High Standards - Overrated?

Okay, so the title of this post is kind of meant to get your attention. I am actually a fan of high standards and what having them can do to improve your life. I will likewise have high standards for my child and encourage him to have them for himself and others. However, one of those "things I've learned while getting older and more adult-like" is that high standards are - sometimes - wrong standards. Or at the very least wrong-ish. There are many things in life to which I can apply this lesson--times when I thought I was having high standards but really I was just foolishly creating a false set of expectations outside of which lay different and, more importantly, preferable options.

Many of us do this with potential life partners. Come on, this isn't a surprise, as much as we are shocked when it becomes an actual realization. We all know that we build a resume of our ideal partner--a set of standards for the person who would make us the most happy and full of feelings of achievement. A "look who I bagged, I must be pretty special!" kind of thing. We are told by all sorts of fictions from classic lit to romcoms, and our family and friends who are, like us, at least partly products of that cultural environment, that at some point we must wisely and sheepishly put away the list in our keepsake box and "settle" for a more reasonable (and available) match. This is in no way (well, maybe part-ways) an argument against the search for passion and excitement--but it is an expression of disagreement in the idea that the reasonable choice is somehow always settling for a lower standard. In my experience, IT IS NOT. Obviously the world is full of different experiences both negative and positive in the love and partnership department (understatement). But it turns out that in retrospect, the romantic standards of my younger self were mostly ridiculous and ill-advised. I'm not going to go into any gory details, but suffice it to say that it was not until I buried that stupid list and opened myself up to less-expected options that I discovered another set of (decidedly more adult) standards that were much higher and more commendable in a long-lasting partnership. And guess what? Turns out that the person who fulfilled those higher, more commendable standards also delightfully happened to fulfill many of those less important standards of the High Fidelity variety (at one point in the movie version Rob makes the fan-centric claim that [paraphrasing] it's what you like that matters, not what you are like. Turns out you shouldn't take romantic advice from Rob in High Fidelity. Why was this not always completely obvious to me? It's basically what the whole movie is about!). Also turns out that passion and excitement are still there and, more importantly, have a higher chance of being there for a long time to come. Look, I want flowers, surprise candle paths and steamy declarations as much as the next romantic, but come on. Who really wants that height of emotional engagement every day? Seriously, people--maybe it makes me boring but I'd oftentimes prefer to sit in sweatpants with a bowl of kimchi and watch Bones with my sweetie-pie than get all dressed up for a whirlwind night of romance and the pseudo-athletic stuff that's supposed to follow. Wow, I've really gotten side-tracked here. This was supposed to be a side example. Anyway, the point is that the love department is one area where sometimes supposed high standards can turn out to be wrong standards, and one must be open to going outside those previous standards to realize it.

Believe it or not, my main example is much more trivial than the side one. It starts with a dangerous confession:

I  hate Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I really do. I struggled through it for hours, trying to decipher its post-modern code of coolness and smartness with a concordance/guide next to the book on my laptop. It was one of the single most liberating moments in my academic career (and maybe my life) when my advisors told me that it was okay if I didn't like it and took it off of my University Oral Exam reading list. HALLELUJAH!! No book has ever made me feel more dumb--and I resent that because I know that while I'm sure I'm dumb in several ways, I'm overall not dumb at reading books. I mean, I get what he was trying to do. I see the techniques and have read the analyses and know how it's an example of what post-modernism is about, but I just found reading it to be an excruciating experience. Soul-crushing really. I'm so pleased that there are many many people that seem to really love it and find it enjoyable, even though a little part of me doesn't quite believe them. It's one of those books that you're supposed to really admire and compliment because it makes you part of a smarty-pants club. Don't get me wrong--I love the smarty-pants club (I mean look how many years I've been in school); but in this case, for me, the entrance cost was just too high. Gravity's Rainbow, maybe unjustly (maybe not) became a symbol of what grad school can sometimes do to your love of your discipline.

