The Little Professor

Procrastination meme

(A quick break from some copyediting, thanks to New Kid.)

I am copyediting a textbook on the history of ancient Greece.
I want a new dinette set.
I wish that I was in Chicago.
I hate driving.
I love books, my cats, chocolate, Chicago, and my parents.

I miss Chicago (there appears to be a theme here...).
I fear writer's block.
I hear L&O: CI in the next room.
I wonder if my new and hopefully improved passport will put in an appearance.
I regret buying this computer desk.
I am not extroverted.
I dance around the living room, much to the dismay of the cats.
I sing badly.
I cry once or twice a year.
I am not always even-tempered.
I make with my hands spaghetti.
I write in all-caps (and, according to my students, illegibly).
I confuse most "celebrities" with each other.
I need to finish copyediting this textbook.
I should write that article on Anne Boleyn.
I start books on a frequent basis.
I finish books on a frequent basis.
I tag any faculty members on the verge of a nervous breakdown (or, at least, on the verge of writing exams).

Linking about: Robinson Crusoe

At our Victorian Studies Reading Group this afternoon, the subject of Robinson Crusoe and Victorian responses thereto put in an appearance.  Ergo, some links:

• Robinson Crusoe: An e-text (U of VA). 
• Se rêver Robinson...: A French site devoted to both Crusoe and the Robinsonnade, with an emphasis on French imitations. 
• Exotisme Historique et Geographique: A French site on adventure stories, with some discussion of the Robinsonnade. 
• Islands of Adventure: The Devon Library's holdings in both Robinson Crusoe and sundry knockoffs. 
• Some pages devoted to the "real" Robinson Crusoe, Alexander Selkirk: Alexander Selkirk (excerpts from contemporary and near-contemporary accounts), BBC History, William Cowper's "The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk," "The Real Robinson Crusoe" (Smithsonian article). 
• Picturing the First Castaway: The Illustration of Robinson Crusoe: Illustrations from the early eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. 
• N. C. Wyeth: Another e-text of Robinson Crusoe, with the Wyeth illustrations. 
• Pantomime Guided Tour: Robinson Crusoe: Brief history, images, a playbill. 
• "Westering Crusoes": An article on Capt. Mayne Reid and the Robinsonnade.
• "Robinson Crusoe in Hollywood": A talk by Walter Coppedge.  See also the character name search for "Robinson Crusoe" at the IMDB. 
• Variations on Robinson Crusoe: Brief essay from the Victorian Web. 
• Bet you didn't know that February is Robinson Crusoe Month. 

This Week's Acquisitions

• Stephen Wright, The Amalgamation Polka (Knopf, 2006).  The Civil War + the picaresque + comedy = not the usual Civil War historical novel?
• Sigrid Nunez, The Last of Her Kind: A Novel (FSG, 2005).  The aftereffects of Sixties idealism.
• David Mitchell, Black Swan Green: A Novel (Random House, 2006).  One year in the life of a teenager.
• Peter Orner, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo: A Novel (Little, Brown, 2006).  A freedom fighter-turned-teacher and her effect on a tiny school in Namibia. 
• Alan Hirshfeld, The Electric Life of Michael Faraday (Walker & Company, 2006).  Biography of the great nineteenth-century scientist.
• Bart D. Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend (OUP, 2006).  The multiple "lives" of these central Biblical figures, both canonical and apocryphal. 

Friday Cat Blogging

Yes, I admit it--I've been known to contribute to the delinquency of felines.  Disraeli here enjoys a good roll in some catnip. 

March: a brief note

Geraldine Brooks' first historical novel, Year of Wonders, follows a young woman as she discovers her medical talents during the plague of 1666, finds herself disabused of certain fantasies (sexual and otherwise) about the local clergyman and his wife, and ultimately winds up in a utopian harem.  March, Brooks' second novel, reinvents Louisa May Alcott's Little Women by following Mr. March--based closely on Bronson Alcott--during his year as a wartime chaplain.  Like other texts rewritten from the perspective of a marginalized character (except for a brief stretch in Marmee's voice, the novel is narrated entirely by March), March tries to undo at least some of its source's sacred cows: March himself is, as Marmee eventually concedes, an "inconstant, ruined dreamer" (259), whose political ideals ruin his family financially; Marmee feels trapped by March's relatively conventional notions of womanhood; March's eventual return home does not reinstate the family's earlier domestic idyll, but instead forces him to realize that "I would do my best to live in the quick world, but the ghosts of the dead would ever be at hand" (273).  Some of the novel's themes carry over from Year of Wonders--in particular, both Marmee's and March's discoveries that a loved one bears a threatening romantic secret, as well as ex-slave Grace Clement's developing skill as a nurse.   The most interesting theme, however, rests in the tension between a character's belief in the need to lie and the forces that make them reveal the truth.  Thus, March censors his Civil War experiences for his family, only to have them inadvertently revealed to Marmee by Grace; the slaves and ex-slaves learn how to lie in order to protect themselves, but face sometimes fatal consequences when found out; Grace conceals her responsibility for the death of her white father's son--and her attempted rapist--but, years after the event, bears the burden of unwilling guilt.  The novel's close, in which March resigns himself to performing the role of happily redomesticated patriarch, suggests that there is no easy way out of this dilemma.

