Book Review, Etc

Everyone was sick at my house this weekend, off and on, including me (a migraine Sunday, although the migraine meds worked for once -- yay! -- and it's gone now): which means everyone was grumpy, including me, and almost nothing got done.

Also the seder Saturday night, which I had to clean house for, and also the kid is off to Tulsa to visit the zoo with her school today, on a school trip which has me a bit edgy, since surely nine years old is too young to be crossing the country (okay, it's like 110 miles, but still!) very nearly on her own?

Anyway, all of which is to say that I spent all day yesterday prepping for class today, and, inbetween that (it was Chaucer's The Shipman's Tale, and going through nine papers for students who are meeting me for conferences, and reviewing my notes and the reading for HEL*, and my background for Hayao Miyazaki, whose film, Howl's MovingCastle, I am starting in WLIT II today). When I wasn't doing all that, and cleaning the horrible house, and trying to make the kid and mr. delagar feel better, I was reading One for Sorrow, an interesting book, though (as the kid would put it) odd.

Not that odd is bad.

It's Christopher Barzak's first novel, I believe, and he's got a nice voice; also, his main character, Adam, steps out of the normal modes -- not a Mary Sue by any means, and not a lost prince, and not a brilliant and misunderstood genius, blah-de-blah. True, he can see the dead and from time to time drifts into other dimensions, but that, in this book's worldview, is not precisely an advantage.

Also, he's a working class kid. That alone made me want to keep reading. His father builds houses; his mother, though she stays home with the kids, is not June Cleaver -- she's pissed at her fate, and takes the car out drinking when she and the old man fight. His brother does too much dope. His grandma dies on him. There's enough money, but not enough for fancy crap like trips to the nearby city to visit museums, and his visit to his girlfriend's house lets you know how tight his family's budget is -- though his family doesn't have it as rough as Jamie's.

Jamie is the ghost, the kid who visits him, moves in with him, more or less -- sleeps with him, sort of. This is an interesting move. Jamie is his shadow-figure, and his demon lover, and his Belle Dame Sans Merci, but also a scared kid. It's an intriguing mix.

Jamie was also, before he was murdered, in love with Adam -- and this I like a lot, since Adam, though he clearly loves the girl in the book, also loves Jamie. This rejection of sexual categories -- I'm gay, I'm straight -- for something else (I love these people) is one that doesn't often get made. One really good scene in the book is one where the gay bookstore owner attempts to reach out to Adam, to explain how all his problems stem from his trapped sexuality -- which the reader knows as well as Adam just is so wholly reductive, especially at that point in the book. (Although, nonetheless, the bookstore owner comes off well, and remains, at the end of the book, one of the few people Adam can trust.)

Anyway, it has some problems, this book, but it's intriguing and well-written, worth the time.

Money Money Money

If you're like the delagar household, you've noticed that things which used to cost, at your local Harps, two bucks or a two-fifty, like a box of Triscuits or a dozen eggs or a gallon of milk, now -- yikes, when did this happen? -- cost three-fifty, three-ninety-five. And let's not get into meat! We bought chickens for Passover last night. Remember when chicken was cheap? Nearly eight dollars each for the chickens we paid.

So what's up with the food prices? I've been blaming Bush, because, you know, I hate him.

Also he started that stupid war which has helped to make gas prices, what are they in your area now? Here they're 3.40 a gallon, and diesel even higher, and I reckoned that had to be doing something to the cost of food.

But maybe it's more complex.

See this post at Crooked Timber.

Oh, right...

You might have heard, if you've been anywhere near the Right-Wing 'sphere lately, of that "study" showing that single-mothers are responsible for our looming national debt.

Oh, yes, oh, right, it's those slutty women who think they're too good to submit to a man: they're the problem. Not, oh, a stupid useless war that some stupid useless git got us embroiled in.

Okay then.

Anyway, over at PAB, Lisa chews up this "study" (I call it so since, as it was sponsered by the Wingnut Welfare Machine, I don't reckon they actually studied much).

