A Told Tale Of The Charted Road Of Credible Love

How I Met My Wife

Jack Winter, the New Yorker, July 25, 1994.

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate.

I was furling my weildy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.

I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I’d have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknowst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn’t be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do.

Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or a sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion.

So I decided not to risk it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make head or tails of.

I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen. Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated—as if this were something I was great shakes at—and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings.

Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had not time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. Wanting to make only called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d’oeuvres, trying to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a few myths about myselfs.

She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savoury character who was up to some good. She told me who she was. “What a perfect nomer,” I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

S.A.

I've heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've even heard of Over Eaters Anonymous. But there's another kind of abuse that I think requires its own Anonymous group. These abusers make every appreciator of writing cringe - or ought to. If they don't make you cringe, perhaps you should attend a meeting of the newly formed Sesquipedalians Anonymous.

These are the Thesaurus Abusers. They write sentences such as this one:

"The abundance of his leonine mane and the floppiness of his silk cloth conspire to create a sort of vaporous tutu, causing the gentleman to forfeit his customary virility." - The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Hey, I gotta cite my sources.)

Or this:

"Since then, I have gone every day to the butcher's to buy a slice of ham or some calf's liver, which I slip into my net bag between my packet of noodles and my bunch of carrots. I then obligingly flaunt these pauper's victuals - now much improved by the noteworthy fact that they do not smell - because I am a pauper in a house full of rich people and this display nourishes both the consensual cliche and my cat Leo, who has become rather large by virtue of these meals that should have been mine, and who stuffs himself liberally and noisily with macaroni and butter, and pork from the delicatessen, while I am free - without any olfactory disturbances or anyone suspecting a thing - to indulge my own culinary proclivities." - ibid

Of course, there's always this:

"Moreover, a concierge who reads Marx must be contemplating subversion, must have sold her soul to that devil, the trade union. That she might simply be reading Marx to elevate her mind is so incongruous a conceit that no member of the bourgeoisie could ever entertain it.

'Say hello to your mother,' I murmur as I close the door in his face, hoping that the complete dissonance between my two sentences will be veiled by the might of millennial prejudice." - ibid

I don't know about dissonance between her sentences, but I'm pretty sure there's some dissonance between what she's trying to say and the decorative cloak she's throwing over it. It doesn't even work as a piece of irony, unless she's trying to be so ironic that she overdid herself and ended up sounding like a college freshman trying to impress her English Comp. teacher.

As a professor in Stern once said:

"Don't write: the conflagration consumed the edifice. Do write: the house burned down."

The professor then left the class with this bit of advice: "Eschew the sesquipedalian."

So I encourage all of us to eschew our own inner sesquipedalian. Realize that mastering the English language does not mean using its fanciest words at every given opportunity. It means understanding how to use simple words to convey your sophisticated (or not so sophisticated) ideas aptly and precisely.

Thank you.

Reflections Of An English Major

Some coast through college as though it is just a current tugging them along to graduation and then spitting them out into the "real world."

Others endure college because it is a practical guide for skills they can later use to make money, but they are not interested in wasting their time with studying anything impractical in that venue.

But there are also some who really use college as a time for personal growth. While this is not mutually exclusive from the first two categories, I do believe it deserves its own category anyway.

Someone who takes her English major seriously cannot possibly escape college without reaching a sort of self-knowledge she did not have before. Part of studying literature is studying yourself. A true English major gains an awareness of what she is doing. There is a certain kind of carefulness with which she learns to approach texts and, as an extension of that, the rest of the world.

Not all books are literature. The thing is, many people separate "popular fiction" with "high art literature." But literature is not synonymous with "high art." The way I like to understand it, though this is not my own idea, what makes something literature is its ability to be both good writing and exist on the same plane as its reader. There is not the book that is somehow on a pedestal higher than the reader, but rather the reader is able to take the book and see herself in its writing. That should not be confused with seeing herself in the characters. A real piece of literature is one that lasts through time and exists as its own entity, not dependent on a time period or a piece of background knowledge. You don't have to know anything about the author, about the time period, about the subject matter other than what is written in the book. It is writing that can speak to readers a hundred years ago, today, and a hundred years from now.

