Bookaholics Anonymous

I have a confession to make. I am inexplicably obsessed with the musty smell of old papers bound up in leather covers. I love holding a book in my hand, flipping through its creamy pages, and feeling history beneath my fingertips. However environmentally unfriendly it is, the physicality of owning a book is an experience that cannot be replaced by e-books or the Kindle.

But then again, I am a bookaholic. My desk in my dorm room is covered with tall stacks of books and my book shelf is completely filled with anthologies, reference texts, poetry, plays, and fiction (and a DVD collection). I also have two bookcases at home that contain the rest of my growing book collection. And yet I keep buying more and more books like an addiction. 

This weekend, I went to the LA Times Festival of Books and bought The World According to Garp (John Irving), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon), About a Boy (Nick Hornby), and I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Bill Bryson). 

I also bought a very nice copy of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court from a booth that sold rare and fine books. It’s really nicely bound with gold lettering and beautiful script on each page. I was also looking at a leatherbound copy of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but it was unfortunately out of my price range. 

(Perhaps even more exciting though was the fact that I got to see Kristin Chenoweth from Wicked in person!)

Inspired by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, as a child I dreamed of having an enormous grand library with the books piled up to the ceiling. I will probably never own a house big enough to house such an ambitious library, but I still dream of having bookshelves line every wall of my future home (which I imagine to be cottage-like and cosy with the rooms painted gold like in Bridge to Terabithia). To this dream, I have added the desire to own tasteful artwork and fine wine. 

My research (and thesis) advisor is a fellow bookaholic. He has five or six book shelves in his (tiny) office filled with books about Shakespeare, Renaissance culture, and other topics related to his research. One meeting while we were talking about purchasing books out of print, he told me that whenever he goes to England, he would peruse the bookshops there and sometimes he would find really rare books for only £20 or so. He is currently registered at the British Museum as the owner of the earliest edition of this one 16th century book and owns some very nice editions of rarely printed plays such as John Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize. My professor has so many books that he can’t put them all in bookshelves at his house (his American literature collection lies in sad little stacks in his garage – sorry AmLit majors ). Shelves and shelves of books, rare book collections, books categorized by genre and author (I’m an organization freak). This could be me in thirty years!

In addition to my new Mark Twain acquisition, my fledgling special books collection includes autographed copies of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and most recently Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia. Next week, I plan to get another book autographed by David Sedaris. 

I have caught the book bug (worm?) and I’m loving it. 

It's nice to see that reading isn't dead at all.

Also, happy belated 445th birthday (April 23) to Mr. William Shakespeare! Even though that might not be your real birthday… But I’m sure you don’t mind that we think of you as the literary St. George.

Permission to Go Insane? Granted.

The smell of brand-new books waiting to be opened and annotated. The fresh pages of notebook paper. The bright-eyed students eager to bury their heads in books, neglecting the beautiful sunny day outside. Spring quarter has arrived! After a difficult but rewarding winter quarter, Sophia Literaria is ready to… go through the torture all over again. With the GRE out of the way, I decided to take on extra (22) units this quarter, resulting in the following reading list:

• Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Shakespeare, As You Like It
• Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
• Shakespeare, Sonnets
• Shakespeare, Richard II
• Shakespeare, Henry IV, part I
• Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
• Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
• Shakespeare, Hamlet
• Dryden, All for Love
• Inchbald, The Mogul Tale
• Colman the Younger, Blue-Beard
• Southerne, Oroonoko
• Bickerstaff, The Padlock
• Rowson, Slaves in Algiers
• Gay, Polly
• Colman the Younger, Inkle and Yarico
• Sheridan, Pizarro
• Steele, Conscious Lovers
• Lillo, London Merchant
• Williams, Craft of Argument
• Booth, Craft of Research
• Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

Not to mention secondary works, the books I’m reading for my independent research project, submissions for Aleph, and articles for my Information Studies seminar. Lovely. No wonder I indulge in television and comic books/manga in my spare time (the less words the better!).

