stuck in the middle

When I became a literature major, I didn't expect to start hating some of the texts I read. I certainly didn't expect to find that analyzing them could be a horrible chore and not a pleasure at all.

Take my current problem, for example: to write a 25+page in-depth analysis of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives; if possible, to come up with some original insight into its creation, reception, and influence on modern American literature.

What else is there to say, though? I can talk about how much of an influence Cubism had on Stein and her work (and how much influence she had on it, thanks to her and Leo's palling around with the Parisian artist's community); taking that idea further, I can write about how much her experimental style reflected and influenced early 20th-century literary modernism; we can discuss the sexual politics of "The Good Anna" and/or racial politics of "Melanctha", even though I find analyses like these irritating and exhausting; I can go back and mine Stein's work with William James and the Harvard Psychology Laboratory for some juicy tidbits about her characterization style.

Thing is, it's all been done. I'm currently surrounded by a sea of printouts of journal articles talking about everything I mentioned above. The only other approach I can think of at the moment is to discuss the significance of threes in Stein's life and work made manifest in Three Lives (also, Cubism. See, cube = three. Get it? *groans*), and right now I don't know how to spin that one without making me sound like some weird New Age fool.

The problem here, too, is that I have now read Three Lives backwards, forwards, and sideways, and I can tell you this: I hate it. I HATE IT. I have never liked the Modernist Literature movement and its dreary misery and emptiness. I hated the literary and linguistic experimentation and how it was all so dreadfully artificial and frequently got in the way of whatever story there was -- and sometimes there wasn't any story to speak of, nothing but a mess. It takes an extremely talented writer to make his or her experimentation seem fluid and organic, and as far as I was concerned Joyce (and to a certain extent Woolf) did it. I am a formalist at heart, and Miss Stein, all you did here was annoy me. Especially with "Melanctha" and its meanderingly circular way of storytelling. Talk about ending not with a bang but with a whimper.

I want to make it clear that I'm not against all literary and linguistic experimentation here -- literature would stagnate if it didn't occur -- but there's a huge slush pile of mediocrity to wade through, here.

It feels like a rat race, sometimes.




Gosh, that felt good. I'm sure I'll regret a lot of the things I've said here by tomorrow, but right now, it feels really good.

...sorry. still a bit hungover.

The visible signs of the rash are gone, thank goodness -- but my hands still itch something awful.

I really should catch up on the shit-TON of work I left moldering on my desk during the Week of Pain but I can't bring myself to start on them. BORED! Hang on, why do I NOT have a Sherlock BORED! icon? I must fix this.

Okay, TMI over. Let's have something more cheerful:

The Art of Scheduling; or, How Mycroft Came To Realize He Was Well and Truly Fucked by igrab. It suited him, and he assumed it suited her for she'd never given any indication otherwise. (Mycroft/Anthea)

(I DID wonder about what looked like a wedding ring on Mycroft's right hand in A Study in Pink. Like everyone else, I'd assumed it was Mark Gatiss's real wedding ring and he'd just shifted it to his other hand. And then I watched that behind-the-scenes special that came with the DVD and he had one ring on each hand. So...okay, this paragraph really had no point, then.)

Anthea had the most infuriating habit of looking completely innocent when she was at her very most devious. He sighed. "There are times I find myself pathetically glad to have you on my side."

"I wouldn't dream of being anywhere else, sir."

He had turned to go, but that made him pause, and look back over one shoulder. His brow furrowed and he considered, once more, her motivations - her apparent lack of them, to the point of not even wanting a present to celebrate her date of birth. "You really don't, do you," he murmured, but it was more to himself than anyone else, and when she looked up, distracted, her eyes clearly seeing numbers and maps and far more important things than her somewhat astonished boss. It was simply a statement of fact, something he'd known for a long time but perhaps didn't fully understand until this moment.

This, here, was what she wanted. This life. His life, as a matter of fact. She'd played him like Sherlock's violin and that was all the present she'd needed.

(Maybe I should just put all these recs together in one post next time. ...Nah, I like sharing the stuff I like as soon as I find them.)

Okay, so after a whole week I've finally finished all the isoprinosine and several varieties of decongestant I was supposed to take, and I'm now left with the foulest, most disgusting medication of all: Amoclav. Good grief, the thing's a fucking horse pill. God, I hate pneumonia.

Such is the price I have to pay for (relative) good health. But oh, I hate feeling tired. It's so tiring to feel tired all the time. Climbing up the stairs after lunch actually winded me.

And I've got a flight to Tacloban this Friday, too. The thought just makes me want to curl up and die.

1. caught the flu, god knows where. Took the day off and spent half the day asleep, the other half watching/not really watching videos/staring at the ceiling.

2. YOU SICK, STUPID, SICK FUCKERS.. I can't bring myself to watch the news, I can't take the shame and embarrassment right now. You stupid, stupid assholes, I hope your Facebook walls get swamped with angry, angry messages.

Things I have now that I didn't before my 30th birthday:

1. Acute lactose intolerance.

2. Bizarre random allergy to galunggong (mackarel scad, according to this site). *sad*

3. Frequent idiocy-related headaches and an increasingly short temper.

What surprises will my 31st bring me in 2 1/2 weeks?

...

BTW, American Idol is back. Naturally its degenerate awfulness has sucked me in again. I'm weak, I'm telling you, weak!