TripWillis

Yes. You rarely see something as thought provoking and formally complex as that, but also so affecting. Leave it to Charlie Kaufman.

I know exactly what you mean, but then there are other postmodern tropes I like and I LOVE postmodernism in film (Synecdoche, New York anyone?). I guess it's lucky for me that pomo is considered "dead" to a certain extent now (or at least some think so -- not that I'm an authority on this). It's not that I don't appreciate a good pomo text or two, but many of them irritate me. I think the toughest time I ever had with a hallmark pomo text was Gilbert Sorrentino's Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. I felt like I was being made fun of for 200 pages. As far as Crying of Lot 49 goes, I like it in bits and pieces. I like when they go to the Jacobean revenge play in the middle and I also like the psychologist, what was his name [Dr. Hilarius]? Whatever it was, I always pictured Dr. Jacoby from Twin Peaks when I thought of his character. Huh. I wonder why?

I'll let you know when I find it.

Does anyone else, like myself, have basically 0% confidence that they will get in anywhere, but are applying to like 10 places anyway? Why do you think we are doing this to ourselves? Just curious. And let's talk. We need to cheer each other up.

I found White Noise to be a very smarmy book, but the thing is, I think that's what people like about it. I just can't digest so much character scorn and pretentious humor over the course of a whole book. But, I have some weird principles when it comes to my personal taste that everyone else should just ignore: I don't like to read about rich/aristocrat people, I don't like to read about writers, I don't like to read about the intelligentsia, I don't like overbearing amounts of pop culture references, I don't like an assumption of the reader's leftism (although I am left), and I don't like archetypal female characters. *phew* nice to get all that off my chest. Oh, and I also have a tough time with political commentary on consumerism in books because rarely do I find that the author (no matter how good they are at the act of writing) has a particularly nuanced view of the issue.

I gotta come out and be the one to say I hated White Noise, but it's definitely representative of a "type" of literature I don't like, so I wouldn't let that stop anyone else... I also don't care for Pynchon *ducks people throwing objects* hey! Easy!

I mean, I don't think intellect has much to do with it -- it's a numbers game. If your odds are 14/250-400 chance (also consider that your field's allotment is smaller than that), then it will be difficult to be in the top 14 period. That's why people are so concerned. As far as where I'm applying: Harvard, Rutgers, UC: Davis, SUNY: Stonybrook, CUNY: Graduate Center, University of Maryland, Tufts, Boston University, and New York University, but I'm still considering subbing in the following: Northeastern, Northwestern, and University of Illinois: Chicago.

I've heard that WashU and UConn are both good.

Haha, wow helpful! UC Davis wants this from me, 500 word PH, 500 word SoP. Best I could tell, I should just extricate the 500 words of narrative that guides my SoP from the 500 words in my SoP that talk about my currents interests, projects, and future proposals. *shrugs* Oh brother. This is almost as weird as NYU's 10-12 page writing sample range. WTF???

African-American literature (particularly Queer Black Studies), dirty realism, literature and the environment (particularly the redefinition of the nature/human divide in the postmodern and globalized era).

Amen to this BTW...

I think I answered Seamus Heaney for that question.

Okay, but you guys gotta keep this secret... It's almost all Lord of the Rings trivia. Probably about 40% Silmarillion and Hobbit and 60% on LOTR, split between the three books.

Wow, that's weird. Not as much world lit on mine as I expected. GG Marquez made an appearance.

If we're being truthful here, I think there were under 15 questions about American Literature. Do others agree?

I would focus on prosody, literary terms, verse forms, stanza forms, etc. and, rather than focusing on identification, focus on reading about 10 well-known poems from each literary period of note in-depth so that you can really familiarize yourself with antiquated language and periodic style. I think if you focus more on style and structure, it will help you. For instance, I was able to nail John Donne and John Milton just by style, even though I'm not super familiar with either of those works. I could just tell it was them.

Don't be too nervous. My nervous racing mind really worked against me during the test, as around question 124 I started to get mentally exhausted and overwhelmed due to the difficulty and my inability to "speed analyze" for more than an hour at a time. It began to cripple my confidence, even though I was doing alright (I thought) for the first half. (Seriously, if they wanted to reflect actual graduate life, they'd give us a break every 45 minutes to check facebook and pour a cup of coffee and eat a few potato chips.) Just remember: it is no mystery that this test is hard, and therefore, there's no reason to be nervous. I wish I had told myself this.

You could try every school outside the heartland. Marxist criticism is highly influential pretty much everywhere.

I guess if it's "recommended," you might as well just send it. That indicates to me that a poor GRE Subject score probably won't hurt you with them.

"In addition, applicants for the Ph.D. program in English and American literature must also submit results of the GRE subject test in English" That's from the NYU English Dept. website... so...

Progress: LoRs approached and confirmed Writing Sample and SoPs all in advanced revision stages; meeting professors and letter writers later this month for more feedback GRE Revised Done (and very happy with!) Subject Test Done Transcripts requested and sent Applications started and saved CV updated I'm basically on the home stretch at this point.

It was pretty much exactly what I expected: a total trainwreck. I'm just glad that I survived. I've always known that this test isn't going to be the star of my application, nor should it be the star of anyone's application. But, my studying did help because I was able to nail all the stanza and verse form and literary term questions. Those were points I wouldn't have had before. Overall, I just have to say that this test had very, very long passages with lots of dependent questions. I'll admit, that was very frustrating. It was too hard to get through it all and I left a bunch of questions unanswered (though I definitely at least scanned the whole thing). I don't understand what the purpose is of making sure someone can analyze literature quickly. Taking the test today maybe reinforced my opinion that schools are probably not taking this as seriously as we all think, especially for those of us focusing on American Literature. There were like 0 American Lit questions! I'm not even exaggerating!