When reading becomes your job, your requirement, the measure of your success at life, sometimes it makes you stop reading. For fun, anyway. It is baffling to me how hard it is for me to decide on and get into a book in my leisure time these days. Somehow TV is so much less threatening (see my television addiction). I realized recently that grad school in literature had raised my standards so 'high' that it limited the list of 'acceptable' books for me to read to an impossibly narrow list. Granted, the items on the list are theoretically there because they are extremely well-written examples of artistry and exciting in their various innovations, transgressions or masteries--and on one level I'm excited to read all of them one day, but they are almost all books that I can't fully read at my leisure. They are books that I may one day have to teach or at least talk about with someone who is smart at literature, so when I read them I inevitably feel the need to have my stickies or little notebook nearby, a pencil for the margins or at least keep my brain engagement on a more analytical level. This type of loaded reading, while clearly rewarding and fulfilling to me (again, see years of education), is absolutely different from the type of reading that made me a fan of books for life. This is not how I originally devoured the Anne of Green Gables series (multiple times), Ursula K. LeGuin's fantastical tales or even Garcia Marquez's novels and short stories. I gobbled them up with relish, enjoying the dickens (yep, I see the pun) out of every page that I tore past. I read fast because I consumed books as if they were films, stories in full color unraveling before me with no room to pause. Being a scholar has made me a slower, more careful and deliberate reader--which on one hand has greatly amplified my appreciation and understanding of these works to a level I would clearly not ever want to take back, but on the other hand has made it very difficult for me to shift back to a mode of reading in which I can just enjoy the story. That slow kind of reading sometimes feels for me like I imagine a race car driver might feel hitting the brakes on a 35mph road.

In addition, I am a big-time plot addict. This is something that is a little embarrassing to say as a literary scholar, since I still have the feeling I'm supposed to value form over story. And  yes, of course I find form fascinating (duh). But man, I love a good story--and if you give me one, it's nearly impossible for me to stop until it's over (which you know if you've experienced my epic consumptions of entire television series on DVD - such as my college-vacation marathon of all of Cowboy Bebop in 27 hours, recent K-Drama sleep-robbing obsessions, and many many early mornings buried in a book). I suspect that I'm still reading/watching The Walking Dead just because I need to know what happens, even though it may never actually end. That might help you see why I hate Gravity's Rainbow (if you've read it).

Because of all of the above, I have been desperate for a way to get back my love of reading--to return to that mode of total immersion and enjoyment that made me that little nerdy bookworm back in the day (or at least capable of choosing and reading a bedstand book). Thankfully (and thankfully for you this is where the argument comes full circle), I've recently discovered a couple of things that are helping me reopen myself to that experience. It was really about--you guessed it--high standards that were, at least partially, false standards. I couldn't pick up books that I would just enjoy because there were other more 'worthy' books in line ahead of them. And I couldn't pick up those books because I was deterred by my standard for how to read them. My solution, therefore, is two-fold.

First, I've been reading and enjoying books that fall outside of those standards. I don't want to insult them as being under lower standards, because I love them, so instead I want to clarify that point about the supposed lower standard sometimes being actually a different set of qualities that are excellent in their own way. For example, I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Tina Fey's book Bossypants, which gave me permission to buy and enjoy the book I'm currently reading, Mindy Kaling's likewise comedic memoir/list/essay collection Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). First, can I mention how awesome those titles are? I am major title appreciator. Also, these books are hilarious and so clever! These ladies are genius at being funny and awesome at putting their own lives out there for other people to better appreciate the humor of their own. I read them just for fun and guess what? They get me to read instead of watching TV all the time, I laugh out loud frequently, and I'm learning great things like appreciating parts of my life in a different way and even becoming a better, more well-rounded writer (academic writers could probably all use a little influence from comedy writers). By the way, you may know Kaling as Kelly Kapoor from The Office. I picked up her book because we are currently really into her new show The Mindy Project. It's awesome. WATCH IT IT'S FREE. The other example is self-help books. They get a bad wrap because some of them aren't so great - big surprise. Other genres also have books that aren't so great (like sci-fi, realism, autobiography or postmodernism), but like those other areas there are some self-help books that have actually been really nice to read and had a positive impact on my daily life, like The Happiness Project, which is delightful, intellectually stimulating, hilarious, historically information and super helpful or more religiously-minded books by Max Lucado like Great Day Every Day. A few years ago I also got a big boost from What Should I Do With My Life?, which almost scared me away with its title but ended up helping out during a major career change that culminated in my wonderful life in literature and academia.

