Welcome to Forgotonia

Here were today’s most interesting teaching challenges (from my morning Advanced ESL group)

1. When the word “partner” came up, (as it will frequently, since nearly every page of our new textbook encourages the students to work with a partner), one student said, “I say ‘partner’ one day at work and someone say to me, ‘Are you gay or something?’ Is ‘partner’ like a bad word or mean gay or something?” (…thus resulting in my awkward attempt to explain use of “partner” for “person with whom someone makes a home, but who said person may not …uh…be married to…”)
2. and, (from the same student, after I had said, “Good question. Please speak up if you have questions about any other words”), thus resulting in an awkward charade that I hope no one noticed as they walked past my classroom): “What is ‘wrestling‘?”

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the days since I finished this book, I’ve been struggling with what to say about it, because I want to do it justice, and there’s too much to say.

But, I just read an interview with the author, and decided I will let Jeffrey Eugenides himself articulate why the characters of this novel–private-school kids who do things like major in English or religious studies–are worthy subjects:

“…when you think about your 20s…. Everything was at such a high pitch. Intellectually, you’re learning an amazing amount, reading an amazing amount, and you’re discussing these books with your friends. That’s not always the case now, when we seem to read more solitarily, and maybe discuss our reading now and then. But that time is kind of a hothouse of reading and talking. Then that gets all bound up with perhaps the first great love affair that you’ve had or the most intense desire that’s unfulfilled that you’ve ever gone through. College is full of all of that. You’re old enough to make decisions, to be on your own, and yet you’re totally confused. It was easy to re-enter that atmosphere, and I enjoyed having characters who were intellectually fully formed but also unsure of themselves, confused, and passionate about what they thought and who they loved.”

Quickly, I will also add that, despite my own similarities to the collegiate experiences of the heroine (who finds herself, to her chagrin, being asked to deconstruct literature and language in a semiotics/literary criticism course, when the real reason she’s majoring in English is simply that she loves to read), it wasn’t until the novel began to follow one of her male suitors, Mitchell (based loosely on the author), on his spiritual/religious quest, that I really started to get drawn in.

As a novel that is (very loosely) formed around the structure of a Jane Austen-era plot, there’s a heady level of referentiality that bookish types will especially enjoy. (And, ironically, it was this very writer whose first novel, The Virgin Suicides got me excited about contemporary literature and indirectly led me to become an English major myself).

The one mild criticism I have with the book, and I’m not even sure it’s a criticism, is that I’m not sure why the author chose to set it in the 1980s (other than the fact that this was his own collegiate era). I never felt that it was entirely necessary to the story for it to have taken place in the Reagan era.

One thought that crossed my mind, however, is that for Eugenides to create the characters (and place and time) that shape the arc of the narrative, he needed them to write and receive actual letters, and for those letters to take some time (weeks or months, in Mitchell’s case, as he treks across Europe) to get delivered and received.

There’s also the possibility that he chose the 80s to create sympathy for the other major male character, who suffers from mental illness–because, back in the 80s, so much less would’ve been known about how to diagnose or treat it. But almost everything seemed as if it could have been taking place today.

(See? I actually can’t just let the author speak for himself like I said I was going to. There’s still so much more to say, too. But I will leave you here so you can go read the book yourself.

There.

No more talking from me.

Now go.)

(Or if you’ve already read it, please tell me your thoughts below).
View all my reviews

Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

**SEE UPDATE OF ORIGINAL POST BELOW**

I’m re-reading this for the first time since college, when it was one of the books we studied in Craig Watson’s “Contemporary American Novel” course at Monmouth College. I know I liked it back then but I barely remember it.

In the process of moving from Illinois to Iowa over the past several days, I’ve been going through many a dilemma about keeping/donating/throwing things away. Finally, I have decided that if I’m going to keep *anything*, it has to be for a specific reason that I can state aloud.

A major change for me, Keeper of Everything I Read: from now on, books must fall into the category of “Because I Know I’m Going to Read it Again” or ecause “Because I Know for Certain It’s One of My Favorites and Inspires Me” in order to qualify as a keeper. Hence the re-read on this one: I had trouble putting it in the donate pile. So now I need to be able to see if I can justify keeping it, or face continuing to have too much crap when it’s time for the next Major Schlep to a new place.

This is really hard for me. But I’m trying to tell myself that, when it feels painful to give books away, there are always libraries (for the foreseeable future, anyway…).

However, I still refuse to get a Kindle. It will probably be quite awhile before I bend on this belief: BOOKS MUST BE SMELL-ABLE.

**11/28/11 UPDATE**

Wow. I just can’t do it. And by “it” I mean “actually re-read it,” not “give it away.”

I had thought it would be kind of a fun (and maybe fascinating) experiment to re-read this book (about young people in their early 20s) as someone who has now actually lived through her 20s (when, originally, I read it as a young college student).

But instead it’s just depressing me.

I know this book has literary merit. (And for the very way Beattie depicts the bleak scenarios with verisimilitude, etc.) But…it’s kinda bringing me down. So, out with you, Chilly Scenes. I’ve lived enough life now that I can paint /have experienced enough of them on my own!

(Have you read this book [or any others of Beattie's you'd recommend]? Leave your thoughts in the Comments below.)

View all my reviews

Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie

I’m re-reading this for the first time since college, when it was one of the books we studied in Craig Watson’s “Contemporary American Novel” course at Monmouth College. I know I liked it back then but I barely remember it.

In the process of moving from Illinois to Iowa over the past several days, I’ve been going through many a dilemma about keeping/donating/throwing things away. Finally, I have decided that if I’m going to keep *anything*, it has to be for a specific reason that I can state aloud.

A major change for me, Keeper of Everything I Read: from now on, books must fall into the category of “Because I Know I’m Going to Read it Again” or “Because I Know for Certain It’s One of My Favorites and Inspires Me” in order to qualify as a keeper. (This is, in part, the philosophy behind a site I’ve been following.) Hence the re-read on this one: I had trouble putting it in the donate pile. So now I need to be able to see if I can justify keeping it, or face continuing to have too much crap when it’s time for the next Major Schlep to a new place.

This is really hard for me. But I’m trying to tell myself that, when it feels painful to give books away, there are always libraries (for the foreseeable future, anyway…).

However, I still refuse to get a Kindle. It will probably be quite awhile before I bend on this belief: BOOKS MUST BE SMELL-ABLE.

View all my reviews

I know this is a little crazy, but I’m actually a tiny bit relieved that we’re getting another cold snap before spring is ready to have officially sprung. Every year at this time, I get a little panicky that winter is officially over.

When I see the flowers coming up in my front yard (planted by a previous tenant, I should note), I find myself thinking things like:

But I’ve only used my crock pot twice!

I never wore those cream-colored tights!

I never used the fireplace! And I still need to burn that sugar-cookie-scented candle I got for Christmas!

Yeah, I know. Crazy. I may be the one person in the entire Midwest who is actually chagrined when it turns nice outside. (Then again, T.S. Eliot did say April was the cruelest month. I think it’s because, like me, he was pale.)

The real cause of my angst is that whenever I drive to work or go to the rec center, I pass by what feels like a parade of college girls who’ve apparently spent every free minute of their winter solstices simmering in a tanning bed. The first day it’s a few degrees over 50? Flip-flops and short-shorts everywhere, and everyone is so tan.

Yes, I know these girls will look like burnt ‘taters by the time they’re my age, and I should feel virtuous and lofty for keepin’ it pale and abstaining from the coffin-shaped-cancer-causers. But still. I can covet the color of a caramel thigh, can’t I?