, it felt like an excessively large portion-- and that requires a redirection of energies. Reading and scholarship will take care of themselves now; I have and will put in the necessary hours of studying, writing, editing, etc., but I need to be as diligent about not letting other areas of my life slide for the sake of scholarship as I was about keeping up with reading and thinking critically when I wasn't a student.

I will always think of myself as a student and learning will always be an important part of my life, but now that I have this first semester behind me, I know better what it's place should be. Academia is not the place for me, and I will be very happy to finish this program next spring. I value all that I have learned and I look forward to my remaining time as a Masters student, but I would not consider going for a PhD. Scholarship cannot be my entire life.

As far as this blog is concerned, well, I'm not really sure what shape it's going to take now. I want to hold myself accountable for being healthy, nurturing my relationships, and enjoying the new city in which I live. I suppose now its focus will broaden to include all the aspects of living on my own and shaping my adult life. Still much to be learned, so I'll keep the title as it is.

I particularly want to make sure that I keep art in my life as I press onward with graduate studies. I did not take time to paint or draw at all this semester, and I noticed a change in my mood as a result, so I will probably use this blog to document some of my artistic projects (like the mural I started on the back of my bookcase in August, which I'm working on presently).

That's all for now; the new semester starts in less than two weeks and I intend to make it a more balanced one than the first.