Secondly, and this part is still in progress, I want to find away to allow myself to read those books I 'should' read in the more appealing enjoyment mode while still finding a way to process them intellectually. Reading them twice isn't a great option, as it's hard enough to read them all once without doubling the commitment. Any suggestions from the audience? My first strategy is to read books that will probably have absolutely no resonance with my dissertation. Right now I'm trying it with Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence, which I'm resisting a bit for other, unrelated reasons I'll go into another time.

If there is a moral to this unexpectedly long-winded post (you should be grateful that my son is making awake sounds in the other room), it's that occasionally high standards are really limitations in stuffy outfits. And who wants to live life full of limitations, or in stuffy outfits for that matter?

Oh, and also that Mindy Kaling and Tina Fey's books are really funny and I love them. And so are The Mindy Project and 30 Rock. I should've just said that, huh?

Lemon out!

Alpacas and Tragicomics

Please try to suppress your shock at my appearance so soon after my last post. And while you do that, try to appreciate it as a trust token of sorts, a gesture expressing my deepest intentions to follow through on my stated plans--divulged to you, my few but much-valued blog readers.

First, some happenings from the last couple of weeks:

I have started to write poetry again. I'm keeping it top secret for now because I find the prospect a little unnerving. We shall see where it goes.

Also, we are thinking about adopting a rescued middle-aged beagle. News on future developments may be appearing soon. Before we take on responsibility for the welfare of a living thing, I welcome your advice, admonitions, encouragement, etc.

Meanwhile, some enjoyable moments have come from a couple of visits to Stanford during which I got to socialize and have some great conversations at leisure. When I arrive on campus I now have to navigate around quite a construction extravaganza. Stanford appears to be rushing to finish every possible beautification project before school starts in September. I honestly find it hard to believe, flattery aside, how the campus can be aesthetically improved. We shall see! A benefit of the chaos was the tightly-compartmentalized walkways, which made for more frequent encounters with the hundreds of visitors walking around. It was somehow heartwarming, in a really cheesy way, to see all the various groups of high school students doing their thing and overhearing bits of their animated conversations as they walked by. My little game is to "Guess the Major" from a variety of completely stereotypical first impressions. It's fun.

As for conversations, one particularly entertaining interaction happened while I was having lunch at the Treehouse restaurant with my friend H. We were pulled into conversation with a man in a Hawaiian shirt sharing our picnic table. We had gradually been edging closer to him as we tried to avoid a very persistent bee drawn to our Baja Fish Tostada salads. The stranger turned out to be VERY talkative. It was worth the hijacking of our conversation, though. He jumped in when H. and I were talking about Asturias, the Popol Vuh and ancient cultures such as the Mayans. Apparently this guy had spent a lot of time at archeological sites in Central and South America and knew quite a bit about these civilizations. He also went around the coast of those areas on a sailboat with his family, making pit stops at the sites of several sites of ruins. He mentioned he taught at Stanford, so we asked what department. I fully expected archaeology, history, sociology, anthropology or something of that nature, but he said he was affiliated with engineering, and did something with physics. He then proceeded to get us up to date on the happenings on his alpacas, which he keeps on a ranch or something he has in the area. Crazy! An alpaca-raising physicist who in his spare time sails to the sites of ancient civilizations. I love it.

On the subject of my quest to get healthier, I report that since I have so far lost about 4.5 pounds in about 3 1/2 weeks. It's something, so I'm happy about that, but I'm behind the schedule I set myself. It's kind of frustrating to be going so slow, but people keep telling me it's better this way and I'm doing great. I don't know, though. I do feel better physically, and seem to be toning up a tiny bit, but I wish I could see some more definite numerical results. That is probably silly, but it's true. I got some new running shoes in the mail--so I'll be taking on that frightening project sometime soon. Look for continuing status reports.

