The Diary Begins...

October 19, 2009
Turned in the Marx paper at 10:30. I was nervous precisely because I was confident…not that this was easy, far from it, but compared to the Freud and Lacan papers, this one flowed. And I didn’t stay up until 2 a.m. and finish the essay the next day in a panic like I did with the Lacan paper.
I was in the lounge chatting with Ashley and Ed after the turn-in when Gerard walked in wearing his peacoat and scarf, said “Shit!,” and walked out, much to our amusement. Julie was wearing a really nice hat, by the way, and Jessica had her fedora. I like women in hats. We keep saying Ashley should get a top hat. She’ll look like Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!
Today was LOTS of reading. Five essays on the Crimean War, aka the Stupidest War ever fought, with Stefanie Markovits’s “Rushing into Print” being the best. Then a long walk to Treasure Island and home, where I felt ready to collapse as soon as I walked in but stayed awake to read Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. Oddly, I had seen the documentary of her reading excerpts over footage of Antigua itself six years ago in Wendy and Sox’s class, but had not read the book. It’s very good, but after a while I have to wonder about how the strength of the argument turns against her…since we all see our environments and actions from certain points of view, how is hers as valid as anyone else’s?
Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History is surprisingly sincere in its emotions as well as its intelligence, a surprising combination from the man who gave us the immortal Eminent Victorians. Hoping I get the Holroyd biography for my birthday. Moving on to the shorter essays as my next pleasure book.
Peter and I shared a three-cheese pizza for dinner, and I decided to hold off on white wine until tomorrow. I wanted eight hours of sleep. Beer makes me sleepy. Hence the Heineken I am consuming as I finish this first entry.

October 20, 2009
Jess got my e-mail about the plans for next Monday and thinks I’m adorable. Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m just really darn honest.
New rule: at least seven hours of complete mental/physical inactivity per night. I feel so rested, so awake, and had another great workout this morning!
Strachey is an extraordinary writer. “Lancaster Gate,” his essay about growing up in his large family, made me pause over the cereal bowl this morning. “The actual events of life are unimportant. One is born, grows up, falls in love, falls out of love, works, is happy, is unhappy, grows old, and dies—a tedious, vulgar, succession; but not there lies the significance of a personal history: it is the atmosphere that counts. What happened to me during my first twenty-five years of consciousness may well be kept to the imagination; what cannot be kept to the imagination is the particular, the amazing, web on which the pattern of my existence was woven—in other words, Lancaster Gate. Try to imagine that! –To reconstruct, however dimly, that grim machine, would be to realize with some real directness the essential substance of my autobiography. An incubus sat upon my spirit, like a cat on a sleeping child. I was unaware, I was unconscious, I hardly understood that anything else could be. Submerged by the drawing-room, I invariably believed that the drawing-room was the world. Or rather, I neither believed nor disbelieved; it was the world, so far as I was concerned.”
Substitute “Squirrel Hill and Emerson and Los Angeles County” and there we are.
I saw a girl in a red coat yesterday who was absolutely beautiful.

After lunch with Ashley, Jess, and Kaelin today I went into Harper Library Commons, the Hogwarts Room, and read Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, which is an extraordinary novel. And at page 90 I suddenly realized something which made one of Douglas Adams’s “terrible ghastly silences” come over me.
We talked in the Victorian War class today about how people use history to look at the past and the future and how the real and imaginary get bound up and create a new place where terms we judge to be the same have nuances, where the definitions change when we no longer know the real. But it’s all because we want to compare our histories. And histories repeat themselves. Because the structures men create will change and wither and die, but the feelings, the emotions we have in our nature, will not wither and die. They stay. They provide human constancy. And they go into the systems. Things repeat. And all at once, the entire world of knowledge opened up before me, and I saw that it extended beyond even the extraordinary extent which I had thought was already unlimited.
I had a Spartacus moment, the moment where Kirk Douglas says to Jean Simmons, “I want to know everything, about the stars and how they shine and why the water is blue and why the moon is bright as the sun, and I want to know you, I want to know everything about you…” I want to know everything. And I want to hold on to the sense of the past. I want to hold on to the Boston I loved which Kaelin reminded me of.
And I’m terrified that I may be a horrible literature professor, because they’re telling me not to care about Lucy and I do care about Lucy, not Lucy herself who can be a little cruel and brutal but about her situation and how she wants to love someone so much it hurts her even though she finally, Lacanian-style, gets what she wants and it’s not what she wanted. I care. I’m invested. I feel like I should be at a distance but I can’t help it.
Tomorrow I’m going to start Trollope. Tonight I shall read Tennyson and Gaskell and go to bed after eating sausage and brown rice, which is exactly what I want temporarily.
Erik is back from San Francisco and it was great to speak to him. Don’t know if I would have found it so easy to leave, but I am neither Erik nor an Ogle.
Kaelin had never heard of Bolt or Strachey. Glad to have educated her.

October 21, 2009
Forgot to mention yesterday that I received my first ever “A” from the University of Chicago! An A- and B+ on my intervention and response for Culture of Victorian War. That was encouraging. I also think I’m just going to look at my damn Marx grade on Monday and be done with it.
Didn’t eat sausage and brown rice…just as well, because I realized the seafood sausage is kind of lousy on its own. After reading Tennyson and the essay, I met up with Peter and Erik (whose family’s past turns out to be a Swedish melodrama worthy of Ibsen-by-way-of-Bergman) for dinner at Edwardo’s, where we shared a massive deep-dish vegetarian pizza, which I greatly enjoyed by cutting out some of the extra cheese. I am a little nervous because despite three square meals a day and less exercise, I’m not gaining weight. Mom and Dad might be ticked off…
“Maud” is a fantastic poem about holding on to romantic love and high ideals in a time where industrial capitalism has driven sincerity and reality from the world…I am a bit disturbed by the ultimate message that a man can only become a man when he goes beyond a woman, or, passes the rational to an insanity which will “clear his mind.” But I’m not Tennyson and I’m not being accused by idiots like Alfred Austin of being effeminate.

Today in Reading Modern Poets we had a very oppressive session where “Hitler Spring” was discussed in excruciating detail and “Brief Testament” glossed over at the end. Didn’t even get to “Iris” or “Xenia I.” I guess all the better for me…now I can write my paper on “Iris.”
In RMP, Kaelin’s hair curled around her face like a Bernini sculpture, Anna wore a blouse which reminded me of my pillow back home, and I left watching the leaves change color on the quad and fall and I thought about Ashley. Oh, how I missed the leaves in Los Angeles.
Tonight was strange. I spent a wonderful half-hour on the phone with Carlee, during which I got a text from my mother. Carlee is well…going to Youngstown and Columbus this weekend…and she listened a LOT to my tales of the scholastic life a la yesterday and my worries with Abigail.
I thought about Chicago eight years ago when I left feeling ill and came back feeling great and we won the national title with yours truly as principal bassist of the classical orchestra, and I bought jazz music and ate at Medieval Times and sang “Mr. Roboto” with Mr. Dispenza and Carlee Tressel, a vision in black, slow-danced with me on the boat on Lake Michigan. I told her on Capri, until I die, I’ll never forget that. And I never shall.
Marc and I talk so much better these days, ever since April…we’re both standing on our own, but we’re at a point where we care about each other, a little as friends, a little as brothers.
I ate sausage and rice tonight from Trader Joe’s. Also had a dollar milkshake and a crowd of topless men ran past me through the great fountain outside the Reynolds Club. Also re-read “Maud” and read an essay on…wallpaper. I’m in grad school.

October 22, 2009
So I decided to eat a little more today, topping off the breakfast cereal with noodles from The Snail…mmm-hmm…but they left me feeling quite stuffed, as noodles are want to do. Dad and I talked for a bit, partly about how I feel I should gain weight. He says I should do nothing unless it feels right to me. And I am feeling quite healthy and happy these days…my ab exercises are getting stronger.
But we also talked about the where-I-am-where-he-was at 25 dynamic which kicked off my moroseness yesterday. When Dad was 25, I had THOUGHT he had already started graduate school. He had launched his career. And he DID marry Mom, that is an incontrovertible fact. But he corrected me he did not start grad school until 26, and was far less ambitious than I…had not lived where I lived or done what I’ve done…and girls will come in time. I wish, as he does, I was always able to internalize what he says and move forward.
Wrote about Lucy for Abigail after a hilarious lecture where David showed clips from The Sound of Music to distinguish Kincaid’s narrative of an out-of-place au pair from those written from positions of privilege. Never anyone more privileged than Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Mary Martin with a made-to-order book. David and Mark are such different lecturers. David is animated, witty, exciting. Mark is more staid, his humor dry…but it is there. Mark’s problem is he sounds so much more superior.
I received a book today from Earl, that remarkable auditor who read his wife Trollope three times and swims at 6 in the morning while I run. Earl is going on a trip, but he wants to read my very exciting (potentially…I think so…) paper on Trollope and the Crimean, and in return he gave me a book of novellas he wrote. Had no idea he was an author! The discussion on “Maud” was suitably intense, draining…I feel like I talk too much in that class. But I love Victoriana.
My first looking into The New Zealander was richly rewarding. Trollope’s thesis is that the Crimean War was one of England’s fienst hours, since they triumphed despite no preparedness, and everything was criticized because the government listened to public opinion, i.e. the press. He refers to Newcastle on similar terms as Palliser. Oy, as Huberman and Singerman would say. Tie this in with essays on government and press and central notion of British dishonesty as destructive…I’ve got a grad school line of inquiry!
Need to wrap up so I can expel some noodle-related waste before enjoying wine, crackers, cheese, and wallpaper, then a double feature at Doc. And a woman walked by with the same pasta salad Brian bought when we were at the Div School café together. Ah, sweet mystery of life…

October 23, 2009
Three movies in the last twenty-four hours. This came after drinking French red wine for an hour and a half while talking with Ph. D. students about Elizabeth Gaskell’s use of wallpaper. I met a girl named Emily who looked like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall and a man named Gerard, another Gerard, who just bites the last bit of cheese.
The movies were The Private Life of Henry VIII, the worst kind of old-school apart from Charles Laughton’s iconic performance in the title role, A Boy and His Dog, immensely entertaining and featuring one of the greatest final scenes in the history of cinema (“she had lousy taste”), and Up, where even when I knew what was coming I still wept unashamedly during the first ten minutes. I left my water bottle in the theatre and then my hat blew off my head.
To backtrack, this was an excellent day. I printed out my readings for Victorian War and then spent the morning eating fruit and granola reading Crimean War despatches, Czeslaw Milosz’s sometimes too wordy-for-its-own-good, sometimes transcendently holy poetry, and the Newsweek with my 25th birthday on the cover, proclaiming that college should be done in three years, though when I read the article I had the impression that college should work to accommodate every student’s desires and learning style, be it two years’ worth of year-round education or six. I’d have to agree. We all have our own dreams.
Precept group was wonderful. I was able to finally talk in class without getting embarrassed and speak to Abigail with no recriminations on my side and total ease…victory…thank you, Abigail, and Miss Tressel.
After precept group was Pub Night. Too much beer and nachos, but I had a great time losing foozball and talking to anyone and everyone. Had a great conversation with Bailey about faith and Paul Simon.
After Up we went to Medici and I finally tried the Mediterranean pizza. The spirit of Montale was with me, and I am amazed typing this that his name is included in the Microsoft Word dictionary…the food was great, and I feel great. This is my 25th Birthday weekend! I should live a little, damn it! Starting tomorrow…with hours of lectures…yeah…but it’ll be great.

October 24, 2009
Humanities Day proved to be an excellent intellectual respite from the routine of Victorian warfare, poetry, and theorist of the week. Tomorrow my goal is to fill up on Starbucks without exercise and then tackle The Pleasure of the Text…also found out Barthes cameoed as Thackeray in a French film about the Brontes. Small world.
Started with The Economist over breakfast, special report on U.S.-China relations and our growing debt. I wonder if it really is better, as Marx argued, to live in a system where you know you’re being exploited as opposed to capitalism. China is growing in fits and starts with a silenced majority. It doesn’t seem superpower-like to me.
People kept asking me for directions this morning. Status of the local conferred. Sadly, I got one street wrong…hope the driver didn’t get too mad.
Lectures. The Chaucer lecture was like a movie, two Chicago professors who might have been romantically involved use the code-breaking techniques of World War I to compare 80 or so versions of The Canterbury Tales to produce a definitive text…and it kills them both from overwork and pressure. Then David Wellbery’s lecture on Faust made my back get chills at the end like a movie…the idea of Goethe’s immortal version as a myth for the modern world in which the gift of the pure moment is sacrificed for immanence was never so lovely and tragic. It was delivered in Mandel Hall, which startled me…here in the Reynolds Club, a miniature grand theatre with balconies, proscenium, everything!
Lunched at the Reynolds Club on some fantastic vegetarian Indian food (mainly chickpeas and rice) with Peter, Eric, Zach, and Adam Snyder. Turned out Zach is in the Army reserves, and since Eric was a major in Iraq, they had plenty to talk about. Having Eric in Culture of Victorian War, by the way, is a real bonus for the class.
Then came 2,300 year-old Chinese history, which gave me some things to chew on about what events are selected for historiography and how the way they are presented leads to judgments. Anna, Peter, and I finished with Richard Strier’s very rewarding “How To Read a Hard Poem” where we brilliantly dissected Hart Crane, then got mutually confused over Emily Dickinson comparing herself to a loaded gun.
Quiet, solitary night after that. Workout (sun came out and it was beautiful), dinner, laundry, reading, now bed. New rule: red wine may be wonderful, but it should only be drunk in groups with food…on its own, white wine is much preferable.

October 25, 2009
My life is one of pleasure and pain. The pleasure is beautiful, gracious, a blessing from God who gives me everything, including friends beyond compare. The pleasure is never expected, rarely sought, always abundant. The pain is something I bring entirely upon myself: the pain of being able to solve all my biggest problems with strength and fortitude while going nuts over the tiny, insignificant problems which aren’t really problems at all...isn't that the way?
But tomorrow I shall celebrate no matter what letter appears beside by paper on Marx. For I did do great things with help from He Above and my fellow toilers under the sun.
And today, I read The Pleasure of the Text in a single four-hour sitting, which is akin to having tantric sex. Barthes’s thesis is that all interaction with art, the text, is erotic, comparable to sex, a drive of life beyond the drive of death, a creation where you take an author’s words and become undifferentiated from them, create new meanings, go beyond ideology. In Barthes’s world, if sex is reading, there is GLBT, perversions, BDSM, masturbation, necrophilia, chastity, and, yes it makes sense, you can draw out the middle syllable of “bananas” when you’re angry and perfectly convey what he means.
And I’m being forced to learn this. I’m a lucky man. A blessed man. And I ask for the memory of Job and all sufferers to be blessed. And Mommy with her piggy flu.

My Life as Doctor Faustus

I wish...

Abigail chastised me yesterday that I keep expecting every week to have a "breakthrough" moment where the inscrutability of the Core will give way to total understanding. A few hours later, I did have the breakthrough moment...and the breakthrough was that I will never have a breakthrough moment.

To explain what this means, I must also explain why I have not posted on the blog in days. Classes started this week and my second paper was assigned, and I had already decided during the all-core weeks that apart from a few predetermined social activities which would be rigidly structured, I would work. Nonstop. Rise before 7, usually 6, and go to bed after 11. Except for looking at the news in the morning, no reading for pleasure. Breaks only for meals, exercise, walking, and sleeping. I would show the world that I had a right to earn a master's degree in English through sheer mental exertion which would finally result in absolute comprehension of my class material. It got to the point where every minute spent not working, every minute idly browsing the web or otherwise, I was full of guilt for the time not spent working. I remembered Jordan telling me to get ready to stay up until 2 in the morning, remembered the exhortation in my University of Chicago Daily Planner to study as much as possible, reduce all socializing, and never waste a minute. I would fulfill these dictums.