But the truth is I love being crazy busy. I love the challenge of making sense of a hard passage, the adrenaline of filling up a bluebook during a midterm, the sense of achievement when all those late nights pay off, and the satisfaction of turning in a paper that you’re actually proud of. Maybe I drive myself crazy with work because I like the affirmation at the end of the quarter that, despite all the pain and frustration, I still adore English. Even after struggling (and complaining) through The Faerie Queene all winter quarter, I can still say that there’s nothing else I’d rather be studying. Literature is my soulmate.

Brownie points if anyone can guess what three classes I’m taking based on this list (One of them is really easy, but let’s see how specific you can get)! AND extra brownie points if you know where the last picture is from!

An Unforgiving Art

First entry of the new year! My schedule this quarter is pretty packed – I’m taking three English classes, continuing my work with Aleph, and embarking on an independent research project on early modern authorship. My GRE prep course also starts in less than two weeks so things are going to get hectic in Sophialand. 

One of the classes I’m taking is on the history of literary theory and criticism, which has been really interesting so far because it discusses the types of ideas that got me interested in literature in the first place.  I love literary criticism and the debates it has over genre, language, and the nature/purpose of fiction and poetry. 

Anyways, I was reading Horace’s Ars Poetica last week and this section really caught my attention:

“In some things, a tolerable mediocrity is properly allowed. A mediocre lawyer or advocate is a long way from the distinction of learned Messalla and doesn’t know as much as Aulus Cascellius, but he has his value. But neither men nor gods nor shop-fronts allow a poet to be mediocre. Just as music out of tune or thick ointment or Sardinian honey with your poppy gives offence at a nice dinner, because the meal could go on without them, so poetry, which was created and discovered for the pleasure of the mind, sinks right to the bottom the moment it declines a little from the top.” 

Horace’s opinions of his own profession strongly reflect my own views about studying literature and working in academia. There is no room for mediocrity in my career plans… which I think is just a little scary.

(P.S. Ushered for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra this past weekend. Simply phenomenal. If you ever get a chance to see the “Cellist Twins” Pei-Jee Ng and Pei-Sian Ng in concert, do it! They’re mindblowingly awesome. )

A Long December

December has not been very kind to bloggers, or at least not to this particular blogger. With term papers to write and finals to take, I have unwittingly neglected my blogging duties this month. Unfortunately, I’m about to board a plane in T-minus 4 hours for southern China where I shall be traveling (namely in Hong Kong, Guilin, Beihai, Sanya, and Shanghai) for the next three weeks, so I probably won’t be able to get any decent blogging in before New Years.

There are still two weeks before Christmas, so I’ve decided to compile a quick list of things to give your fellow bookworm for the holidays:

1. For the poetically inclined – A rhyming dictionary. A gift that is both practical and entertaining, a rhyming dictionary is a must-have for anyone dabbling in poetry or song writing. You can use it to find that elusive phrase that will complete your couplet or it can be really fun just flipping through it and finding words that you never knew could be used in a rhyme. This is the ideal gift for anyone who loves words (especially phonetics). I would recommend the Penguin Rhyming Dictionary, or if you have a little more money, the Oxford Rhyming Dictionary (warning: some words will only rhyme if you put on a British accent).

2. For the ambitious bookworm – War and Peace, newly translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. First published in hardcover last year, this book just arrived in paperback form on December 2nd, in time for the holidays. I actually haven’t gotten a chance to read this translation yet (sadly, my first experience with Tolstoy was with the inferior Constance Garnett version), but I would vouch for any Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. They have previously translated several works of Dostoevsky (including The Brothers Karamozov and Notes from Underground), Dead Souls by Gogol, a number of short stories by Chekhov, and Anna Karenina. The couple have a knack for maintaining the original linguistic style of the work, a feat difficult in translation because translators often impose their own mannerisms or cultural language onto the original. Translation is never as good as the original, but since not all of us have time to learn Russian, this is probably going to be as close as you can get to a true Tolstoyan experience.