Lisa also points out another study, an actual one, showing that, why yes, single women with kids do tend to have a higher poverty level; and hey! Get this! Women with kids in general, married or not, tend to have a higher poverty level; and Wow! Who would have guessed it? There's a way to fix this!

And it's not marrying the sluts off so that some guy can support them (as if).

It's education. Who would have thought?

Taxes!!

Paid our taxes today. Aargh.

Afterwards, kid came asking us to take her to the art store to buy her some clay -- that kind that bakes in the oven.

"I feel like making something with my hands," she explained wistfully.

"Sorry," I said. "George Bush just took all our money. Call your grandma. Maybe she has some left."

Think this was wrong of me?

(Like I care, so long as she GROWS UP TO HATE REPUBLICANS!!!)

Big Time in Pork City

Big storms here all last night: the tornado siren went off, I don't know, six or seven times -- I started sleeping through it after the third or fourth time, and we didn't run for the shelter after the second. I decided I would rather die.

(The shelter is not in our house, or even near it: it is behind the Cook School, which is over a mile away. So, to get to the shelter, you must leave when you hear the siren. You get in the car, driver through the pelting rain and hail. When you get to the Cook School, you park out front. Then you run, through pelting rain and dark and hail, trying to stay on the path, generally in vain -- last night I went off the path, into the mud -- it has been raining since mid-March here -- grasping the hand of your terrified nine-year-old, around back behind the school to the shelter. You can find the shelter, if the power hasn't gone, by the bright light outside its door, and by the stench of smokers: no smoking is allowed in the shelter itself, so smokers congregate outside the door, in its covered foyer: to get inside, we must cross this fog of damp smoke, shouldering through about thirty edgy and very damp Arkies.

Once inside, the shelter, which doubles as a gym, is bright and full of muddy children, their sodden parents, elderly folk towing oxgyn tanks, barking dogs, and and squawling infants. A dozen or so children will be playing some sort of game all through the gym -- last night they had a balloon, and were doing that game where you don't let it hit the ground. Last time, I remember, it was soccer, only with a volleyball. We usually bring books, even though it is always too noisy to read them. And too wet.)

We did not die. The storms kept coming through, bangy and crashy. The tree across the street blew down. The backyard is a lake. Every school in town, except mine, cancelled classes today, so the kid has come to work with me. But other than that, and all the sleep I did not get, all's well here --

Oh yes

This man should run our country:

At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c*nt."

Why I Just Love the Right

Over here, that fucking idiot Dr. Helen talks about the poor and why people are poor. Then her smart commenters chime in. Since all of them have known people who are poor -- or, at least, you know, their sister's cousin had a friend who worked with or used to try to hire poor people, back in the day -- you won't be surprised to find all of them have a perfect understanding of poverty in these United States, and know everything about why people are poor.

It's because they are (a) lazy and (b) like to cheat and (c) feel entitled to live off the rest of the good, hard-working people in America (which is to say Dr. Helen's commenters. Oh, and don't forget they're all fat too. That gets mentioned several times. And they have lots of fat, lazy, cheating children each.

She's responding to this book, which suggests that the poor, far from being idiots in not doing wise things like saving up their spare fifty cents every day to invest in the stock market, or trying to find enough coupons every week to save two dollars in grocery money so they can put that two dollars weekly toward buying health insurace (why can't they earn their way out of poverty? Lazy slobs!) are actually making the best choices within their purview when they invest that extra two bucks they have on ice cream or tequila or a lottery ticket.

Dr. Helen thinks it's a stupid book. Because she knew some poor people once, so she knows what poor people are like, and they aren't either making the best choices they can with what they know at the time -- they're out to get her! They're evil! If they weren't evil they wouldn't be poor! QED!

Hey! Yay!

For years I've been hoping someone would remake True Grit and scrub Glen Campbell's hideous performance from our collective memory (I've never like John Wayne's either, frankly) and look! look! Here it comes!

The Coen brothers are going to do it! Who could ask for more!

