the other half of the paper-writing picture

When describing in my last post how papers fill up the vast majority of my time, I concentrated on my writing process to the exclusion of the vital other half of the formula: reading the assigned texts in the first place! Which I do, always; I'm not the sort of person who could write a paper about something from online summaries or a quick skim of the opening and closing chapters. (Whether or not I read the texts I don't have to write upon is a different story entirely, of course, depending greatly on whether or not they seem interesting. Usually they do, since I'm picky about my classes.)

So what have I read recently? Mansfield Park for my Austen class, which class is to my joy going in chronological order. It's one of the two Austen novels I hadn't read any of before (the other being Emma, which I'm slogging through now), and I was absolutely delighted with it. Fanny and Edmund, Mary and Henry, the terrible Maria and even worse Mrs. Norris... I should really like to see a crisp, clear movie of it, without all the political implications spelled out for modern audiences. Just people in old-fashioned clothes speaking meaningfully to one another, letting the beautiful weight of the story propel itself forward. I wonder if the 1983 BBC version is at all satisfying? It looks like my local library has a DVD re-release of it...

For my women in 20th century literature class I just read Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which was also a delight and a treasure -- so much so that I'm planning to write my long paper on it, although I'm a little afraid that I'll end up sick of the book in the process. But how can one end up sick of "a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds"? I think the real danger is that I'll dive into the beauty of the language and never remember to come up for air. As it turns out, the professor for my Austen class is teaching Woolf next semester, and I'm going to take it, unless his reaction to this midterm I'm even now working on demonstrates him to have unbearable grading twitches.

My counselling class, bless its practical little heart, has no required reading, so next we turn to Shakespeare, in which I have recently read "Measure for Measure" and am about (tomorrow) to read "Othello." While I'm sure the latter has some merits I have not discovered through reading ample criticism of it, I doubt it can compare to the utter strangeness of the former, in which after many manipulations on the part of various characters everyone's punished for their flaws by... being forced into marriage. I see why those who like to categorise things call it a problem play; I found it pretty fascinating.

Finally we come to Literature and Psychology, in which the last few texts have been movies, so there hasn't been any reading for me to do. (We shall leave aside, for the moment, whether or not I actually watched said movies.) The lack of books is about to change, however, with a Henry James short story and a Ralph Ellision essay both on the table for this Thursday. Unfortunately, what with the two papers due Thursday morning, I'm not going to have a chance to start on these until Thursday afternoon. I anticipate some hours of quick reading over Chinese food (mmm, eggplant and brown rice) in the student union.

Other books on the horizon (aside from the aforementioned Austen) include The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, plays by Terence McNally and Caryl Churchill, a piece by Gertrude Stein that I may just pretend isn't on the agenda, and Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Not to mention two ten page papers, two five page papers, and the final counselling project -- all of which will be wrapped up by 19 December or so, and then I can settle into lovely holiday baking, knitting, cooking, cleaning, reading (if my brain permits) and game-playing while building up my stamina for the next set of classes. I'm very seriously thinking of taking a class on Wordsworth and Keats during the winter session; an entire 3-hour class in 12 4-hour days is awfully frightening, but I've heard good things about the professor, and it would mean that I only have to take 12 hours during my final semester, which seems a blessing.

Austen paper is progressing nicely! Time for bed, so I can get in a few more hours before I go to campus tomorrow for my counselling extravaganza.