veniente

Fuck this. I hate how devitalising ideas of 'function', 'purpose', 'use', 'value', and 'applicability' are to the humanities, how they neglect the traditional/originary notions of what humanities/higher education was 'about', as it were, or at least what the humanities could be about, their potentiality (emancipatory and otherwise), and how I'm always having to justify why knowledge/studying/thinking is something useful. While I don't wholly agree with Fish's idea that the humanities are 'honourably useless', I absolutely despise how discussions of their benefit and use are so typically framed in economic terms. I want to know what the 'external value' or 'use' of the military is, or of investment bankers, or stock traders.

Hey hawkeye, me too, I hope I wasn't rude or offensive; I definitely didn't mean to be, however unbridgeable our personal opinions on the importance of authorial intention!

Any of the bold-ed bits, I guess. Like, say, the idea that a piece of literature has a singular 'Truth' which may be unlocked. Or that art has one purpose.

I don't think I know where to begin

It's cool. Like koolherc, I also majorly ♥ the Bard.

I would question: 1. Why we need to establish 'literary' value in the first instance, and what is meant by it? Particularly given, as TripWillis has noted, English today finds literariness and textuality in many places. 2. How, and by whom, is this 'value' being 'measured' (or, more accurately, conferred)? And, similarly, who decides and on what bases do they decide that some writings/texts are more valid or 'deserving'(!) than others. 3. Against what template is the 'complexity of ideas' to be measured? 4. Why is 'originality' important? And, what does it look like? 5. Shakespeare as somehow transcending history/culture/politics and processes of canonicity. 6. Why I care?

One of the most 'faithful' filmic adaptations of a novel that I've seen. It's basically lifted word for word, scene for scene. I think both are excellent, but I would say that if you've watched the film you hardly need read the book, and vice versa.

Thanks!

Did someone mention that it's about to be a long weekend in the US?

Even through the haze of my hangover I recognise this as a new low.

This sounds brilliant!

Thankfully I got full funding - tuition waivers and (smallish, but enough) living stipends - for my Honours and then MA years (where I'm from the BA is three years, BA (Honours) is a one year graduate degree, MA is one year). This was at the country's top 'state' university (in the Anglo-Saxon world it seems like it's pretty much just the U.S. that has private universities). For my undergrad, at the same institution, I got a government loan for the tuition fees - which, being a state university, are enormously subsidised anyway - and worked 20+ hours a week to avoid debt as best I could. I can't really testify to the use of any of this - by which I mean the fact of having respectable prizes/scholarships and an MA - given I am yet to get in anywhere , however, there are nicely funded MA programs out there (elsewhere, I have mentioned Melbourne & Sydney, for example), and I think sometimes it can look good if you do your MA at a different institution than the one where you did your undergrad. Basically, I wouldn't have done any graduate study if I didn't get funding; my attitude was, and is, 'if they want me enough, they'll pay'.

Amen! It's Friday evening here, I'ma drink to that.

Yeah, Eggers seems to be quite a polarising figure. Why is that? Is it that his writing is, at times, too whimsical and twee? For my part, I think he's alright - I liked What is the What and Zeitoun. Am surprised Foer (another polarising author who, personally, I don't mind) hasn't been nominated, particularly EL&IC. I really like how people come out defending authors who they believe do not belong in this thread. I think Portrait of an Artist, Beloved, and Sound and the Fury are all excellent, for very different reasons. If someone said J.M. Coetzee I'd cry.

Hold in there! I'm feeling equally despondent, especially after seeing JHU acceptances all go up on the board while my email remains infuriatingly silent.

Maybe this is what I need.

Well, a couple of days ago (on the books to read thread) I said Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was one to avoid (a somewhat lazy verdict given I had only read five pages). However, such was this community's love for it, combined with my respect for this great community, I'm thinking I might have to give it another go! While there's lots of books I just didn't much like or didn't think were that good ( Portnoy's Complaint, Atonement , White Teeth, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Stuart: A Life Backwards, The Lovely Bones, Women as Lovers, any Dan Brown), I bestow upon Irvine Welsh's Filth the dubious honour of being a book that I would recommend not reading. I read it when I was a teenager. It's vile.

Hilarious! My MA thesis is due on the 28th. It still requires a ton of attention, writing, and refinement. I must be approaching 40K words; it should be around 150 pages when I complete. I cannot wait to finish it; spending twelve hour days re-reading my writing is getting me down. Recently I've been questioning whether this is really the line of work I wish to pursue. That may change with an acceptance, however!

I think the most awkward part is when his brother masturbates in the library. But yes, the whole thing is extraordinarily cringe-worthy and just an amazing portrait of a disintegrating family. Favourite line: "Did you get that it was her cunt?"

Yes, it's lots of fun, and now that you mention it I do remember that passage of dialogue

I want to die whenever I hear professors, in the context of a discussion of Portrait of an Artist or The Castle or the Sistine Chapel, let us say, describe the artifacts as "Joycean" or, "Kafkaesque," or "Michelangelesque." Surely this is a redundant usage given that we know Portrait of an Artist is written by Joyce. I'm happy enough for one to make a claim that The Waves has "Joycean elements of..." but to say that Portrait is Joycean just strikes me as stating the obvious. More interesting would be an argument for the Sistine Chapel as Kafkaesque...

I'm waiting on reponses to my U.S. Ph.D. program applications. After an interview for the Fulbright Graduate Student Award (October 2011) I was nominated an 'alternate candidate'. Am hoping that the list of alternates is very small(?) and have heard rumours that sometimes people who get awarded a Fulbright and a Rhodes (or other schol.) sometimes decline the Fulbright [fingers crossed!] Am curious to know what my chances are, and if anyone has had experience of going from alternate to selected status, and when this might happen?

Stanford and Berkeley rejections must be coming soon, right? (According to last year's results board it was the 14th/15th.) Sigh.

Oh, the madness of words. Between intention and interpretation.