3. For the intelligent dreamer - The Sandman (Vol. 1-10) by Neil Gaiman. I was first introduced to this comic book series in my sophomore year of high school and four years later, I still find myself fascinated by the questions that the series raises. The Sandman, “a comic book for intellectuals” as Norman Mailer has described it, has this wonderful dichotomy of past and present, reality and fantasy that manifests itself in its artwork (which varies stylistically from story to story) as well as in its melding of classical mythology with modern life. Although I would probably criticize certain segments of the series, I found the conclusion extremely powerful and thoughtprovoking. The spinoffs, however, I would not recommend except for Endless Nights, which I think is closest in tone to the original series.

4. For the general reader – The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom. There are many people against the idea of a canon as well as people who simply cannot stand Harold Bloom. However, regardless of how you might feel about his critical theory, his enthusiasm for great literature is always palpable and that love for good books is especially contagious for the general reader. This book acts as a reading list and a guide for some of the greatest works in the Western tradition and will definitely whet your appetite for the likes of Shakespeare, Dante, and Chaucer.

5. For the nontraditional gent or gal - Write a short story featuring the recipient as the main character. If you plan on traveling, do a little literary tourism and explore the haunts of fictional characters (i.e. Sherlock Holmes’s digs in London) or the abodes of famed authors (i.e. Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West). Invite your friends to a reenactment of a scene in a beloved book (such as the Mad Hatter’s tea party or the Neverfield ball). Buy tickets to an author’s talk or poetry reading or even a play. If you’ve given your literary friend a book year after year, this is the year to change it up and form some lasting memories.

Let me know if any of these literary gift ideas helped!

As for my winter break reading, I shall be catching up with my Kafka (short stories only) while I am in the Orient so I shall let you know my thoughts upon my return. Also, I’m contemplating adding a travel category, but I think I’ll probably keep it oriented towards literary tourism or maybe places of historical or artistic value. I shall ruminate upon this some more…

Until the next time I have internet access, adieu. Happy Holidays!

Life in a Cardboard Box

“What is research, but a blind date with knowledge?” – Will Henry

As an English major, one of the questions I hear most often is: “What do you plan to do with your major?” and other variations of “What do you want to do with your life?” These well-meaning skeptics tend to appear in the form of Asians, pre-professional majors, and engineers. At Thanksgiving gatherings with family friends, I get either the sympathetic stares reserved for “Girl-Destined-To-Live-In-A-Cardboard-Box” or eager suggestions for me to go to law school or switch to business. It seems to me that most people look at college as more of a vocational school than a center of knowledge and exploration, intended to advance our understanding of the world we live in and acquaint ourselves with the greatest minds of human history.

Of course practical preparation for the real world is important. There’s no doubt that necessity and therefore money is a powerful motivating force. But I can’t help but think that there’s something more to life than “bread and butter.” Like the ascetics of Buddhism, I tend to believe that materialism and physical needs are paltry compared to our spiritual well-being and somehow, even though I understand the benefits, I can’t bring myself to forsake my intellectual interests for a bigger wallet (not that I’m against money in general – if you happen to love a subject that also brings in the big bucks, more power to you).

However, despite the inconveniences of always having to defend my major, I do think that it is a valid question. Why literature? Why research? Why academia? There seems to be a strain of anti-intellectualism in America that discourages the life of the mind, the pursuit of the Ivory Tower. The common thought is that spending too much time in scholarly endeavors renders one useless in the actual society, but personally, I think this is an unfair stereotype. I don’t think there is anything more pure and beautiful than the pursuit of knowledge and truth. 