And at first, I thought this would WORK. Sure, I felt dreadfully tired at night, but it was proof I was working hard!

Then I got the topic for my next paper, to explicate a passage from Lacan's "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function." Reading the text and my notes carefully, I determined to write a great paper which would build off my own jubilant "B-" from the first paper, one which would situate Lacan's ideas in the grand psychoanalytic context I'd spent three weeks in. A first draft complete, I popped in to Abigail's office hours to ask her a question about citing Freud. Providence. It turned out I completely misinterpreted the prompt. But Abigail was more than happy to help me work through it for a few minutes.

But then my brain began to take a toll. I had spent three days working on this paper and they had been essentially wasted. Then came ninety minutes in precept group discussing Lacan, and I realized that like we the poor humans of his "Das Ding," I was chasing after something impossible to find. I'd been looking forward to social hour all week, but now I felt physically ill. Everyone kept giving me worried looks. And Abigail finally ordered me, with the same exasperation my parents feel every time I get fixated on something and can think of nothing else, to please go talk to other people about other things besides Lacan! This was our time to relax!

Then I made a mistake. I have consumed much more alcohol than I did last night on several occasions, including here in Chicago, and never felt a thing, but now the wine mixed with my stress level and after everyone had gone, I found myself collapsed onto a bench a pathetic, crying, bubbling heap of mush.

I, who will be 25 in 23 days. I, the serious student.

A wonderful girl whose name I could not tell you and Braden walked me home, and then I called my parents. A few times. And I woke up after eight hours of sleep sober and ashamed.

It was my crack-up, Fitzgerald-style, but I think a better analogy is with Christopher Marlowe's great tragic hero. Like Doctor Faustus, in my mega-ambitions I had lost sight of why I had come here to get an education in the first place.

For one thing, I had almost forgotten my passion for learning so many new things and reveling in the learning. I was now desperate for grades, desperate to not fail, desperate to use my brain to GET IT and in so doing please Abigail and David and Mark.

But I thought the point of my being here was to figure out what's going on. The truth is, nobody knows what's going on, and I think I was the last person to admit it! Everyone in the class, all my friends who are so much more articulate than me and can talk about philosophy and linguistics in ways I've not yet come close to understanding, are not trying to seize the material. They're pondering it, asking questions. I have not been doing so at all.

Hence the breakthrough moment. I'll never have a breakthrough. Lacan is not meant to be easy, and nothing else will be easy. This class is a challenge I am not predestined to win, and winning isn't even the point. They want me to think. And if I never understand some things but I can think better, that's what everyone will be happy with.

The other point. Braden and Wonderful Mystery Girl told me that they couldn't believe I was working at such a frenetic pace, Abigail found it hard to comprehend how I could spend six hours with a single Lacan essay, and Mom and Dad got ticked off that I would not let myself have fun and had even given up pleasure reading. And blog-updating (on my end). And everything else which makes my life fulfilling. Hard work is a matter of quality, not quantity.

I thought being the total academic was why I was here. But it's not. I'm supposed to be the same person I've always been, the person the people in the program are counting as a friend, the person whose teachers are praising him for being thoughtful, the person whose ambitions should never surpass how much he surrenders himself to God.

I hope God can forgive me...and Abigail as well...and I hope the people in MAPH will realize my life as Doctor Faustus is over. I am an ordinary person trying to learn things, a person who loves books and films and his faith and his friends and the well-rounded life he'll try to lead from now on.

The post-script: after some rest and recreation, I sat down and wrote a new first draft which was even better than my original paper. It's my best work yet at the University. And now I remember that my revisions to my first paper came after I took a break to play board games and watch movies, and that worked out really well! I DO need to disengage for at least a little each day. That's how I get things done. Now Peter disengaged last night as well, but he went to the movies and my favorite restaurant with our other friends instead of sobbing like a wreck for twenty minutes. I need to learn more from my roommate...