PhD statement of purpose

Over the past twelve weeks I have had the pleasure of studying the troubling and compelling texts of V.S. Naipaul under the guidance of his recent award winning biographer Peter French. Many scholars have examined Naipaul's works from postcolonial critical perspectives. Others have remarked upon his formal existentialist debts to Sarte and the high modernists. As of yet, far too little has been said concerning the sheer power that his liminal sexism and philandering practices have had upon structuring his fictional terrain.  The research I have begun, and propose to continue through the course of this dissertation, fills this critical gap in our knowledge of this significant male writer. I carry out an exhausted comparative analysis of Naipaul's novels and the musical contributions of American grunge-blues-lounge-wtf? performer Tom Waits. 

Beating my MA Ambivalence

I love tom waits. I know he's often growly. I know that a real life incarnation of his music would involve spilled whisky, saxophones, and rear tire breaks grinding over a drawbridge. But still... I am an introverted lover of beat music and talk. I admit to listening to it while drinking yerba matte and wearing a blue bathrobe, but let's face it- you can't reason with true love. 

On a less amorous note, today's 'planning and writing your dissertation class' proved to be no more than a powerpoint projecting the great variety of departmental requirements that are born and die in the pages of university handbooks.

Library and Dissertation Woes

I'm beginning to see the contours of my dissertation. I'm frightened because they are lumpy. There is no smooth, overarching theory, no linear logic to make it svelte and smart. But this is how I think. In montages of experience.  Isn't that how we're taught to write? The imperative as always been 'show don't tell!' Why is there so much difference between the form and subject of academic writing? 

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Julie's postings about her library stalker, her library opera singer/light bulb, and her polygamous library book prepared me for a library encounter of my own. I now have a library foe. Yesterday I went down to the bottom floor of Brotherton at 4:30. An irate employee chided me, asking why I would turn on a single stack section light when they are preparing to close (in 30 minutes). I responded as I always do in direct confrontation, a little bluntly, a little daftly,

'I'm looking for a book and I can't see.' Today I saw said closer-of-libraries, bringer-of-darkness on the second and third floors and received suspicious looks of recognition despite the fact that the library doesn't close for six hours. 

Travelers' itch or foot fungus?

Since our heavy round of traveling through Europe and the UK, I've frankly been keen on staying in and resting the soles of my feet and the strings of my metaphorical purse (debit card). I'm still determined to stay on the ground for a few months but we can't help considering our modes and destinations of future travel for, as we are daily reminded by would-be-renters viewing our apartment, this year abroad is extremely short and has over a third passed. As far as short term trips go, we're planning a visit to ACU house in Oxford at the end of February. One of our favorite former professors is teaching there this semester and has kindly offered us a room, a tour, and welcome conversation. I confess I am so eagerly looking forward to a familiar face and Texas accents. 

A more imposing trip is in Zach's future. He's flying to Seattle in May. From there he'll conduct social research in one or two cities in the region, probably Coeur d'Alene. He has four weeks in which to do the groundwork for his dissertation, visit his family, perhaps head down to LA to see Kurtis, before returning to Leeds to write. 

I for one plan to take the opportunity to have a European spring fling but since I will inevitably be frantically finishing overdue papers and dissertation drafts, I shall have to find a European fictional character with which to carry on in the romantic poetry section of the Brotherton library.  

Sleepless in Polynesia

I'm taking a class this semester that spans one-hundred and fifty years of South Pacific writing. The first text is Melville's Typee. Reading this sickly romantic book I've come to the realization that my vocabulary books in high school, specifically 10th and 11th grade, were based upon 19th century American novelists' vocabulary. Words like 'perfidious', 'sonorous', 'blithe' and 'profusion'. It's odd to come across those old words that I once used so awkwardly and energetically in my writing at the time. 

Zach and I are notoriously sleepers-in. But we've come up with a plan. During the month of February, our goal is to rise by-- I'll be honest-- ten five out of seven mornings per week. In March by nine. April by eight. That's where I draw the line, but Zach is ambitious, believing that summer's long hours in the north will enable him to work dawn to dusk. 

What am I doing up at 3 am in light of our plan and the momentous dawning of my own new year? Good question.  

How they pile

Why is it that separating and piling my books takes up so much of my time and accomplishes so little? Wouldn't I feel better if I checked them out one by one and actually read them?  

My new year

I missed the inaugural address but it came to me in a Halal fast food joint across the street from Uni. My friend Amber and I were discussing the brutality of Tudor and Stuart punishments when the new class president Barack Obama's voice came over the speakerphone in homeroom. 

But seriously, I was thinking about it as I walked home. I'm joyous, if for nothing else, for the fact that African-Americans today are saying, 'America is my country for the first time.' I think that counts for something. 

Tomorrow is also my birthday, which means that I have another reason to re-begin my new year today.