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RJM909

RJM909

Joined June 2016

"...with the thoroughness of mind which reveres details and never quite understands them." Lewis's Babbitt
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RJM909
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A helpful snippet to remind students baffled by Eliot: it's ok (preferred, and suspect otherwise) to not have "the answer" in your back pocket to his poems. Ambiguity is to modernism as ambivalence is to pomo.
(And Eagleton's Marxist leanings chew up/spit out the erudite in Eliot beautifully ?.)

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RJM909
Cannery Row | John Steinbeck
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Fictional writing in ENG 102 this week. And so I dig out the perfect first paragraph, ever. Steinbeck needs more classroom time these days. (And I don't mean any of that mice, men, or red ponies stuff.)

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RJM909
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"What does 'the personal is political' even mean?" Answer: this entire book, mantra embodied. Seriously. A perennial re-read to remind us how vital & necessary raw poetry can be. Whenever lit reading/critiquing starts to feel too detached, Rich reignites! (Let's be honest: true of all her work!)

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RJM909
Borderlands | Gloria Anzalda
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Pickpick

Fierce and beautiful. The piece itself lies at the borderlands of form, multilingual and multi-genred. In no way derivative, it sits in fine company w Adrienne Rich's What is Found There. A staple in any feminist library, long neglected Chicanas' voices. It is theory-narrative-prose-poetry.

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RJM909
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One of my favorite semantic headaches, ever. To discuss: to be vs to seem (modernism and romanticism meet). Themes: indignity of death, what of ruling over "lite" domain (title!), shades of Dickinson. Pair w "The Snow Man."

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RJM909
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"The House of Asterion" - another, yet unique, trad story retold from the monster's POV. Steeped in defensive language (contrast w conclusion) and self-justification, A's alternate narrative is terrifying. And also human. Distorted redemption/Christian refs. #intertextuality #perceptionasreality

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RJM909
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Revisiting ol Terry for SP 17. He opens with attempts at defining "literature" (which naturally don't take). I love this beauty:

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RJM909
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories | Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Who has hysteria now? (Wandering womb disease is apparently EEO.) I will forever love this conclusion.

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RJM909
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories | Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Teaching this tonight. Students always get into it, which is good; but sometimes, it feels as though we are fetishizing mental illness. The risk is far outweighed by its strengths. Gilman tells her truth through fiction, and skeptics of lit falter on this one :).

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RJM909
Modernism: Evolution of an Idea | Sean Latham, Gayle Rogers

From Beckett's defense of Joyce (Finnegans Wake): "form is content, content is form." And: "[Joyce's] writing is not *about* something, *it is that something itself.*"
As a content junkie myself -- let this be the new ALP prayer. ?

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RJM909
Modernism: Evolution of an Idea | Sean Latham, Gayle Rogers
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LIT 220: post-Reconstruction (1877-), the debate for newly enfranchised humans. How does this change once he law says it's "so"? Discuss with DuBois and rebuttal, 1903.

RJM909 BTW's speech via Edison, a few years later (hear him read it!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZuvQJutHiY&feature=share 8y
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RJM909
Modernism: Evolution of an Idea | Sean Latham, Gayle Rogers
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Always an issue when describing "Modernism" -- defined foremost here itself as a "problem," "unmoored [from 20c studies]," and "an art for boundless now" (1-2).

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RJM909
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson
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Closing confessional by Jekyll. Stevenson dispels binaries even as he evokes them (and relies on our Faustian devil/angel shoulder accessories). Interesting conversation on "agency" (paired w Cronenberg's The Fly). Monsters are beyond borders, thus freedom. But then what are *their* limits?

LitProfNovara That's such an odd ending, isn't it? He's the "only one" allowed to be pure evil. Really, there are no redemptive qualities in even the worst examples of humanity? 8y
RJM909 Seems to fly in the face of redemption & embrace agency of self. But then what "self"? Suggest our having too much control over our fragmented selves (w the right drugs) puts us "beyond" redemption. He has "to recall me to myself" -- feels like id/ego (Jekyll isn't all good either). Feels modernist! 8y
RJM909 Even as he writes it, he warns Hyde will likely take over and destroy it! Because by now, it's the drugs making him Jekyll, not vice versa. (300 is tough ☺️. I remember why I failed at Twitter!) 8y
RJM909 Ooh! Another idea. H. of course isn't "purely" evil bc, if nothing else, this book teaches a person can't be reduced to a singular essence. If it weren't for the bodily changes, I'd say Jekyll "chose" Hyde ultimately - or rather X, who was J and H, did. And removed culpability and blame via letter. 8y
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