Summer School

I don't know if it's being at Harvard or the fact that last semester wasn't really like school the fact that this is my last year of school or what, but this has been a pretty academic summer as summers go. What follows is an insight into what's been going on inside my brain for the last few months while it may seem like I've basically been working, arguing, and, yes, wilding.

So here are some fun facts about me and Lincoln. I like to compare myself to the greatest president ever, so bear with me. It will be like Lincoln/Kennedy comparisons, only less freaky.

1-I was born on April 14, the day Lincoln was assassinated (also the day the Titanic struck an iceberg (booooring) and the day the Segunda Republica Espanola was created). Isn't that a great birthday?
2-We're both 6'4", which means should I ever go to his house in Springfield, I can have the truly awesome experience of gazing into the shaving mirror that he gazed into each and every day.
3-We both spent our formative years in Indiana...although I spent my whole life there, and he just spent his childhood/adolescence.
4-We both think slavery is wrong.
5-Neither of us would be Republicans today.

Ohok, so I ran out of steam on the last two, but whatever.

In other news, I've been doing something I've never really taken seriously before--summer reading. I'm reading more this summer than I have in, well, ever. I'm a reading machine. I love it. So far this summer I've read The Long Goodbye, The Sun Also Rises, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Assassination Vacation, great parts in Leaves of Grass, Winesburg Ohio, and am currently in the middle of American Pastoral and Moby Dick.

I'm not sure the two Sarah Vowell books count, though, since I read both of them in about half a week, although not consecutively. Winesburg, Ohio was really great. I completely disagree with what Huey read and related to me, namely that it's basically bogus how it's based on a premise that small-town life is crazy. The best part of Winesburg is that most of the stories aren't crazy. They're refreshingly normal. My family probably has people with much crazier stories than those. I just love that it doesn't go over the top, but rather simmers in a way that "small-town" or "suburban" literature doesn't anymore. Exhibit A--American Beauty, a good, if deeply flawed movie. I must admit, though, that most of the book I was underwhelmed, but the last couple of chapters were really good, and by the time I finished I absolutely loved it. "An american town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself." I love that line. Overall, I like a little bit more stylized prose, but the conversational, let-me-tell-you-a-story approach is kind of nice. It's not terribly artistic, but it matches the subject matter well.

Yesterday before I hunkered into reading American Pastoral I was talking about how it wasn't really grabbing me. I was only 59 pages in at this point, but still I was kind of bored by the whole Jewish assimilation stuff, and the prospect of tackling the Vietnam war seemed a little boring since, well, like most people of my generation, I'm sick of hearing about Vietnam. But wow. Roth knows how to pack a punch. I wish I had some choice quotes to lay out before you, but I don't. It's really great. Could be thesis worthy. My brother actually recommended it because he thought it matched my preocccupations with America well, and boy howdy does it. I can't wait to see where it takes off. I'm still just about a third of the way into it.

Today is Bighead's birthday, so we're going to go karaokeing, and he's just going to have to wait until I have some money for his present because I'm still kind of poor.

I'm home a week from today which is shocking. When I arrive, I will have been away over 7 months. That's not a terribly long time, but it seems like it, especially as action-packed as my life has been this past half year.

On Monday I had to turn in thesis topics in a crunch because I was notified that day they were picking advisors and if I didn't get my stuff in, then I'd probably get a random advisor who in all likelihood would not match my interests. So here's what my brain came up with when I got that sucker-punch of adrenaline, condensing all my deep academic soulsearching of the last three years into one email. These, ladies and gentlemen, are my interests, in email form:

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Sorry about the delay. I also apologize that I'm currently preoccupied with
three or four ideas running circles in my head. I'm still undecided about a
thesis topic and am reading as fast as I can this summer. I think most
importantly, my ideal tutor would be interested in the 1950s or 1980s (with the
60s and 70s also possible). In addition to this, I've become interested in the
time after the Lincoln assassination:

In regard to the Lincoln assassination, what interests me most is the idea of
the American martyr, and the importance the nation placed on his death on Good
Friday, as well as his near deification by Whitman. The imagined relationship
between Whitman and Lincoln, the difference between the idealist poet and the
pragmatic politician I think holds the strongest possibilities. Before the
Civil War, Whitman has in some ways been credited with creating a new American
religion, linking body and sould in spirituality, and his near deification of
Lincoln in subsequent versions of Leaves of Grass fascinates me.

In the 1950s, I would be most interested in studying Chandler's The Long Goodbye
as a kind of precursor to pop fiction...a paperback masterpiece. Also, it's
connection with post-war consumer culture, anxiety about power, and the idea of
crime as a symptom of freedom, and not a disease in itself also interest me.

In the 1980s, I'm interested in how the apocalypse plays out in American arts,
from rock music to movies, etc. I haven't decided on a text, but have noticed
how both the religious right and idealist liberals both viewed America as
spinning out of control. The right saw us as moving toward certain apocalypse
awash in a sea of vice, while the left may have believed in the myth of America
too much, and as the Civil Rights movement came to a near screeching halt in the
Reagan administration, the left saw America as not living up to its potential,
and regressing into a modern imperialist juggernaut.

(Also of interest to me is a reading of The Great Gatsby as a novel of Midwest
displacement on the east coast, and the alienation that comes with it. The
idea of mobility in terms of physical mobility in an automobile, covering the
terrain of America, and the social mobility as seen by Gatsby's rise in wealth
would both be cautionary as in the end, all the characters are Midwest,
incapable of adjusting to life in east coast standards, and Gatsby unable to
pull off his upper class aspirations, falling flat, notably in the face of his
fellow Midwesterners.)

I will hopefully be sending you a list of tutors that I think may be best able
to help me in the next hour.

Ryan
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Obviously there are some errors in this, as The Long Goodbye is not actually a "paperback" novel, but it is certainly pop and subversively highbrow. Unfortunately, I failed to mention American Pastoral and have also failed to mention the Godfather which would be a really great choice as it totally and completely reflects America at that time, avoiding allegory, thank god, but still having layers upon layers of symbolism.

If you've gotten through this potentially very boring post, you're a better reader than I.