perrykm2

Yes, I went through this with Dante, "the little death." Really? People talking to him makes him orgasm, crying makes him orgasm, the smell of poop and rot makes him orgasm? What were the Italians doing in the 14th century?

No, not at all. Haha. Unfortunately, my sister is anorexic and severely underweight; it seems like an interesting illness to approach from a literary standpoint.

jma, what is your concentration? What is your interest in eating disorders?

I'm sorry about that, user_name. I've been checking the website every day; after the first few rounds of acceptances, I've just been waiting for my rejection.

You got it JUST now or earlier today?

Of course. It's not meant to offend anyone! We all have different interests. I always thought Beloved would be a good horror movie or, like, a psychological thriller.

I don't know if each edition is divided into 3 parts.

So was ours, but I was only counting the first two parts (right?,) not the third after he's been arrested.

A potentially fun take on the other topic. Since you're going to be checking GradCafe every day, you might as well post in a fun/casual/social thread. What books would you NEVER recommend to anyone, regardless of how relevant or canonical it might be? I had to read An American Tragedy my senior year of HS. Everyone in my class collectively agreed it was horrible. The book takes about 600 pages to establish that the protagonist is, in fact, poor but doesn't want to be poor! All of the symbolism and imagery is really trite, but it doesn't stop Dreiser from explaining it in extreme detail, multiple pages of JUST detail. The central message of the novel (which is positive/agreeable) gets completely buried in wave after wave of just kind of bad/unimaginative writing. My friend described it as a really long and really bad version of the Great Gatsby, which is pretty apt.

This probably isn't a great suggestion, but I just finished Lady Audley's Secret and it was so good in the trashiest way possible.

I did an undergraduate thesis for both of my majors. For Classics, I wrote about the legacy of Ancient Greek conceptions of Egypt and its influence on early silent film. It was a great paper, one of the best things I've ever written. My Lit seminar paper was pretty blah. It was about posthumanism as an expression of Cold War paranoia/trauma in David Cronenberg films, mostly Scanners and Videodrome.

I always laugh at that scene. The rest of the film, especially Walt's character, just makes me cringe and feel uncomfortable.

Although, I'm sure sometimes there's a discrepancy between the conventions for which we come to recognize an author and some of their works. Maybe they mean, like, this work by Kafka is the highest concentration of Kafka essence possible, 100% max extreme Kafka.

Yep, me too. Everyone is like, "I GOT ACCEPTED AND REJECTED FROM THIS PLACE." I am wondering if I submitted any applications at all and this is just a very extensive and detailed dream.

Have you ever seen the Squid and the Whale? There's a pretty funny dialogue referring to exactly that. From wikiquotes: Sophie: [about The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka] Yeah. I mean, it's gross when he turns into the bug, but I love how matter of fact everything is. Walt: Yeah, it's very Kafkaesque. Sophie: Because it's written by Franz Kafka. Walt: Right. I mean, clearly.

Yer' a wizard, antecedant!

It seems like people who receive fellowship offers get phone calls?

My statement of purpose is about how researching the traumatic effects of the Trujillo dictatorship in popular Dominican/Haitian literature guided me to my current scholarly interests. I think we're birds of a feather. I've never read anything by Christina Garcia, but it's so exciting to meet people you look up to. Not just like "I love your movies, Denzel Washington!," but like "your book or theories have competely changed the way I live in the world."

Don't think I am a huge jerk for bragging about this, but my school had a Latina/o Writers Festival and Junot Diaz was the main speaker, and because I presented a paper at the semi-conference (small panels of speakers) about Junot Diaz and Edwidge Danticat, I got to be the "student ambassador" and take him on a tour of the campus (with 10000 other people in the English Department) and got him to sign my copy of Drown. He was so funny; it was magical.

It's SO funny.

If you're looking for a true classic, you can't do better than the Quixote. It's super readable, and once you've read it, it's amazing to see how many books and films have been [sometimes heavily] influenced by Cervantes. Reading Don Quixote and then reading Frankenstein right after is totally a WTF experience.

Not at all. They're the floral print Dr. Martens, pictured here: http://www.killahbeez.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/dr.-marten-main.jpg

Or, I'm not the only crazy lunatic.

I actually feel better that I'm not a crazy lunatic for crying over shoes.

I cried today after I went out to coffee with my friend. Her parents pay for all her stuff (apt, bills, etc.) and she has a cushy pt job and paid internship, so she bought all of this new stuff, including a pair of boots I've wanted all winter. She was like, "yeah, I love them so much." I've been paying off all of my application fees and gre scores and transcript orders and most likely will be for months. Thinking about spending so much money and not getting in somewhere made me so depressed, I just broke down in my car and started crying, "I WANTED THOSE BOOTS, I LOST ALL MY MONEY."