Raining Cats and Dogma

I have always cherished books as possessions, not merely as tools of the trade. I don't like to take notes in my books, and certainly not the nicer ones.

Perhaps this is because, as a child, I didn't have access to a huge number of books--my parents basically said, "when you've read all the books we have (appropriate for your age, of course), then we can talk about new books." The public library wasn't convenient, and I was a disorganized child who lost things, but when they realized that I had read the World Book Encyclopedia through T, we got me a library card.

As an adult, I am loathe to get rid of books, even those I won't likely read, or didn't like. Particularly, books that might carry some cache for having read them will stay on my shelf forever. David Foster Wallace's offputting Brief Interviews with Hideous Men stayed on my shelf long after I had given up on it.

But now, a confluence of events has me thinking about my books as objects once again. Of course, a major move means packing up, moving, unpacking, and reorganizing all 31 boxes of our books. We're just doing that now; one of the last major tasks of the move. (There's a meme floating about that I myself won't complete, but it's in line with what I've been thinking about).

But two new features of this job and this move add twists to this task. First, since I plan on trying to do much of my writing on campus, I've decided to move a bunch of books to my first-ever unshared office. So theory/criticism, all our drama, and most of our academic anthologies are going with me to Stansbury Hall.

Secondly, part of the contract I negotiated with the university means that I get a sum of "start-up money," what scientists might use to furnish a new lab. I am using it to update my personal library, and so I just placed a 73-item order on Amazon.com.

How, you may ask, do I intend to process 73 books that arrive all at once? Slowly, but hopefully methodically. I'm setting weekly goals for reading, writing and grading that will include both theory and plays.

But the real reason I ordered them all at once is so I can have them all at once. My sister has her souped-up car and stereo; I have my library.

Posted by at 7:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

At its most mediocre, narrative theory is simply a collection of various features of narrative. The best of it, though, does more than catalogue, and pushes us into why--why these features happen, why they resonate, why they matter.

When I wrote my abstract for Brian Richardson's collection on narrative beginnings, I thought I had the latter, but I'm afraid I may have the former. The argument looks at ways that playwrights and directors play with their beginnings to disrupt the audience's smooth entrance into the narrative world--delayed openings, real world features bleding into the narrative world, theatre environments that induct audience members into the narrativce world well before the narrative begins.

These are certainly interesting cases, and I've always been convinced that drama and performance help us sharpen up our sense of how narratives work. But while I'm convinced that these instances work to call attention to audiences relationships with the fictional worlds being represented, I'm not sure yet what this tells us about the very beginnings in question, in drama particularly, or in narratives generally.

So while performance gives writers and directors the flexibility to disrupt the audience's schema for entering the narrative world, how might this map back onto our sense of beginnings in, say, fiction?

The best analogic example I can think of is Eggers's You Shall Know Our Velocity where the narrative starts on the cover, traditionally the paratext, but I'm not sure how that paratextual example formally inflects the thematics of the narrative itself.

Perhaps this reveals a limitation for fiction, its ability to disrupt its audience's induction into the narrative world, something that can only be done with narrative frames, like in Barth's Lost in the Funhouse or Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.

Still thinking about this, must start writing very soon.

Posted by at 7:29 PM | Permalink

I have been working under the assumption lately that I'm still in the DC area, just in a really far out suburb. To prove it to myself, I picked up and drove to Greenbelt and back yesterday.

Really, why do this? you ask. Well, there were some surface errands to run, something about a bank, delivering some moving boxes, hitting the Trader Joe's on the way out of town, but really, I didn't need to make this trip, not now, not a week after moving to a new house (which is coming along nicely, thanks).

So why? Because I've been able to deal with moving into a new life by convincing myself that I'm not really going anywhere, or rather, haven't really gone anywhere. No reason for teary goodbyes, I'm just around the corner, for crissakes. Our friendship won't change . . . It's not like you can't come into town on a day trip.

OK, so I have to deal. I don't live near you anymore. I feel such emotional vertigo from this that I just picked up and spent 7 hours on the road in a day for some errands.

My god I miss you all.

Of course, perhaps some of my readers are already gone from the beltway (or are just returning). So to you, how does this work? When do you feel like it's ok to live in a place far away from anyone you know?

Posted by at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

But comments are disabled for the moment.

More posts eventually, after the move, maybe, but not right now.

Posted by at 3:28 PM | Permalink