jywayne

As a fan of the American West, I highly recommend either Blood Meridian if you want to be blown away by the sheer force of Cormac McCarthy's language or the Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey if you're feeling like hugging some trees and protecting the f-ing wilderness from being ravaged by the machine. But, if you want to stick to the 30s, then try To a God Unknown by Steinbeck--a very underrated book.

Marlowe--I contacted the Grad representative back in December and she said my file was complete. Since then, I've just gotten the e-mail three times a week that says nothing since their electronic system is broken.

I saw where someone got a letter of rejection from Tennessee on the results board. I still haven't heard anything: what gives? I project that I'll get shot down as well thanks to an atrocious subject test score.

I'm finishing up a master's program at Ohio University. I've had great options here--I've done freshman composition, assisted in Early British and American surveys (I'm an Americanist but I do some work in Early Modern too), and am teaching my own course to juniors and seniors right now on the American West. I definitely could not have asked for better opportunities anywhere ese.

I am not doing a thesis but rather a master's paper [for pragmatic reasons in getting it into a journal as well as the fact that the thesis just felt like a lot of grunt work when I had the option between the two). I'm working on Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, arguing that the democratic philosophy of Jim Casy is inspired by the metaphysics of a little-known UCLA philosopher named John Elof Boodin. I have some archival evidence in which Steinbeck even wrote to Boodin and asked to use his philosophical ideas in his fiction. Interesting stuff.

Michigan for me. THey are huge in 19th-20th Century American Realism & Naturalism, which is my thing. Here's to hoping that all you folks who get admitted to Michigan will choose to go to the Ivys instead when I ultimately get plopped on a wait-list in the best case scenario.

I'm coping by teaching a course on the American West to college juniors and seniors. Nothing like getting paid to talk about a little Sergio Leone, Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, and others to brighten the disposition.

I don't usually post, but I read the forum and saw this topic and realized how screwed I was. I called ETS and they said that because the subject score wasn't available on 11/25, when I had score reports sent out, then I didn't have a score to send; therefore, they sent nothing. Ergo, they want another $50 to send subject scores to all the places I want that I thought I had sent scores to already. I got furious and asked them why they didn't make this more clear on their website; they said it was clear (albeit in the most microscopic letters below the score report screen). What a racket.