While March is certainly an above-average exercise in realist historical fiction, the novel makes few technical advances on its predecessor--and, as Civil War fiction, pales in comparison to E. L. Doctorow's The March, one of the novels it beat for the Pulitzer Prize.  The adjective I'm seeking, I think, is "safe."   March's gently feminist take on Little Women (which is not exactly a conservative text, for all of its frequent sentimentality) is unexceptionable, but hardly unexpected, and its simultaneous affection for but anxiety about utopianism is similarly unoriginal.  I didn't come away from March feeling as though the novel taught me something new about the historical novel as a genre, let alone about Little Women or the Civil War.  It would be nice to see Brooks do something a bit more ambitious. 

Codified

People are always finding codes in odd places, so it's good to report that the presiding judge on the recent Da Vinci Code case really did put a secret code into his ruling.  On a related subject, I see that there is a weblog devoted to courtroom humor; see also Lawhaha. 

Duckling blogging

The first ducklings of the season at the village's little pond.

Academic haiku

(Inspired by the Dean.)

End of semester
But where are all the students?
Must be the weather

Cat on the essays
Shouldn't I be grading them?
Eh, don't disturb him

Ants in my classroom
Transgressing the boundaries
Exterminate them

Theses incoming
The rough drafts are outgoing
Desk overflowing

Must go overseas
Still no corrected passport
Getting worried, much?

Two more interviews
Then another four meetings
I'm committeed out

Evaluations
Final grades are due shortly
Must watch L&O

Buy books? Eat chocolate?
Both stimulate endorphins
Chocolate is cheaper

On the couch

ANALYST: Lie back, relax, and tell me your troubles.

LITTLE PROFESSOR: I'm experiencing these...urges.

ANALYST [encouragingly]: Go on. 

LITTLE PROFESSOR: Yesterday, I bought cute little metal shelves and organized the cupboard in my bathroom vanity.  Today, I bought cute little plastic baskets and organized the junk drawers in my kitchen...

ANALYST: Did these actions assuage your feelings of need?

LITTLE PROFESSOR: No--they intensified! I cleaned out a kitchen cupboard and the pantry, then scrubbed down the bathroom.  And after that I vacuumed. 

ANALYST: Your suffering must have been intense.

LITTLE PROFESSOR [sighing dramatically]: Now, I feel the urge to...I don't know if I can bring myself to admit it...

ANALYST: I promise not to judge you.  Trust me.

LITTLE PROFESSOR: I...I...I'm thinking about cleaning up my office at work.  Filing all the papers, throwing things out...

[The ANALYST looks stunned.]

Doctor, I don't know if I can help myself! Help me discover what's bringing on this uncontrollable desire to neaten everything in sight.

ANALYST: This appears to be a classic case of displacement.  Isn't that a stack of Brit Lit II papers on your table?

LITTLE PROFESSOR: Well, I, er...

ANALYST: And shouldn't you be grading those papers?

LITTLE PROFESSOR: I, um, ah...

ANALYST: I assure you that after several hours of grading, you'll be in no mood to clean anything. 

The things one learns...

Former fellow Cliopatriarch Jonathan Dresner forwarded me this twist on the Oxford thesis:

Theories abound as to the true identity of William Shakespeare, but a new book makes the most scandalous suggestion yet - that the creator of Hamlet and Macbeth was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I.

...

He further argues that the first child, secretly sired in 1548, was raised as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford - who is one of the main claimants to the name of Shakespeare for those who do not believe a lad from rural Warwickshire capable of literary genius.

Mr. Streitz thinks that Elizabeth I had quite the brood of illegitimate children; that we don't know about them is, of course, a conspiracy.  Or, as he puts it: "So, to think that Elizabeth did not have children because they were not documented is to contradict the culture she lived in, contradict what we know of her personally, and contradict the ability of a society to cover-up unwanted information" (83).   Oh.  The brouhaha is rather belated, one must note--the book first appeared in 2001.  For some reason, the article on Mr. Streitz neglects to mention that he thinks that Oxford/Shakespeare is also at least partly responsible for the King James Version (scroll down to the McGrath review).