English major shame

I just got back from a weekend on Cape Cod and my brain is still on the beach. I have a temporary tattoo of an octopus on my arm and a lot of sand in my purse. However, since I start classes at Emerson soon, it's imperative that I get back into an academic mindset. I need to arrive at my first poetry workshop in top form, like the Usain Bolt of my incoming class. (Note that I did not make the obvious U.S. Olympian reference. He's got 8 gold medals, he doesn't need a shout-out on my blog.)

I want to start grad school off right, with a veritable tabula rasa. So it's time to come clean about some classics that, despite my degree in English from Yale, I somehow avoided reading in my undergraduate years. Some of these tomes I was assigned to read and didn't; others just slipped through the curriculum cracks. I gotta come clean, so this guy doesn't come after me:


1. Ulysses
Shame rating: 10+

Yes, it's true: I never read Ulysses. Which, for an English major, is like admitting that you never learned to read. In two separate courses at Yale, Ulysses was on the reading list, and both times I got about 100 pages in and gave up. However, it turns out that some great minds have struggled with Joyce's modernist masterpiece: Virginia Woolf described it as "an illiterate, underbred book." I couldn't have put it better, Virginia. Still, Ulysses is my white whale. And speaking of white whales....

2. Moby Dick
Shame rating: 6

This I actually do plan to read. Mainly because Christian Slater wanted to use a marked-up copy of it as Shannen Doherty's phony suicide note in "Heathers." A lot of kids read this in high school, though, so if anyone asks, I'll have to say I'm rereading it.

3. The Scarlet Letter
Shame rating: 6

Again, a high school standard that I missed. What the hell were we reading back at Mary Institute St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis, MO instead? I can't recall. Go Rams!

4. The Brothers Karamazov
Shame rating: 4

I don't feel too guilty about this one, seeing as I have read War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and Anna Karenina. My Russian lit karma is in good shape.

5. Animal Farm
Shame rating: 8

I know, right? Seriously embarrassing. People are always referencing this book and I have to scratch my earlobe pensively and try to change the subject. I don't like animals, anyway, with the exception of the fat calico one that shares my bed.

6. Harry Potter and the Secret of the Whatever, Books 1 through whatever number they are up to now
Shame rating: 0

I'm fucking proud of this. Anything this massively popular I have no choice but to dislike and regard suspiciously. English majors are supposed to be elitists, remember? I know, J.K. Rowling reinvented children's literature and now our nation's children like to read again, blah blah blah. I have also not read The Da Vinci Code. Or seen the movie. Sorry, Tom.


7. Anything by Charles Dickens
Shame rating: 3

I feel like I get Dickens without having to actually read him. He just seems a bit too quaint and precious for me. I do, however, enjoy describing things as "Dickensian."

8. Middlemarch
Shame rating: 5

For reasons beyond my comprehension, I often get this confused with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which I also have not read. I have no clue what either book is about, but I think one is about the environment. Bo-ring!

9. Love in the Time of Cholera
Shame rating: 7

I really do plan to read this. Someday. It's been on my shelf for years. I love the title and Javier Bardem is in the movie. I think I could put up with cholera for Javier....

...but I digress.

10. Portrait of a Lady
Shame rating: 9

I am not going to lie, I have my issues with Henry James. His prose is just so dense and wordy and convoluted. I want to smack him upside the head after a few sentences. Just get to the fucking point already, Henry! But some of my best friends swear by this book, so I am going to give it old college (grad school?) try.

I think that about covers it. I feel better now.

Just for fun, I'll end here with something from the Onion that seems very apropos of my upcoming immersion in Emerson's M.F.A. creative writing program. Enjoy!

Creative Writing Teacher Announces Plan To Sit On Edge Of Desk

DAVIS, CA—Dressed in a pair of casual jeans to offset his tie, University of California-Davis creative writing professor Glenn Kohn, 30, announced plans today to begin Monday's class by sitting on the edge of his desk, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, adjusting his tortoiseshell glasses, clapping once, and saying, "All right, young minds." The unorthodox move is slated to occur sometime after he tosses an empty Starbucks cup over his head into a nearby wastebasket, proving to students that his introductory short story workshop is unlike any class they've ever taken. "For finals week, I may consider purchasing a baseball and tossing it up and down while they read aloud," Kohn said. Students of Kohn's are expected to respond to his free-spirited, nonconformist teaching style by blowing off his weekly one-page writing exercises.

My new favorite book

Whenever I cave in and join the social networking site du jour, there is always one part of the inevitable profile section that strikes fear into my heart. I am fine with Favorite Music (I long ago accepted that I do not have cool taste in music), and Favorite Movies (Strictly Ballroom, Gone with the Wind), but then I get here and don't know what to do:











(FYI, that list is not from my actual Facebook profile. "Future Jihad"? Please.)

It's always so hard to list my favorite books, maybe because I have so many that I love. But recently, I discovered a tome that somehow slipped under the radar when Modern Library issued its 100 Best Books list. This book is also strangely absent from Time Magazine's list of 100 Greatest Books of All Time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Jane Seymour's Guide to Romantic Living.


Published in 1986, lavishly illustrated and now woefully out of print, this book is AMAZING. It is filled with insights into how we can live more romantically. Jane Seymour, "one of the world's most fascinating and glamorous actresses" (jacket cover) helpfully explains in the Foreword that this book is not about "the lifelong partner" -- and let's hope not, because Jane is on husband #4. Romantic living is about "approaching your life with the drama and mystery that some of us think exists only in books, TV, and movies."

Jane's advice is very inspirational and easy to follow. In Chapter 3, "Bringing Romance to Everyday Life," she writes:

If there's a window near where you're reading this, look out of it. Really look. Observe. Look at the colors, the movement of the wind, the shape of things.
If you look long and hard enough you'll see a new world just outside your window...the miraculous is right outside your window if you only look.
And it's right inside your heart. (45)

When I look out my window, all I see is the BQE and All-Boro Auto Sound and Security. Maybe I just need more time with the book, though. No one said Romantic Living would be easy. After all, "most women have many roles to play: worker, mother, wife, hostess" (117). So true, Jane, so true. And as result, we have become "too lacking in mystery." Fortunately, Jane has some ideas about how to get the mystery back:

Try veils, hats, antique jewelry, lockets. Don't reveal too easily who is in the locket: just stare moodily into the distance and smile a tender, tragic smile. (146)

YES! A few pages later, Jane notes that "large floppy hats are mysterious too," or if you're feeling more adventurous, "tie your hair up into an exotic turban" (155). And it just keeps getting better:

If you're feeling predatory and vampish, why not try wearing some leather? Tina Turner wears short leather skirts; why shouldn't you, whatever your age?
(answer: because I don't have Tina Turner's legs?)

If you're in a dreamy, feminine mood, wear one of the Laura Ashley creations.
(great; now if I could just find that bus schedule for Milford, CT...)

I don't want to spoil all the surprises of this book; you should discover the pearls of Jane's wisdom all on your own. It's like Brenda Dickson, in book form! Jane's official fan site, www.friendsofjane.com, has lengthy excerpts from this book and others.

You know who looks like she could really benefit from some romantic living? This woman:

That's the real Jane Seymour, the 3rd wife of Henry VIII, who died at age 29. If only she'd worn more floppy hats, perhaps she'd have lived longer.