the most exciting thing that has happened this week- you have no idea, prof nohrnberg actually asked me - me! - i would have thought he'd ask his grad students, people who've known him much longer and better. eek! - to write a letter of support for him. it's for a new chair - distinguished teaching professor or something like that - and it makes me warm with excitement thinking how, if he gets it, he'll be teaching new classes - special interest classes, not just the departmental required classes like milton and shakespeare - classes that he wouldn't ordinarily teach to undergrads - genre rather author classes - epics, and understanding allegory (well okay not really a genre but a way of thinking) and renaissance lit surveys. oh i'm so sorry i won't be here if he teaches them. i wonder how one goes about writing these letters though. what's the correct tone or format or whassit. i should ask bob, who is also writing a letter and talking about "how he is the best dissertation advisor in the whole history of the world", how he's writing his.
speaking of nohrnberg i was trying to read his essay on riddles of identity in paradise regained and i thought to myself, not for the first time and rather desperately, how on earth will i ever make it in school because i know even less about the bible than i do about american lit. not knowing about american isn't anything to be proud of, but it isn't as disastrous, and though i've largely shyed from taking american lit classes - a mixture of non-interest and anxiety i think - i really could sit down and read hawthorne and melville one day. but not knowing the bible - that's as bad as not knowing the classics - i'll be a laughingstock. sitting in on and off in nohrnberg's class doesn't count, i haven't even read beyond genesis. and to think my two advisors are experts on the subject. alison milbank's speciality is religion in literature and her husband is in the religious studies department, and nohrnberg is the bible expert. which makes me even more aware of my ignorance. and i'm not even like these kids who''ve grown up knowing even a little of this in sunday school or at home. i can't make connections the way others can, and somehow i am even more reluctant and resistant to learning more about it, even as i acknowledge the importance. sigh.
saturday, just past one in the afternoon, dec 14th. writing my 25 pages on and off, distractedly doing several other things at once. just had a large but not so tasty breakfast of hash brown, french toast, tinned pears and omelette. mistake was putting spinach in the omelette, because they were newly out of the fridge and still icy. i was told to slay a spartan or two yesterday, but i escaped only within inches of my life etc. quite keen on going home this time, to be sure: this has been an unproductive semester and quite likely to result in some of the worst grades i've ever got, and i'm anxious to put it behind me. and i haven't got any reading done for ages and really need this break to catch up. the girl next door is packing to go and her parents are here helping her heave boxes. i'm wondering what on earth it is that she has to bring home - she goes home often enough during the term, and everytime she does she looks like she's moving out. and she only lives in maryland! now if i lived in maryland i would go home with a backpack filled with some books and a toothbrush or something, and i could wait downstairs to hop into the car. to each, etc. i like it when people are gone: i can play music as loud as i want to. no such thing as quiet hours if there's no one here to hear. (like falling trees in a forest?) listening to the queen of the night aria, and before that, suddenly thinking of choonping, so downloaded parts of the moulin rouge soundtrack. didn't like the movie at all, but the music was great fun, and somehow the one thing that came to mind was choonping bouncing down the street happily singing "how wonderful life is" some people think ewan macgregor will be lupin. i don't think i'd like that. su-lin says ralph fiennes has got to be lupin. i like ralph fiennes but i don't think he is my idea of lupin either. but so far, everyone has been so well casted (except cornelius fudge and tom riddle) so i shall just sit back and trust they'll find someone good.