As Gothicsprite mentioned in her journal, we celebrated our anniversary-day on Wednesday. I enjoyed the snow bubble tea, and the dinner conversation. I also got to feel like a big man because we made reservations, not expecting the place to be busy but not wanting to make a last-minute change either, and when we got there, the place was packed, people waiting over 20 minutes for a table, but when we got there, we got to stroll right on to our table past all the people who'd been waiting.
I ended up using my undergrad adviser for a recommendation, so I had to send him a bunch of forms in the mail today. I ordered transcripts from both UBC and UNO, and I found myself surprised that UNO's ordering system seemed superior to UBC's, mainly due to having more address lines. However, when some universities need something addressed to a department, with a street address, a building address, and a attention line, those lines get eaten up fast.
Tomorrow I send my GRE scores and the first application. Early next week I'll send out writing samples and whatever else I need to send for the applications I would like to do over the weekend. If these applications don't drive me bursar before I finish the term, I will consider myself lucky.
I started Gravity's Rainbow after xmas. So far, I've enjoyed it, but I've made it a point to read through some of the gaming books I got for xmas. I got some Mage tradition books, which makes me want to run Mage again, but I have more worked out for a game based on the Fu Manchu novels. I just need to find a group, some time, and I can write the first few sessions fairly quickly.
Gravity's Rainbow got me thinking about the modern and postmodern novel as a whole, in particular why people have a hard time with them. For example (and see the wikipedia entry on this for citation, I'm doing all the work), the three judges for Pulitzer prize in literature unanimously nominated Gravity's Rainbow, but the rest of the Pulitzer judges dismissed the nomination. They found it overwritten and some admitted that they could not get through it.
Now, I've read Beckett's Watt as well as some of his plays, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce, and a whole slew of items that I don't care to list for a contemporary novel class in my undergrad. I enjoyed the hell out of them, but I did recognize a commonality to them, something shared by all. I put a metaphorical finger on that the other day while reading Gravity's Rainbow; I think they all share a sense of vacuity.
To better explain, I don't think of the novels as vacuous, more like they convey to me a sense of emptiness, of not having a structure in which the hang the narrative. Now, I love that, think it's one of the best things to happen to literature since movable type. For just a second, connect that to Sartre discussing our being hurled into the world, thrust upon it, existence precedes essence, what we "are" we make ourselves into. Go further, compare it to Nietzsche, the whole of Existentialism, and you have the actual literary context. Even further, look at the mentalism of Buddhist metaphysics, mind encompasses all existence, nothing exists outside of the mind. More, the teachings of the Tao deny the fundamental reality of human-created social order, reality does not bear properties, we exist in it. Underneath all of that, lies primal chaos. We build structures, sometimes complex ones, but we build them, and when we deconstruct them, we have only the primordial chaos, shifting, plastic.
The sense of emptiness in the postmodern and modern novel allows the author's narrative to fall only on the background of that chaos. Those novels do no good to someone who wants to be coddled, to be told every little detail, who need to know not just what but why and how for nearly every movement in the plot. However, in the postmodern and modern novel, the steel girders fall on the just and unjust alike.
So, I conclude that those who can't wade through Gravity's Rainbow and similar works have trouble dealing with that emptiness, they can't let it be and flow with the narrative. One does have to do a certain amount of work to get through books like that, but I find the work entirely worthwhile, good for the soul, so to speak.
I'm done for now, I'm going to go read.
I ended up using my undergrad adviser for a recommendation, so I had to send him a bunch of forms in the mail today. I ordered transcripts from both UBC and UNO, and I found myself surprised that UNO's ordering system seemed superior to UBC's, mainly due to having more address lines. However, when some universities need something addressed to a department, with a street address, a building address, and a attention line, those lines get eaten up fast.
Tomorrow I send my GRE scores and the first application. Early next week I'll send out writing samples and whatever else I need to send for the applications I would like to do over the weekend. If these applications don't drive me bursar before I finish the term, I will consider myself lucky.
I started Gravity's Rainbow after xmas. So far, I've enjoyed it, but I've made it a point to read through some of the gaming books I got for xmas. I got some Mage tradition books, which makes me want to run Mage again, but I have more worked out for a game based on the Fu Manchu novels. I just need to find a group, some time, and I can write the first few sessions fairly quickly.
Gravity's Rainbow got me thinking about the modern and postmodern novel as a whole, in particular why people have a hard time with them. For example (and see the wikipedia entry on this for citation, I'm doing all the work), the three judges for Pulitzer prize in literature unanimously nominated Gravity's Rainbow, but the rest of the Pulitzer judges dismissed the nomination. They found it overwritten and some admitted that they could not get through it.
Now, I've read Beckett's Watt as well as some of his plays, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce, and a whole slew of items that I don't care to list for a contemporary novel class in my undergrad. I enjoyed the hell out of them, but I did recognize a commonality to them, something shared by all. I put a metaphorical finger on that the other day while reading Gravity's Rainbow; I think they all share a sense of vacuity.
To better explain, I don't think of the novels as vacuous, more like they convey to me a sense of emptiness, of not having a structure in which the hang the narrative. Now, I love that, think it's one of the best things to happen to literature since movable type. For just a second, connect that to Sartre discussing our being hurled into the world, thrust upon it, existence precedes essence, what we "are" we make ourselves into. Go further, compare it to Nietzsche, the whole of Existentialism, and you have the actual literary context. Even further, look at the mentalism of Buddhist metaphysics, mind encompasses all existence, nothing exists outside of the mind. More, the teachings of the Tao deny the fundamental reality of human-created social order, reality does not bear properties, we exist in it. Underneath all of that, lies primal chaos. We build structures, sometimes complex ones, but we build them, and when we deconstruct them, we have only the primordial chaos, shifting, plastic.
The sense of emptiness in the postmodern and modern novel allows the author's narrative to fall only on the background of that chaos. Those novels do no good to someone who wants to be coddled, to be told every little detail, who need to know not just what but why and how for nearly every movement in the plot. However, in the postmodern and modern novel, the steel girders fall on the just and unjust alike.
So, I conclude that those who can't wade through Gravity's Rainbow and similar works have trouble dealing with that emptiness, they can't let it be and flow with the narrative. One does have to do a certain amount of work to get through books like that, but I find the work entirely worthwhile, good for the soul, so to speak.
I'm done for now, I'm going to go read.