Now, the promised book update for the month:

Books Bought:

• A really cool paperback of O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. The edition was put out by Houghton Mifflin in a "Sentinel" series.
• An interesting hardcover of The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde. Think it's from a series called "Cameo Classics." circa 1940. The cover is an ominous charcoal black with a cream-colored cameo of Gutenberg in relief in the center. It is illustrated in black and white.
  
• The Book of Lost Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien, from the History of Middle Earth series published posthumously by his son Christopher.
• Small 1910 hardcover of Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy. Beautiful gray-blue with gold design, with illustrations.
  

Books Borrowed:

• Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
  
• Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, translated by Dennis Tedlock
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Books Read:

• Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

This book was a huge surprise. Not that I don't admire the writing talents of OSC, but this is so very different from stuff like Ender's Game. I think I was just taken aback by the depth of what I thought would be a more or less straightforward fairy-tale-goes-modern routine. Far from it. It was incredibly insightful about some topics that are notoriously difficult to get your head around, much less your pen (or typing fingers). One of those was Judaism in 20th c. Europe. The other was the experience of immigration. I have no personal experience with the former, but do with the latter. I honestly stopped in my reading tracks and went back at several passages to admire a bit that particularly struck me. One of them occurs when the protagonist, who emigrated from Russia to the U.S. with his parents as a child, returns there as a graduate student:

"Only when he was belted into his seat and the plane pulled back from the gate did it occur to him why he felt so free. Coming to America, all the burden of his parents' hopes and dreams had been put onto his shoulders. Now he was heading back to Russia, where he had not had such burdens, or at least had not been aware of them. Russia might have been a place of repression for most people, but for him, as a child, it was a place of freedom, as America had never been.
Before we are citizens, he thought, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty. I have done my duty. I have bowed to authority. Mostly. And now, like Russia, I can set aside those burdens for a little while and see what happens."

In another section the protagonist reflects on those burdens and their root in the responsibility that comes with knowing that your parents went through some amazing amount of personal hardship and sacrifice to give you a chance to reach higher goals with a comparatively much greater amount of ease. The burden of measuring up and making it valid, to picture them saying to each other, "well, it was all worth it because of this." And the fear of failing in this massive responsibility. OSC did a startlingly good job of expressing this--in my opinion. Like my friend B., who lent me the book, I also shamelessly enjoyed the references to literary academics, such as his dissertation dealing in part with the work on Russian folktales by Viktor Propp. I also loved the explanations of connections between Russian folktale tradition and tales that developed in other cultures. For example, he mentions Baba Yaga and her moving house that walks on chicken legs. I almost shouted with glee (seriously). It's Howl's Moving Castle! I don't think it's a stretch to say that Hayao Miyasaki is very aware of some of these folktale traditions, and seeing the cultural jump is exciting to me. Glee! Highly recommend this book.

• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

I love love LOVE Willa Cather. This novel went farther to solidify my affection for her descriptive prose. I could say a lot, but I'll stick to my favorite aspect of Cather's artistry, which is her passionate depiction of landscape. I know other people have most likely said this thousands of times, but it can't hurt once more. It's really like she has a love-affair with it--her words run over its curves, its exultations, its harmonies, its fierceness, its savagery, its surprises with so much intimacy. If there's anything wrong with that it's that everything else to me is dwarfed in comparison. The characters, the plot--I just get completely lost in the images of certain combinations of the natural environment and how she captures them with so much vitality. This is probably due in part to my own passion for the landscape of Texas. It is so hard to describe to people the things I miss, the things I love; to argue for the beauty of places so many find "ugly" or "boring." There are some Texan poets I love to talk about this, who understand the strings that get pulled in my brain when I think about driving across half the state on Scenic Highway 281, when I float slowly through the mossy, glimmering light of the Guadalupe River while the sun bakes into my skin and the water shocks my limbs with cold, when I drive into an endless horizon on I-35 with nothing in sight in any direction but fields, sky, clouds, and a highway that I know goes on for hours and hours, when the sun sets in a hundred shades of orange and the night falls with such darkness that all I see is headlights and the glow around randomly scattered dots of life. I found this quote somewhere online, and I haven't really verified its attribution to John Steinbeck, but I'm going to go out on a limb and include it anyway, because it states what I struggle to describe much more eloquently:

"I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans."
-John Steinbeck

Clearly, I highly recommend O Pioneers!

• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Another pleasant surprise, lent to me with high recommendations by my friend L., who is also a fan of graphic novels, manga, anime, and such. I'll keep it brief and say that Bechdel gracefully masters what i consider to be an immense task: telling a difficult and painfully personal autobiographical tale without bitterness. In this graphic novel she is delightfully humorous without being tiresome with irony, frank without being abrasively cynical, and emotionally engaged without being resentful or petty. Most of all, I could feel her love toward her parents almost tangibly in the pages, in the care she took to tell this story in just the right way despite the tragedy or difficulty of the situations she describes. That aside, I was really impressed with the versatility of her drawing. She incorporates a lot of different things in her panels, such as diary entries, handwritten notes, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc., all done in realistic drawings. Superb! Highly recommended (you can see I have been on a roll).

• Hombrez de Maiz by Miguel Angel Asturias

I am going to completely bow out of this one because I am doing a paper on it, so I feel exhausted regarding its descriptions. Suffice it to say that this is an absolutely landmark work in Latin American and Western literature in general, and very innovative for its time. He incorporates mythology, dream sequences and figurative languages almost seamlessly throughout the narrative and uses the structure of the novel itself to help tell a huge story through a microcosm of society. Unfortunately, the sheer mastery of these non-traditional elements makes it somewhat hard to read. It took me ages to finish it, even though I really enjoyed it. That said, it's not often I actually feel triumphant on finishing a book, like I've accomplished something monumental--and that is how I felt when I read the Epilogue. I may have even thrown up my hands in victory. I came, I read, and I conquered!
Highly recommend it, but mainly to tenacious readers who can accept being led without the usual drives and comforts of narratives. Also recommend reading it along with the Popol Vuh, in the translation mentioned above, which I am starting today.

• Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Absolutely fabulous! Morally stunning. Socially earthshaking. How much more hyperbole can I employ to sing the praises of Watchmen? Not enough. It's probably the most acclaimed graphic novel ever--and one of the only ones to win awards usually reserved for strictly narrative novels and other prose. Although I feel there is something somehow wrong about having to justify the merits of a graphic novel by arguing that it can stand up among novels, I will concede for the sake of the uninitiated graphic-narrative-deprived and note the two awards people usually cite: winning the Hugo Award and getting on the list of Time Magazine's 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to the Present, or something to that effect. Alan Moore stories are always good for a lively chat about politics or woes of humanity--something I am usually up for. Anyway, this book is pretty astounding. I prefer to leave it there for the sake of not giving it away, as there is a mystery involved. I won't lie, it's violent and fairly disturbing (mature readers--whatever that actually means) as well as morally disarming. But if you can handle it, I don't only recommend it, I command you to read it. MUAHAHA.

That's all I can think of for now. Let out your collective sigh of relief and feel free to continue with whatever you were doing before I so rudely and verbosely interrupted. Until next time!

P.S. I nearly forgot. If you are somewhat curious about/interested in/passionately love graphic narratives, i.e. graphic novels, comics, manga, etc., go to this website and join the fun: https://www.stanford.edu/dept/complit/cgi-bin/?q=node/262
Cheers!

Getting Fit, Being Lazy

I have been wracking my brains (not really, of course... it being summer break) for something interesting to write about under the pressure of inevitably falling short of the fantastic adventures some of my friends are currently blogging about (see side bar). For now I will be frank with you--my summer is not in any way exciting, and you will have to put up (or not, actually) with my somewhat more tedious adventures and somewhat less tedious plans for more exciting times in the future.

I will try to continue my sporadic bursts of information on what I am currently up to in life and complement it with a new experiment. Before I tell you about it here are my "happenings."