A couple weeks ago, I bought a stack of books from an English Department book sale, one of which being The Art of Literary Research by Richard D. Altick (1975). The pages are yellowed and the book has that old library smell, but I like flipping through it whenever I’m having an academia-induced anxiety attack. One quote at the very beginning of the book I think sums up the attraction of studying literature:

“In no other subject is the pupil brought more immediately and continuously into contact with original sources, the actual material of his study. In no other subject is he so able and so bound to make his own selection of the material he wishes to discuss, or able so confidently to check the statements of authorities against the documents on which they are based. No other study involves him so necessarily in ancillary disciplines. Most important of all, no other study touches his own life at so many points and more illuminates the world of his own daily experience” – Helen Gardner, “The Academic Study of English Literature,” Critical Quarterly, I (1959). 

These factors led me to the study of literature and they are also what keeps me here. I’ve been given advice to just fulfill my intellectual curiosity in college and then go out and get “a real job,” but I don’t really see how I can do that. You can’t really satisfy a thirst for learning in four meager years, or even in a lifetime. In the final (and my favorite) chapter, Altick describes “The Scholar’s Life” and every time I read it, I’m reminded of why I want to spend my life in academia. 

“The scholar really never ceases being a scholar. He may firmly lock his office door at the end of the day, but he never locks or sequesters his intellect. Consciously or subconsciously he continues to mull over the problems his restless curiosity about books and history has set loose in his mind, and sometimes, at the oddest moments – at 3 A.M. or while taking a shower – a bright new idea may come to him from nowhere… The bookish excitement that has led them into the profession permeates their lives.”

“No other profession offers so legitimate an excuse for reading great literature. And though the siren song of research may lead us to spend many hours in realms far removed from art, if we learn our lesson correctly, they may sharpen our understanding and appreciation of the masterpieces to which we are devoted.”

“Though time is always short, we have the lifelong company of books; and what is more, we have good human companionship… Love of books and a consuming interest in the intellectual and esthetic questions they pose make brothers of men with amazingly different backgrounds and tastes. In scholarship there is no prejudice born of national origin, creed, color, or social class; we live in the truest democracy of all, the democracy of the intellect.”

I’m willing to concede that Altick’s portrayal of a career in literary scholarship may be a bit idealized, but I think its a beautiful ideal to aspire to. At its best, research can be infinitely rewarding. 

(Clearly, I have not been disillusioned yet.) 

 

On a final note: Who else is really depressed about Pushing Daisies being cancelled? Let’s mope together with some pie (dosed with homeopathic mood-enhancers), knitting, and pop-up books.

Confessions of a Theatre Usher

Before the Grammar Nazis come after me, I’d like to absolve myself by saying that I like to spell certain words the British way – i.e. theatre, realise, grey, etc. - It’s my thing, deal with it.

Also, I’d like to draw your attention to my new banner :] (I love MS paint!), which I am quite proud of since I usually get someone to do this type of thing for me. See if you can recognize any of the pictures! Finally, given the frequency that I hope to be attending performances/lectures/readings this year, I’ve added a new category “Stage Spy” for my reviews/thoughts on the events that I go to so be sure to check it out sometime if you want to see what’s new on the LA cultural/literary/intellectual scene.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Today I ushered for UCLA Live for the first time and it was definitely a great start for the season. I love wearing nice high heels and looking “like a lawyer” (although I will have to wait till next time to get my bow tie). I always find it so much fun to dress up and look formal/professional; it makes me feel all grown-up and smart (I silently grieve the extension of the Casual Friday to all five weekdays on the West Coast).

Anyways, one interesting observation I made through the course of today was how people’s manners seem to change based on who they’re dealing with.

Earlier in the day I did some tabling/flyering for Aleph (the UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences – GET PUBLISHED! *not so subtle plug*); passing out flyers, by the way, is probably one of the top five most depressing campus activities to engage in. I’d stand by a walkway, looking as friendly and harmless as possible, and yet people would see the flyers in my hands and veer off their original course (i.e. go to the other side of the street) just to avoid talking to me. As you extend your flyer out, most people will just shake their heads and walk on, but I’ve found that people wearing sunglasses are the worst. They hide behind their stunna shades, feeling empowered, fabulous, and anonymous enough to breeze past people like they don’t exist.

Maybe I just got rejected too many times in a one-hour flyering shift, but when I ushered tonight I was struck by how polite the patrons were. Almost every person who walked through the “center left” doors said “Thank you” when I handed them a program and several smiled or asked how I was. Yes, these are basic pleasantries and perhaps the theatre-going crowd is simply better behaved than the typical college student rushing to class, but the stark contrast just seemed so strange to me.

I realise that etiquette is often seen as an artifice, especially in modern times, but I still believe that it serves an important purpose in social interactions. I never understood how people could be so rude to one another (i.e. cutting in line, swearing, road rage), even if they found the other person to be an inconvenience. Shouldn’t a person with true manners treat everyone equally with the respect that they deserve? Or does etiquette inherently contain different rules for different “classes” of people? More importantly, do manners and etiquette even matter in this modern society of Casual Monday-thru-Friday’s, a tell-all tabloid world that blurs (or eliminates) the line between our private and public selves?

Ok, end of long tangent! I’m actually blogging to gloat about the highlight of my week: ushering for meeting John Updike!

I, Sophia Literaria, was in the same room with a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (I’m actually pretty sure this is the first time this has happened… unless I unknowingly met one during the LA Festival of Books last year).

Sadly, I must confess that I haven’t read any of his novels (although after his talk, I’ve placed The Witches of Eastwick on my list of Books To Read). I know Updike mainly from his vast body of work in The New Yorker, but even without reading his longer pieces of writing, I found myself fascinated by his take on the creative process and the influences of age on his literary perspective. Plus, he was very funny/witty/(dare I say cute?) in that wonderful eccentric grandfather sort of way that always delights me.

I think the thing that struck me the most during the talk was Updike’s rule of publishing a book a year. Updike is an extremely productive writer, who comes out with short stories, reviews, poetry, and novels at an almost insane pace, especially given the length of his career. His body of work is seriously large enough to fill its own bookshelf. Yet I can’t help but wonder if this pace compromises the quality of his writing, if he could be even greater if he had the patience and tranquility to stick to one idea at a time. Updike spoke of great admiration for writers like Saul Bellow who don’t mind “not seeing his name in print” for long periods of time. I almost sense an insecurity in Updike’s admission that he feels antsy when he doesn’t see his work in the public eye for a while.

And yet this is not a complete reading of Updike’s motivations for his frenetic pace. I think Updike takes his position as a prominent literary figure seriously and pushes to remain in the public eye in part because he wants to affect change and influence opinion in a world that is increasingly dismissive of writers and literature as a whole. As Updike pointed out, the position of the writer in society has greatly diminished since the times of the Great Depression onward. I feel like most people these days see fiction the same way they see the movies – as a simple form of entertainment. We don’t see our poet laureates as “prophets” or “oracles of truth” anymore. We dismiss the greatest authors of the Western canon as inferior to Rowling and Meyer simply because they are “hard to read”. We dive into racy plotlines instead of immersing ourselves in language that is beautifully wrought; because we’ve abandoned good writing for quick summer reads and trashy paperbacks, good writing has abandoned us.

However, old-fashioned writers like Updike, who still writes the first drafts to his novels by hand, continue to bravely cling to the idea that maybe they can still make a ripple in the social consciousness, despite Harry Potter, fanfiction, and blogs (*pleads guilty*).

The One in Which Sophia Whines (Briefly)

The first day of Fall quarter has arrived!

I’ve always been a silly kid who got really excited about class the night before and would pick out nice colored notebooks that matched the mood of the course (this year it’s lime-green for philosophy ). I’d walk merrily to class, at least ten minutes early to stake out the prized middle seat of the fourth row, and afterwards go home to cheerfully fill up my shiny new planner with paper deadlines and final exam dates. It rarely occurs to me that I’m going to be stressed out most of the quarter until somewhere around the fifth week when I realise my sleep schedule’s all messed up, I haven’t had breakfast for two weeks, and I’ve already gone through a brand-new ballpoint pen from taking so many notes.

Yes, Sophia is an optimist. And she doesn’t get any wiser each time around.

But this time around, I think I already know what horrors await me. Everyone complains about the amount of homework they receive, but I always feel like English majors aren’t allowed to whine about how much reading they have each quarter. “Uhh.. well, this is your major,” people say, like they’ve never lamented about doing math problems or writing lab reports. To a certain extent, I agree; this is how college is so don’t whine, groan, or cry about it. Yet at the same time, sometimes the workload just seems so daunting.

I will try to make this the first and last time I lament about English homework on this blog, but this just seems so crazy that I thought I’d share. Here’s my Fall 2008 reading list for my two English classes (English Literature: 1832 to Present & English Renaissance Drama: 1567 to 1642):

• Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford
• Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam
• Anthony Trollope, Dr. Wortle’s School
• George Bernard Shaw, Plays
• The Penguin Book of first World War Poetry
• Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
• Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners
• Joe Orton, The Complete Plays
• Caryl Churchill, Plays: 2
• Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture
• Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
• Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, Part I
• Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
• George Chapman, Bussy D’Ambois
• Thomas Dekker, The Shoemakers’ Holiday
• Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair
• Thomas Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy
• Thomas Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
• Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling
• John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
• John Ford, Tis Pity She’s a Whore

Sigh. There goes my social life. Well, it’s off to reading, reading, reading! Wish me luck!

For Love of Puffed Sleeves

“The dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice.” – Mark Twain

In honor of my trip to the northern country of Canada (Calgary, Banff, and Vancouver), I’ve decided to share with you my favorite Canadian children’s series: Anne of Green Gables! Unfortunately, this trip starts in about five hours (a la 6:00 am) so I won’t be able to gush as much as I would like to. But fear not, seeing as how this series has been a beloved treasure of mine since the 7th grade, I’m sure I’ll continue to reference and write about it in the future.

Before Hannah Montana, the Babysitter’s Club, or even the Little House on the Prairie, there was red-headed Anne. Anne Shirley was fiery and stubborn, imaginative and brave. She was mischievous and got into loads of trouble (from dyeing her hair green to getting her best chum Diana drunk off of raspberry cordial), but she also sincerely wanted to be good. From the day I became acquainted with Anne, she became my role model and best (literary) friend. I admired her audacity and dreamed of having her flaming red hair. I loved the fact that she understood that sometimes seemingly trivial things (like having puffy sleeves or owning a set of pretty highlighters) can make the bigger problems in life more bearable. Most of all, she saw the world as better than it really was and in doing so, allowed people to prove themselves worthy of such expectations. 

In a modern era of cynicism, its refreshing to visit a bygone age of innocence and optimism. Some people write off Anne as a form of sentimental escapism, and it may well be, but its themes of placing imagination above the banal constraints of reality are wonderfully reminescent of the best of children’s literature.

Situated on Prince Edward Island, the world that L.M. Montgomery created celebrates its 100th birthday this year. Its always been a dream of mine to visit good ol’ PEI and visit some of Anne’s haunts, but I was surprised to learn just how big Anne is in Canada; Anne of Green Gables – the Musical is now in its 42nd season, people get married each year in L.M. Montgomery’s childhood home, and PEI even has an Avonlea Village that features key locations depicted in the novel as well as an assortment of Anne-based events. Apparently, due to Anne of Green Gables, PEI receives the largest amount of literary tourism in Canada. (Hopefully this means people won’t look at me funny when I tell them that my dream vacation of the moment is staying for a week on the island and satisfying my Anne-fanaticism by going to tea parties and buying a very cute Anne tote.)

For a glimpse of the big celebration, visit anne2008.com.