Apparently they plan to use an actual 14 year old to play Mattie, our stone-killer lead. Maybe they'll use an actual 40 year old for Rooster, and someone that can act for LaBoeuf?

Dealing

I've been back from the conference for days now; just haven't had a chance to breathe. Catching up with teaching, with students' assignments, with prep, with my own paperwork, I have been back four days and I am still a week behind. How is this possible? I have not even caught up on the blogs yet.

The conference went well enough: my paper went well, as did mr. delagar's. On the way to and from the conference, we listened to True Grit, which was what I gave my paper on, and which both mr. delagar and I are teaching this semester in our freshman comp classes. Did you know you can download novels directly to your iPod Touch? It's very cool.

Anyway, in St. Louis, where I did not get a chance to visit Sugared Harpy (rats!), it rained and rained, and we drank and drank. No! Kidding! Worked and worked! Really!

But here's what I wanted to tell you about. One evening, mr. delagar and I were lying about in the hotel room, and I was trying to write my shitting paper, which I had to present the next day, and which I had not yet written (yep, that's the sort of scholar I am), and mr. delagar, helpful fella that he is, was channel surfing, and he stops on this bint on some news network, Faux News or CNN, who knows which, she's some famous bint, I could not tell you which, she had done something remarkable, sold a record or written a book or saved a baby from a dingo, who knows, anyway, what is she talking about?

You guessed it! Her weight!

How much she weighs! Her diet! How she regulates her daily intake of food so that she won't look like an utter cow! How she does this so that she will be healthy and FEEL GOOD ABOUT HERSELF and NOT because she is oppressed by the patriarchy!

No, she didn't say the last bit. The last bit never enters her sweet little radar.

"Will you turn this shit off?" I demanded of mr. delagar. "Now? Seriously?"

"I didn't book her," he said, changing the channel.

"That's all women are taught to do," I spat, "think about their bodies. That's all we are. Bodies. You want to know why we can't do science and math? That right there. Do you know how many calories are in an Oreo?"

"What?"

"Do you?"

"Uh...no...thirty?"

"Fifty-five. Do you know how many are in a carrot?"

He gaped at me.

"Twenty. How many are in a hot dog bun?"

"What in--"

"A hundred and fifty. How many in a pound of fat?"

"What's your--"

"Thirty-five hundred. I know all this and I couldn't do a quadratic equation with a gun to my head. Why is that? Why?" I snarled and turn over a page in my notebook. "I got one word for you, buddy."

He knew what it was, too.

The Commodification of Literature

mr. delagar and I are off to a conference, about which I admit I could be more enthused. I used to like going to conferences, I think. Apparently not anymore. I haven't even actually written my presentation yet, though I mostly know what I will be saying.

Oh, well.

The *point* of this story is that the kid will not be going with us -- she is staying with a friend (she's delighted, since the friend has a new kitten) and mr. delagar last night presented the kid with a notebook.

"I want you to keep a journal of what you do while mama and I are in St. Louis," he said.

The kid looked dubious. "Okay," she said. "But I don't think that will sell for very much."

Alas

I realize I have been a very, very bad blogger lately -- Spring Break combined with a wicked cold/flu thing -- but not to worry! Twisty over at IBTP has been blogging BRILLIANTLY

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/

and you can hop over and read what I would have written if I were half as gifted as she is.

Go! I'm serious!

Here, it is all muddle and hammentashen (Purim coincided with that Christian holiday of Easter, so we had nice poppyseed filled cookies, and I also dyed eggs for the kid anyway, b/c why should she not enjoy pagan bits of other culture's holidays, even though this makes mr. delagar squint his eyes up and mutter about cossacks) and me being moody because tomorrow it is back to the classroom and I have yet to finish grading midterms.

Here is a query via the midterms, btw: what do you think -- is it okay to grade down a student just because that student dots her i's with little hearts?

Or am I being sexist?

It's a grim question indeed.

Spring Break

Spring Break and I'm broken -- some sort of evil cold or flu, plus it is raining buckets: thunder and a deluge.

