Modernism -- the voice talking at me.

My schedule for classes has changed, and I now have about 7 1/2 hours of class per week. Apparently this is a full load, because everyone is saying that I'll be busy. So far, it looks like I have a novel/collection of poems/play per week in both Contemporary Irish Literature and Modernism, while in Post war/Post nation/Post-1945 British/Irish poetry we're covering an author's collected/selected works every two weeks. Music classes will be as time-consuming as always. Sitting alone in a small room, slowly and deliberately putting dots on a page.

Modernism is my first large lecture class I've ever had. And, for the first time, I recognize why people hate English majors. If, say, I had started at a large school bent towards economics, business, engineering, some other practical thing, and had to take a class like this it would make me hate the academic literary society forever. They stand up there and talk about the context of modernism, the basis for experimentation, the world wars and ex-patriots, and the purpose is not enjoyment of the piece of writing at hand. The purpose is to examine Woolf's stream-of-consciousness narrative in some abstract way, never getting around to the act of reading itself. There is no focus on interaction (therefore enjoyment) with the book, because the class is too huge to give anything other than biographical facts and established interpretations. I will probably enjoy it, though, for the reason that I'm interested in modernist literature and it will basically be an independent study course with an added lecture. Plus I've already read half the stuff on the list.

Of Post War/Post-Nation, my professor Gerry Dawe said, "I really just wanted to call it 'Poetry: A Seminar,' but that wouldn't work with the whole course booklet and everything." Basically, we're reading poetry. He gave us some other suggested reading--biographies, letters between poets, the context of the nations--but said it's mostly going to be the poetry itself. He has recordings of the poets, and at the end he will bring in some living recent poets to chat. That class might be my favorite. I've heard of a few of them, and read a bunch of Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney, but I'm looking forward to finding some new favorites here.

I'm going to have a new housemate soon. One is moving out, and another (Danish)girl is going to move in soon. Apparently she left the last place because they weren't clean enough. So I am clearly the ideal housemate.

I just realized I need a link. This one is probably less enlightening than the last few. Although maybe not the Karl Marx ventriloquism one. That was kind of dumb.

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