Commemorative essays by both Newsweek and Slate point out the merits of a series that is often overlooked for more male-centric novels by literary scholars (highly recommend reading the full version of both). Ramin Setoodeh writes in “It’s Still Not Easy Being Green“:

That “Anne” has survived so long—and, with 50 million copies sold, so strong—is a small miracle considering the state of young-adult literature. It’s rare to find a best seller with a strong heroine anymore, in large part because, although girls will read books about boys, boys won’t go near a girl’s book, no matter how cool she is. Even in Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, the strong, grounded Bella is willing to chuck it all for the love of her vampire boyfriend. “The literary smart girl is still showing up in literature, but she’s often the sidekick,” says Trinna Frever, an “Anne of Green Gables” scholar. “It is a reflection of a culture that’s placing less value on intelligence, and also treating intelligence as a stigmatized quality.”

In “100 Candles“, Meghan O’Rourke makes the argument that Anne Shirley is a feminist character of her own right despite the character’s choice to forsake her writing career in order to raise her children:

Unlike many other children’s heroines—Jo of Little Women, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, even Nancy Drew—Anne is not just a sensibility incarnate; she has an irreducible human soul. Her inner spiritual life exists utterly apart from the domains of domesticity and romance. She may be capable of telling her best friend, Diana, “I’d rather be pretty than clever,” but she is also organically indifferent to the courtship tactics of the popular Gilbert, whose smooth brown eyes wholly disarm the other girls. The immunity of the questing self to the distracting temptations of the flesh is most often an attribute of heroic men, from the hardboiled detectives who pass up luscious blondes to Greek warriors who heed not the sirens. Anne, with her endless wealth of subjectivity, is nobody’s object but her own.

I realize Anne of Green Gables is not a particularly edgy choice for someone who claims to be serious about literature, but it is my pet project to prove to the world that this kindred spirit is worthy of consideration. So here’s to all the girls who take poetic license with renaming local haunts, like to quote Tennyson in normal conversation, and aren’t afraid of hitting a boy on the head with a slate if he deserves it.

Happy birthday, Anne! May you never grow old.

No Regrets

I have very fond memories of Dostoevsky’s White Nights. Despite the novella’s blatant ridicule of sentimentality and Romanticism, I felt drawn to the dreamer who went through life clinging to his imagination. I too imagine conversations with houses and create life stories for strangers I meet on the street. This dreamer was a kindred spirit.

The White Nights of St. Petersburg

That’s why I remember being disappointed that Dostoevsky portrayed this archetype in such a tragic light, lonely and alienated from the world. To Dostoevsky’s proto-realist mind, a dreamer was “a Petersburg nightmare, it is sin incarnate, it is a tragedy.” A person needs to invest themselves in society to have meaning in their life and to live separate from it would result in a sort of spiritual death.

As a frequent dreamer myself, I found myself concerned by this diagnosis. Was I estranged from reality? Is burying myself in the humanities my own form of escapism? But what of the worlds of Anne of Green Gables and The Little Princess? In this debate between Romanticism and Realism, I know where I stand and yet how do I defend the imagination against an argument that is equally true?

I recently reread White Nights and this passage jumped out at me:

“You ask yourself: where are your dreams now? And you shake your head and say how swiftly the years fly by! And you ask yourself again: what have you done with your best years, then? Where have you buried the best days of your life? Have you lived or not? Look, you tell yourself, look how cold the world is becoming. The years will pass and after them will come grim loneliness, and old age, quaking on its stick, and after them misery and despair. Your fantasy world will grow pale, your dreams will fade and die, falling away like the yellow leaves from the trees… Ah, Nastenka! Will it not be miserable to be left alone, utterly alone, and have nothing even to regret — nothing, not a single thing… because everything I have lost was nothing, stupid, a round zero, all dreaming and no more!”

When I was younger I decided that my life goal would be to die with no regrets. Of all the vague all-encompassing goals out there, I thought this one would take care of everything. It ensured that I would be a good person, chase after the things I’ve always dreamed of doing, and most of all, have the strength to accept the mistakes that I will inevitably make. But I think Dostoevsky’s take is extremely interesting, the idea that having something to regret means you actually have something you value in life. There are things worse than regret: apathy – to have nothing to care about in the real world.  