I've decided it's finally time to stop feeling bad about myself and seriously lose the weight I need to to feel more healthy and/or attractive. At least for my clothes to fit again. As well as to give in to my husband's insistence that I have a long and healthy life here on Planet Earth. So, after being spurred on by a Hawaiian friend of ours who has a killer bod after losing weight, I signed up for 3 months of WeightWatchers. Yeah, *sigh* and all that. I caved in. But so far in two weeks I have lost about 3 pounds and have less desire to stuff my face all day, so so far so good. Counting points on an online tracking tool they have fulfills my endless desire for lists and technology, as well as micromanaging, so it's useful for staying on track and not giving up. More concrete, you know? My husband contributed two more important health-aids. The first is the Wii Fit, which has been sold out since it went on the market, but is now sitting primly in our living room. It's an awesome game that revolves around something kind of like those platforms they use in Step Aerobics. It's got sensors in it that measure your weight distribution, movements, etc. The program itself measures your BMI through several criteria, weighs you, and tests your balance and agility, then gives you a chart of your progress and adjusts your "Wii Age," reminiscent of Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. The workouts are divided into categories: Yoga, Strength, Aerobic and Balance. There are multiple exercises in each, and you unlock more exercises and intensities as you score higher and do them more frequently. The exercises are clever and incorporate some fun games. Again, so far so good. My favorite is the boxing game--done somewhat realistically with the nunchuk. He also bought himself a Garmin GPS runner training device, which tracks how far you run, your pace, etc, and keeps track of it on your computer. Our tentative goal is to train for a 10k in October (we'll see about that) and to be fit enough to climb Half Dome at Yosemite (which we just visited with my parents over 4th of July weekend) sometime in September. Finally, we started taking multivitamins.

Now for my experiment (bear with me, I know this is a long post--but I've been building up). Some of you may know that I once started up a book review column on WOAI.com. The great part of it was that since I started it, and had a kick-ass web director overseeing it as well (shout-out to CyberBob), I got to write about pretty much anything I wanted. Eventually I even got to interview people on camera. What I miss most, though, as I become increasingly immersed in the world of literary academics, is just sharing my actual non-premeditated, non-scholarly thoughts on books that aren't just something I "should" read or "must" read. When I started writing reviews I was inspired by one of my favorite contemporary writers, Nick Hornby. I LOVE the way he writes book reviews. Hornby writes a column for The Believer, a great mag put out by McSweeny's. Some of these have been collected in a little book called The Polysyllabic Spree.

This column I simultaneously drool over and revere is simply called, to my utter now-doctorally-oriented delight, "Stuff I've Been Reading." Basically what Hornby does is start with a list (YES!!): "Books Bought" followed by "Books Read." As an avid participant in a family of obsessive book buyers, it's not hard to see why I would find this comforting and cathartic. I buy used books like other people buy Starbucks coffee. Our house threatens to become flooded with books from floor to ceiling, piled up in every corner and surface, like in the house of the famous writer in this movie I saw recently called "Winter Passing." The scary thing is, nothing would please me more. Anyway, after the list Hornby writes his article about a couple of the books he's read. Frank, no-holds barred, blissfully straight-forward and unpretentious (for the most part--although I have no evidence to the contrary at the moment).

So, I have decided to shamelessly copy Nick Hornby's method as a source of inspiration for some blogging, with some adjustments. I will list books when I buy them, some information about the book itself (edition, interesting aspects of the cover, year, place acquired, intriguing dedication notes to other people, etc.), my hopes for it, and so forth. Then I will list books I have started reading (you might see the influence of goodreads here). Finally I will list books I have actually read to completion, with a short comment on what I really think about it. Believe it or not, I anticipate this will be challenging/frightening for me, like standing on a precipice and hoping the next step will be hang gliding exhilaration rather than sure and certain death on some depressing non-academic rocky beach below. Okay, now that I've panicked to the point of hyperbole I feel much better about this. Onward!

And now, the "Next on..." moment of delayed gratification. This post has gone on long enough (much too long, actually), so I will post separately with the first attempt at my book experiment. Until next time!

Dear Emma, how I loathe thee...

From Madame Bovary:

"It is better not to touch our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands."

My Joycean Adventure

I'm really enjoying James Joyce's Ulysses right now... so I'll share some favorite parts as I go along. Here are the first few:

"Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too."

"I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant."

"No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop."