(Just Like) Starting Over

Ah, Herbert chapter. Our life together, albeit of relatively short duration, has taken a turn. We have grown. We have grown.

I know about myself that my tendency is to start with an idea and then write my way into an argument. Which in practical terms means that I have to adjust my focus based on what new, clearer, argument emerges in the process of writing an essay. But I have to say that I always hate that part, because it usually means that I have to scrap what I've been writing and begin again, this time with an eye toward the argument that actually developed (as opposed to the vague idea I may have thought I was pursuing). It's part of the process, I know. But it's always disheartening to have to scrap 10 pages or so and begin again. It makes the time one's put in so far feel futile, pointless. (Though I know that's not the case--the clearer argument COMES from its long, and now invisible, preamble.)

___________________________
[Later:]
A-ha! I FOUND you, you wily little bastard. I mean, my argument.

The Economy of Mind

Well, two paragraphs today, despite the fact that last night's sleep was marred by academic insomnia: you know, when you can't sleep for worrying about 1) the project at hand, 2) the immediate point you're trying to make, and 3) your ability to do it. You lie there trying to convince yourself that sleep is the best ingredient for productivity, but you are harrowed by self-doubt, exacerbated by the news that your esteemed nemesis's book is under contract.

And by "you," I mean "me," obviously.

I woke this morning thinking how ridiculous it is that I should have felt so harrowed. It's not as if the currency of ideas in society moved the way the film Wall Street imagines money: that I only win if someone else loses, and vice versa. Ideas are infinitely generated, and generative. (Though that may now also be the case with money, according to some derivatives traders.) It's really NOT the case that my nemesis's book means I don't get one. It's ACTUALLY TRUE that the presence of my nemesis's book helps me, by continuing to stir up the conversation I so wish to enter into, by keeping it relevant.

I deal with this notion of a finite Economy of Mind a lot in the Po-Biz. There are, let's just say, five book prizes. If Magical Poetry Queen wins one (or, more accurately, if Neruda wins one), then, the logic goes, that's one less that I can win. I'm not sure whether I buy into that sophistry in the Po-Biz--I do know it breeds snark--but I know I don't buy into it in the field of scholarly writing. And I also know that the nemesis's book contract is NOT my loss, either in terms of the Economy of Mind or in real terms, not least because his press was not one I was interested in working with. I truly do wish him well, and want his good work to get read, and hope that his book demonstrates to all publishers everywhere the urgency of the questions at the heart of his/ my respective investigations.

I think my insomnia can be chalked up to my own sense of my timetable. I wanted to be done with this book well before now. And then I had a few years when life intervened, in various forms. And now, I simply can't mother and teach and produce at high rates all at the same time (which is why this leave is so vital for me--carving out as it does time DURING MY KIDS' SCHOOL YEAR, when many hours of every day are mine alone). But suddenly I am aware that the person with whom I had been moving more or less in tandem has gone on without me, and it makes me feel like I've lost a race--not with my nemesis, but with my own check-list, with my own potential.

Bleargh. Whatever. I've done two paragraphs today, and they're chunky enough. Tonight I get to make dinner for a friend (couscous with caramelized onions, braised Moroccan carrots, and fava bean sauce; wilted dandelion greens with roasted garlic vinaigrette). Tomorrow begins the Mother's Day Weekend Spectacular, with all its attendant cuteness. I'll get the book done this year, and it will certainly be better, smarter, more capacious and less naive--richer, in terms of the mind's economy--than it would have been if I'd finished it a couple of years ago.

My nemesis.

I don't think I've mentioned my nemesis before. It seems impolitic and catty to admit to having a nemesis, and only announces my own insecurity, but there I am. My nemesis is racing to write a book on a topic very similar to, but not identical to, the book I am racing to write. He has published on many of the same figures I have published on. He and I are interested in a lot of the same historical/ religious/ representational issues. The distinctions between his arguments and mine are sometimes very subtle, and I fear that he may get his into print before I do. This terrifies and angers small and precarious me, because I don't want my project to get pre-empted by his, or to be seen in comparison as theoretically clumsy, or less elegant in its readings.

But I have to say that as a nemesis, my nemesis sucks. He seems to have no earthly idea of what it means to be a nemesis. Has he never read a comic book? Never seen Othello? Avoided the Star Trek franchise and films by M. Night Shyamalan? Doesn't he follow the NBA playoffs?

First off, he does not behave, at least in public, much like a nemesis. I've crossed paths with him at a couple of conferences, and he is lively and engaged. I've even presented on a panel with him once. Could he not feel the antagonist-protagonist electricity between us? He was--or, cagily, seemed to be peaceably unaware of it. In fact, he performed the role of Eager Colleague with admirable aplomb, and has since made friendly contact by email in which he's happily acknowledged our mutual interests. The bastard.

Secondly, I admire his work. He's very, very smart, which is what one would expect of a nemesis, obviously. He is simply far more theoretically sophisticated than I am (though I have him beat on philological stuff). And he acts for all the world as if he is using his powers for good--that is, making really cool and insightful arguments, some of which I wish I had made. He is, I suspect, doing scholarship to which I am sympathetic in order to get me to relax my guard against him, so that I will be lulled into interest and persuasion and a lack of desire to nitpick, and then, cruel and sudden, WHAMO!

Finally, and clearly as a result of his nefarious maneuvers, I find myself really wishing he and I were better friends, because I could use his perspective as I struggle through this Herbert chapter. He and I both disagree with two influential studies on this one issue in Herbert, but for different reasons. And I'd like to be able to talk the matter through with someone who is as steeped in this problem, day and night, for better or for worse, as I am. The worst thing about my nemesis, it's starting to appear, is how much I feel I need him, and how little I feel I can communicate that to him.

Grindstone, end week 1.

My goal is modest: write a paragraph a day. That's the goal I set while dissing with an infant, and it worked for me. A paragraph, after all, is usually close to a page, and it requires a good few hours of work to produce. This model allows me to make measurable progress every day without lapsing into self-hatred for not workaholically accomplishing everything in two weeks. And it keeps me from brain-exhaustion, from working beyond sharpness. And if some days I get on a roll and do more than one paragraph, then I'm ahead.

But as I begin this last body-chapter (that is, I have still to write the intro chapter, but that must come last), I am confronted by how little I know about Herbert and the field of Herbert studies. I mean, I have spent so many years working on my other guys that I know the field of their criticism pretty well. But I've only recently realized that Herbert does, after all, play into the topic of this book, and merits a chapter. And I'm clearly a decade behind on him compared with those other guys. So I am writing that paragraph a day--which means that I'm nearing 4 pages now--but these paragraphs are very hard-won. They do all the contextualizing for the chapter, and that's requiring me to read a pile of material very quickly. I'm feeling unprepared and daunted, and not at all authoritative enough to write this chapter.

But then, I don't have to write a chapter. Just one paragraph. And then, the next day, another.

Random bullets of WOOT!

* Rome: not terrible after all. (Though, honestly. That bus/metro/train system: ridiculous.) Things looked way up after Thing 1 and I were taken in by the elderly Italian aunt of a friend of a friend. Still my least favorite part of our Italian itinerary, but all in all, an excellent adventure.

* Thing 1 has retained every detail about art, history, architecture, literature, or religion that he learned along the way.

* Machine laundered underwear! And no international roaming on my cell phone!

* And my parents came by my house during my long absence and mopped my floors and mowed my lawn.

* And I heard from my translation's publisher, which is based in London, saying they will release the American edition next year, with its recognizable signature jacket design. That will be surreal.

* The wind tonight! My golly! And snow for the next two nights!

* My sister and her husband and baby boy have moved back into my state, as of yesterday. Into one of the very cool and rock-filled parts, what's more. She will be a park ranger. He will run a theatrical organization. I will have a cool place to weekend. With a hot tub.

* Last class's grades in the can as of tonight: this academic year officially history.

* Accordingly,from tomorrow morning until beyond the horizon: VIVA LEAVE! Which is to say: all book-writing, all the time.

* Except, of course, for the new little beets, and peas, and artichokes.

