Tutorial

I had tutorial today. Here are my actual notes:

“The highest degree granted in the School of English is the Ph.D. The Ph.D. is called a thesis, and a thesis is an argument.” Oh this is going to be good.

Napoleon? You want us to be like Napoleon marching to the “high mark of Moscow?” Do you remember what happened on that march?

Your Britishness is getting obnoxious.

SHOOT ME IN THE FACE.

Oh so you’re talking about me.

What are you saying? You don’t like when people open their English essays with in depth discussions about figure skating scoring?

I should probably start reading these books.

I think you've been wearing the same sweater for two months.

Who is screaming outside?

Oh little boy on tricycle, I can only imagine the sounds you'd be making if you were in here.

Oh god. You actually just made a joke about dwarves.

And you’re sunburned.

And your hair is thinning.

And you pick bad books.

You think I’m taking notes.

I should probably start taking notes.

Spiritualism turns women’s passiveness and receptiveness into a positive.

Telling the stories of those who have been marginalized. Historical novels seek to inhabit the absences of those who couldn’t (Toni Morrison’s Beloved)

Séance: someone among the living claims to be speaking in the voices of the dead. Byatt mocks the séance, and in a way mocks the style of her own work.

Oh, writing concentration decisions come out today.

This class is full of awkward silences.

You know what’s great? Realizing that sometimes you don’t have to say anything.

I’m realizing I know very little about the Victorians.

You gotta put the past behind you.

HA. The girl next to me has written “WTF?!” in her notes.

What is the value of pastness if the pastness is not authentic?

Five more minutes.

This book sounds fucking weird: Part winged form with a beak plunged into its own breast, part clay, part flask, part flayed man, made up of colors she can’t identify: is actually a dead guy.

“I defy you to imagine a completely different color and then describe it to me.”

One more minute.

Oh no, you're running over.

No one wants to be here!

A lot of the class isn’t here!

Don’t you have another class to teach?

The dead are tortured by the desires of the living.

You see the people are turning around to look at clock? This is a hint.

No. Girl in the green sweater. Put your hand down. Put. It. Down.

Damn.

Longing for the past is connected to bereavement making it desperate, needy, and intensely personal.

You say literature funny.

We’re six minutes over.

Now no one is talking.

Oh yes, the implacable alienness of the past.

*I got into the writing concentration! Woot.