As my teacher put it: "It becomes literature the moment you enter the picture."

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post about calling myself a writer. The crux of the post is that I find it somewhat absurd to go around calling myself a writer when I don't have any spectacular piece of writing to prove I deserve such an identity:

...by speaking the words I am a writer, I am effectively giving myself the title of, well, Writer, and I guess I just feel rather pretentious doing so. Because I'm not really a writer. I have nothing to show for being a writer. Its more like I fancy myself a writer.

But is the identity of "writer" really reserved for those who churn out bestsellers every year? Or is there some other way to be a writer? Is that kind of activity really writing?

I think that true writing requires a kind of consciousness of what you are doing, regardless of whether you get anything published or not. It's not like once you publish something, you are hereafter known as a writer. You can publish twenty books a year and not be truly writing. Or you can publish nothing but spend your energy really concentrating on what you are writing, how you write, and the fact that you are writing at all. Thinking about whether or not you are a true writer is indicative of a certain kind of attention that all true writers require.

After spending so much time and effort on doing this kind of work - four years of it, in fact - it's weird to feel like you are now walking away. Moving on. Enriched, perhaps, but somehow...leaving something behind. I don't even know what it is that I'm leaving behind, but it definitely feels like something.

It's weird to feel like I could have put so much more effort into my major, that I could have grown even more, that I could have achieved so much more. There's so much I was exposed to that I didn't properly soak in. And I know, you're not supposed to live in the past. You have to move forward. And I know you don't stop learning once you leave college.

But that doesn't mean it's hard to feel like I'm graduating a major that I did not take full advantage of.

The world may say that an English major is impractical. It may insist that English majors are wasting their time, ruining the economy, getting a BA in the Useless Members of Society club, and not gaining any real skills that matter outside of book clubs.

All that may be as true or not true as you decide.

But English majors also spend their time gaining an understanding of themselves and of other people. And the more they understand and work on themselves, the more they can understand and have an effect on the world.

I believe there's a R' Salanter quote about that. :)

That is the gift four years of studying literature and writing brings. So, no matter how useless my skills might be upon leaving college, I will never regret having been an English major. No other concentration could have given me a richer education.

It's just odd to think that the struggle in this environment is now over, yet I am not finished growing. I have a better understanding of what makes good writing, but can I do it? Can I take on the mantle of being my own teacher? Or will I slip into the routine of "real life" the way most people do and wake up thirty years from now wondering when I'll have time to start reading, thinking, and writing again the way I did back in my good ol' college days? How do I know I have the strength and determination to take control of my life instead of letting life's pressures and expectations take control of me?

Thesis Poetry

This is sort of like Finals Poetry, only slightly different. I'm going to write it on behalf of nearly everyone in my apartment who is writing a thesis. (Although I had a post some time ago saying I was done, I merely meant "with a complete draft." It is still being edited and all that.)

Ahem.

I do not like my thesis-
Though it seems to like me.
I really need to finish it--
It will not let me be!

It bugs me when I'm eating
And when I'm sleeping, too.
It prods me when I'm reading
Or even at the zoo.

This stupid thing won't go away.
It's hateful and annoying.
Its unrequited love for me
Is burdensome and cloying.

Do not believe I get this way
With all who come to court.
It's just this thesis I can't stand--
I wish it would abort!

I've started writing now and, well,
The topic's quite appealing.
But I still hate my thesis so,
'Cause all my time it's stealing.

The only way to make it stop
Is facing it like rivals.
And then as rivals we shall join
Towards both of our survivals.

For if I end up well and sane,
Then so will what I'm writing.
So I guess I should get to work,
So we can stop this fighting.

P.S. To my dear thesis, I aver--
I'll always think of you as GRRR.
But in a loving sort of way,
Okay? :)

Ahem

I have finished my senior thesis.

(!!!!!!!!!)

Very Like A Whale

By Ogden Nash

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,

Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have
to go out
   of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?

In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot
of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus

   hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming
   in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf

on
   the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there
are
   a great many things,
But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple
and gold
   cohorts or purple and gold anythings.

No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually
   like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and
   big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?

Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,
at the
   very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts
   about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had

to
   invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate
them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers
to
   people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot
of wolves dressed

   up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,
from Homer
   to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket

after a
   winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket
of snow and
   I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical
blanket material and
   we'll see which one keeps warm,

And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly,
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

This Is Me

Except today I go on a quest - to prove how being an English major really IS practical!

Can't I Handle The Truth?

Y'know...I've always considered myself to be an English Literature major, but today, I received the insult of insults. I was told I was coming at things from a scientist point of view!

Apparently, I am too practical for the world of literature - or, at least, for literature as read through the eyes of a philosopher. Why? Simply because I believe that it is important to make the distinction between fiction and reality.

Of course, that begs the question - what is fiction? If we define fiction as something that is "untrue," then just because a story is fabricated does not necessarily make it entirely "fictional" in the context of distinguishing it from "reality." Yes, it is a story of fiction, but it may also contain many truths and those truths are definitely not part of the fictional aspect of the tale.

Therefore, I do not mean to suggest that there is no practical purpose to imagination or to stories, nor am I saying there is no value in them - even if we can't find them to be particularly practical in our every day lives - but I do feel it is imperative to recognize fiction for what it is.

I am a creative writer. I spend an awful lot of time conjuring up fictions. That does not mean I don't recognize them as fictional, even if they are based on me or on actual events or emotions. Even children who play imagination games and get so completely engrossed in them...even they recognize that what they are playing is something from their imagination. They know that when they go in for supper, they are stepping out of the game for a little while. They can see that there are two worlds - the world of adults and the world of the game. They do not think the adults are playing with them. They know fiction from reality. It could be that they create a new reality for themselves during the game, but they still can tell the difference between that reality and the tangible reality that exists outside their imaginations.

There is a difference between hoping, dreaming, imagining and actually believing that something exists when it does not. How can there not be infinitely more value in being true to one's self and one's reality than in living a shallow life of lies and illusions?

And there is a difference between those shallow lies and illusions vs. using your imagination to deal with reality. For instance, in A Little Princess, Sara uses her imagination to help her get through her Cinderella story. She knows that what she imagines is not real, she does not go around sincerely telling people that she is imprisoned in the Bastille (for instance), but she allows herself to go along with the game just enough that it helps her get through her troubles.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, there is creating a world of imagination, and then there is living a life of illusion and delusion and denying reality altogether. This latter thing is what I'm against. I find it unethical to allow such delusions to go on in someone else and I find it a shallow existence to deny reality in favor of illusion.

With Northanger Abbey, there would have been a big difference if Catherine had only hoped to find a Gothic story going on at the abbey, or even played a game that there was one, as opposed to actually believing one existed. If she was only playing, she would have allowed herself to slip into her imagination and deliciously pretend exciting things were happening. But the fact that she went so far as to intrude into Henry's dead mother's rooms, and the fact that she actually accused Mr. Tilney of murdering his wife to Henry's face - and in all seriousness, too! - shows the danger and preposterousness of allowing yourself to believe that it is perfectly okay for fiction - true fiction - to be substituted for reality.

But this does not mean I am against imagination - believe me, I am all for escaping into your imagination. I just don't believe in substituting fiction for reality. Yes, I see them as separate, though there are some blurring of the lines, and yes, I see value in both.

So, alright, perhaps I am too practical for philosophy. But I have a perfect imagination and yet I am still able to be true to myself. And that's what counts.

Calling All English Majors!

I don't usually post one RIGHT after the other like I'm doing just now, but this was too good to pass up.

Bad4 noted a disproportionate number of English majors in the blogosphere. So I just want to give a shout out to everyone who is an English major - or who is an honorary English-major-wanna-be.

ENGLISH MAJORS ARE THE BEST.

Also, SJ commented over the weekend that I post more often than anyone she knows. I was debating whether or not to feel self-conscious about this, but then I decided, y'know? It's my blog and if I have a lot to say, well, I can't help that! I don't speak enough in person so I guess I'm just drawn to writing. And no one has to read it if they don't wanna, you know? And now I know I'm gonna get yelled at by someone about being apologetic and disclaimering on my own blog, but...! Hmmm.