Thanksgiving...more like Thankstaking!
This weekend has been most unproductive. I guess that I did what little homework that I had to do, studied a bit and then I attempted to find a thesis for my Literary theory class. It wasn't even that it was a waste of time. I spent some time with my good ole' Boog and we watched movies and stuffed ourselves with tacos and pumpkin pie. I also read a book and played some video games. I think that I am just feeling anxious about this semester. I feel like OI should be working more and harder but nobody wants to give me homework. I am feeling stressed out about due dates and the such for another month and a half away. Goddam the semester goes by quickly. It is really only three months of work. The month nobody really knows what's going on and is still stuck in summer mode. The second month the work is assigned and builds up. The third month the University takes a dump all over you and everything is due in rapid succession. I still have no idea what's going on. I'm still so fuckin lazy. I just want to sit around read Gunter Grass and Heinrich Boll and Arno Schmidt and other ex-nazis. I think that post-World War II German Literature is the greatest thing ever. You get to see humanity for what it really is. You read about raging and unrestrained lunatics and madmen, hypocrates, and sometimes about misunderstood saints who are labelled clowns because they weren't in line with fascism and now they're not in line with democracy and the whole facade. I like reading about the great disappointment of the Reich and the ability of people to commit horrible and heinous crimes and then to forgive themselves as soon as they've happened. Their is something totally human about these books. It is humanity at its most frail and vulnerable as everybody has to pick up the shattered peices of their lives and attempt to look beyond to the future. This can also be seen in the works of Kenzaburo Oe. Perhaps its the losers story. Compare to the post-war lit of America. The victor. If all that Americans get is the Beats than they totally got the literary shaft. Europe had the absurdists. America got the beats. What a trade-off.
For my literary theory essay I am thinking of doing the Russian Formalists and attempting to show how their theory that literature seeks to alienate the reader from themselves and those things we take for granted, which cause in use a sense of automatization. This can be seen in the late 19thC realism of Tolstoy where the story is told from the point of view of a horse and makes the silliness of everyday life apparent - things such as property ownership which many never question. But like everything else in life we become used to this type of literature and it no longer alienates us from everyday life, and we read it in a passive state since we've become used to it. So then literature further rocks by alienating us further. It questions things like war and patriotism and can even change the very structure of literature itself - be it poem of novel. This can be seen in the Modernists T.S. Eliot, and in the stream-of-consciousness of people like Joyce, Proust and Woolf. Again we grow used to this and the effects of this are attenuated, so something new comes along - post-modernism and post-colonialism. So the idea is that literature is a continual process building upon those who come before you, and seldom repeating. This is why you can't find writers who write like Shakespeare anymore, or the Romantics, or the Augustans, etc.
I've never understood patriotism. It doesn't make sense to me to get wrapped up in a country you were born in, without your say in the matter. It is just blind chance that you are you and that you were born in Canada. I think it takes real patriotism to love a country you don't belong to. I've chosen Sweden. Great Metal bands, Strindberg, and of course the fact that their country will be off of oil by 2050. All great reasons to love Sweden. Also, Vikings. Need I say more? You might be asking: 'If you love Sweden why don't you marry it?' I have only this to say: I gladly would.
Well, that's enough out of me.
For my literary theory essay I am thinking of doing the Russian Formalists and attempting to show how their theory that literature seeks to alienate the reader from themselves and those things we take for granted, which cause in use a sense of automatization. This can be seen in the late 19thC realism of Tolstoy where the story is told from the point of view of a horse and makes the silliness of everyday life apparent - things such as property ownership which many never question. But like everything else in life we become used to this type of literature and it no longer alienates us from everyday life, and we read it in a passive state since we've become used to it. So then literature further rocks by alienating us further. It questions things like war and patriotism and can even change the very structure of literature itself - be it poem of novel. This can be seen in the Modernists T.S. Eliot, and in the stream-of-consciousness of people like Joyce, Proust and Woolf. Again we grow used to this and the effects of this are attenuated, so something new comes along - post-modernism and post-colonialism. So the idea is that literature is a continual process building upon those who come before you, and seldom repeating. This is why you can't find writers who write like Shakespeare anymore, or the Romantics, or the Augustans, etc.
I've never understood patriotism. It doesn't make sense to me to get wrapped up in a country you were born in, without your say in the matter. It is just blind chance that you are you and that you were born in Canada. I think it takes real patriotism to love a country you don't belong to. I've chosen Sweden. Great Metal bands, Strindberg, and of course the fact that their country will be off of oil by 2050. All great reasons to love Sweden. Also, Vikings. Need I say more? You might be asking: 'If you love Sweden why don't you marry it?' I have only this to say: I gladly would.
Well, that's enough out of me.