Luckily the kid is with her grandparents so I can take to my bed and ingest mass quantities of Nyquil.

Yum, Nyquil.

Them Mouthy Girls

I taught The Dead last week, in my WLIT class, the last two class sessions before Spring break began (oh YAY Spring Break, can I add?).

My students always resist Joyce, which puzzles me. I could understand resisting Joyce if I made them read Finnegan's Wake or the more annoying bits of Ulysses (Uselesslys, I like to call it) but Dubliners, the stories from it, well, they're lovely, and no denying it.

And the Dead is as near to perfect a bit of fiction as you'll want to read.

Anyway, once I have convinced them of that, which generally doesn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes, they warm up to the story. (I just have to show them how the story is working -- they come in insisting the story isn't "about" anything, how "nothing" is happening: I take ten minutes and show them everything that's actually in the story, and once they get their teeth back together, they're in love with the story: very nearly every time.)

But: this time, and it's this class, I swear -- "I just don't like this Miss Ivors," one of the women objected.

It really could have been nearly any of the women.

"Oh?" I said. I had been half expecting it. I have been getting this from this class through the semester. "Why is that?"

As if I did not know.

"Well, she's just not very...respectful to Gabriel."

Nor they ain't kidding, either, my women students.

One of them commented, in her midterm essay, that while she was all for feminism, women needed to remember that men are the superior sex -- God did create them that way, after all.

Rude of women to talk back and correct men, you know. Act like we're equals or that.

I have assigned Woolf's Room of One's Own for after the break. As I sent them out to go read it I asked, idly, if any of them noticed how many works we had read, so far this semester, by women?

They gazed at me, puzzled.

"Oh, yes," I said. "This will be the first, won't it?"

They kept frowning.

"Wonder why that is?" I said, and waved them good-bye.

Off the List

Bardiac, over here, asks an interesting question: is there anywhere you'd refuse to teach for moral or political reasons?

This is a question close to my heart just now, as mr. delagar is ABD, and I have always sworn to him that when he gets his Ph.D. I will (scout's honor) become the trailing spouse and follow him to his job. (He has, for the past 15 years, followed me around the country, after all.)

So we're looking at places he might apply, and taking places off the list. Both of us can do this, it turns out.

We take places off the list for moral and political reasons -- I won't consider taking jobs in South Carolina, for instance, or Texas, and Mississippi is right out -- as well as environmental and financial reasons: mr. delagar won't consider jobs in Alaska or Idaho or Wyoming, and I hold that jobs in the East would be impossible, we'd never make a living. (He argues otherwise, so those aren't off the list yet.)

My students frequently won't consider any place that isn't Arkansas -- even any place that isn't within fifty miles of Fort Smith. If it's not here, it's off the list.

So I'm wondering -- when people say they can't get jobs in the Academy, do they mean they can't get jobs on their list?

In which I am careful to say little

Sleet and snow here today, my favorite sort of weather. I am drinking coffee and trying to write, after a deeply unsatisfactory class this morning.

This is the writing class I took over mid-semester, which that's part of the issue -- adopting classes is a bit like adopting an older child, or an older dog, probably. They're already someone else's kids, they resent you, whether they say so or not, for usurping their beloved teacher (mama), everyone has issues.

Plus I totally usurped everything -- overturned everything that had been established, razed the former class to the ground, redid the entire course, remade it in my own image (all this with the former professor's blessing: she had to leave due to illness, I didn't steal her class or anything like that).

The point I set out to make is I have mostly won the class over -- I showed them in the first weeks that I knew a thing or two about the craft, that they could learn some skills.

Not everyone, though.

Well, you don't get everyone to love you. That's something I learned early in this business: not everyone will love you. It's not your job to get everyone to love you. (The other thing I learned was not every class has to be a great class.)

And not every issue is my issue -- students can have issues too.

Still, it's wearing.

I'm practicing wu wei, or trying to. Be like water. I'm no one's mama, really, and it's not my job to bring them up. It's my job to lead them to the knowledge. It's their job to learn.

And we'll just breathe awhile.