The Rome report

Okay. I loved Venice. Loved Ravenna. Loved Florence. And all for different reasons: Venice's stateliness. Ravenna's small-town charm and mind-blowing mosaics. Florence's beauty and Art-History-Textbook nonchalance.

Rome? I freaking hate it.

Hate Rome.

Hate it.

Why? Is it the completely incomprehensible, where's-your-secret-decoder-ring public transportation system? Is it the city's hostility to pedestrians? Its general rudeness to those of us whose knowledge of the local dialect is a couple of millennia old? Its overrun antiquities? Its fake gladiators hoping for a pose so that they can charge you for the picture? General lack of internet accessibility? The general atmosphere of overkill and plunder at St. Peter's?

Yes, and yes, and yes. I hate it.

And I'm trapped here for five extra days because of a volcano.

And Neruda will live here for all of next year. And frankly, I'd rather visit him in the fifth circle of the Inferno than come back here.

The kid's got funny bones.

Today, Thing 1 endured an extended disquisition on Lateran eucharistic theology (not his native interpretation of that ritual), prompted by a display of ornate ciboria at the Bargello Museum. Tonight as we waited to place our dinner order, the table next to us was given a basket of crusty bread and a small jug of house red. He grinned at me and said: "Dinner is served. It's a miracle!"

On academic celebrity

Leaving Venice this morning, I happened to be on the vaporetto with a certain scholar of early modern English literature who has achieved, if anyone in this field has, a kind of superstar, even celebrity, status. In 20 minutes on the vaporetto, he was approached by three fans/well-wishers, who wanted to compliment him and engage him in some point of discussion. He was attended by his wife, who went to my alma mater just ahead of me, and whose status as an academic object of fascination/ fetishization owes much, I think, to refracted celebrity. In any case, I was amused to watch this power couple work the boat, and to think what a small sphere it is, really, in which we signify, insofar as we signify. And to remember how much it seems to matter, at times, to me--to all of us.

Having said that, it is always a small thrill to me to go to a panel and be flanked in the audience chairs by folks who are, to me, household names. Grande dames and great men of three or four decades ago, still jumping into the fray. That moves me.

Finally, Venice was a great idea for a conference site. If you didn't care if anyone attended any panels. I don't think I was in a room with more than 8 people the whole time. And I myself only attended 3 panels. One of which I chaired.

RSA blogging

To summarize the significant points of the last three days:

1) Sat next to a prominent senior scholar in my field at the RSA business lunch. I had met hir before, and thought s/he was a total condescending and snooty asshat. But at lunch, s/he was lovely, charming, and thrilled to make the acquaintance of Thing 1, or managed a good facsimile of thrill. So s/he gets off my list of problematic scholars.

2) Later that day, s/he gave a paper that made much the same argument as an article I've published, and announced that the paper from this conference is from hir next book, to be released in the next year. I may drop hir a note saying, "Enjoyed your talk. You might find this interesting too...." Or something.

3) Thing 1 is punchy at 11pm, which he's seen every night so far in Italy. And unexpectedly fixated on the bidet. And the penises in Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese. (Really, Thing 1? Didn't I raise you better than to giggle at art-penises?)

4) The Basilica de San Marco: HOLY CRAP. I'm dumbstruck.

5) Yes, the food really is that good.

6) I've run into my colleague more times on back streets of Venice than I ever have in our school hallways.

Frontloading National Poetry Month

In years past, this blog has devoted April to providing a sort of anthology of poems I like. since I'm going to be away for most of April, that's not going to happen this year. Instead, I'm going to make two very loud recommendations here at the start of the month, with the hope that anyone who crosses paths with this blog during April will be inspired to submerse hirself in good reading.

So I say to thee: If you have not read Paradise Lost, or haven't read it since you were an undergrad 25 years ago, this is the time to lose yourself in what is perhaps the most staggering piece of poetry in English.

And if you're one of those people who reads around in old stuff for a living and/or is continually reading Milton, then you should read Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris, ideally cover-to-cover in one sitting.

They're more or less the same text, anyway--just written 300 years apart.