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with dreams and imagination. The trouble comes when it gets in the way of your ability to love life. Dreaming becomes hazardous when the brilliance of the fantasies makes the world seem dull in comparison and causes one to be apathetic towards real  experiences. Anne Shirley and Sara Crewe are such beautiful characters because they so dearly love the world and use their imaginations to find the nuggets of goodness within it whereas the dreamer of White Nights lives a desolate existence in which his best memories are only figments of his imagination.

Sophia Reveals Her Sciencey Side

Fact or Fiction? (Answers revealed at end.)

1. Waking Sleepwalkers May Kill Them.

2. Living People Outnumber the Dead.

3. Vodka Keeps Cut Flowers Fresh.

 

The war between science and the liberal arts, physics and philosophy, mathematics and religion, seems like a centuries-old feud between two apparently irreconciliable opposites. I constantly hear humanities majors complain about the rigidity and cold methodology of science while science/engineering majors rant about the futility and subjectivity involved in essay-writing.

My own beloved university, UCLA, has its battle lines physically drawn across campus via Bruin Walk. North Campus or South Campus? That is the question. Sometimes it feels like we’re all picking sides and after we finish GE requirements, there’s no reason to enter the other side of campus at all. Perhaps this geographic division fosters the psychological mentality that we must pick one or the other. We are either suited to write or calculate, to theorize or experiment.

But I think this type of isolation and the rejection of the “other” is unnecessary and even harmful. In the end, no matter what we learn, we are essentially all in pursuit of that Holy Grail that is knowledge, albeit in different ways.

Anyways, I mention this because sometimes I get the feeling that people think I am uninterested in science or simply do not have the brain power to understand, but I can assure you that this is a vast misunderstanding. There are things that I find boring, unbelievable, or difficult to comprehend, but these limitations are not representative of my scientific curiosity or interest. My biggest regret in life will probably be not getting a chance to learn/know everything. I want to know things, as long as someone will bother to tell me.

It may sound strange, but I think my relationship to science is very much like that of many people’s relationship to literature. The casual reader shies away from Pope, Coleridge, and the ever-so-daunting Milton, but enjoys the occasional Harry Potter series or Stephen King novel. In my case, I find that I love learning random, strange, probably unuseful sciencey facts (about gomphothere turd, human decay, and what not), but find it hard to swallow that unique concoction of labs, calculations, and scantron tests that an actual major would require.

Given the fact that I deal with fiction, poetry, and language all day long every single quarter, recently I find myself turning to science as my leisurely refuge. I’ve developed quite a taste for science non-fiction as my before-bedtime-casual-reading-companion. Whereas I can barely pick up a novel without itching for a pencil to annotate, my relationship with science non-fiction is easy and simple. There are no rings, wedding bells or children in the future for the two of us. He is my fling, my temporary relief when that dear old husband of mine gets on my nerves, as any loved one will from time to time. There is a sort of exoticism associated with meddling in a field that is not your own and this intrigues me. Besides, there is something exciting about surprising people who think you only know stuff about iambic pentameter.

Anyhow, I would love any science non-fiction book recommendations that you guys have! I do tend to lean towards biology/ecology although I can probably read anything that’s witty/funny and doesn’t have too much jargon. My personal favorite so far is Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. I’m currently tearing through Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (excellent, very funny book by the way – although it does make me cringe sometimes), which I shall attempt to finish and review by the end of next week. :]

 

Answers: 1.) Fiction (Waking a sleepwalker is more likely to save his or her life), 2.) Fiction (The number of people alive today is dwarfed by the number of people who have ever lived whether we begin counting from the first Homo Sapiens 50,000 years ago, the Egyptian agricultural revolution in 9000 BC, or the Roman rule in 1 AD), 3.) Fact (If small amounts are added, vodka works as a flower preservative by interfering with the plant’s ripening process.) 

– Courtesy of Scientific American

 

Coming soon: movie review for Wanted, common misconceptions about English majors, and more so… stay tuned!