in Life's name and for Life's sake

I mentioned in my last post that I've been reading Dorothy Sayers for the first time (and kicking myself throughout, because HOW have I never read Sayers before?). I started with Strong Poison about two weeks ago at the recommendation of ladyvivien and was smitten with Harriet Vane almost as instantly as Lord Peter was, but as much as I enjoyed that novel and Have His Carcase, my feelings for those two novels combined don't even come close to my feelings for Gaudy Night, which I just finished yesterday and which I can't stop thinking about. The following discussion will probably only be interesting to those who have already read the novel, and will contain spoilers up to it, so don't read it if you haven't read the novels! (Also, I still haven't gotten hold of Busman's Honeymoon, so if the two people who have actually read Sayers start commenting, don't spoil anything past Gaudy Night for me!)

( Placet. )

Or, Candace discusses "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon" in a rather disjointed fashion, because this is necessary.

( At this point, SPOILERS really goes without saying. )

I don't have the time to do this justice, but better something short than nothing at all.

When I got back from Paris, I heard from a friend that one of my old Berkeley professors had passed away. Her name was Janet Adelman, and she was amazing. I took 45A with her, and spent a semester finding new literary love in strange places, from Chaucer to Spenser to -- wait for it -- Milton. Yes, this is the woman who first introduced me to Paradise Lost and started me off on something so much larger than her, or me, or probably even Milton himself.

She was fiery. She was old, and it wasn't like she was trying to hide it: she wore her white hair long, and dressed with an eclectic fashion only allowed to those who are conscious of their own age and milking it for all its worth (when I picture her now, she's wearing crazy-awesome robelike garments that no one in the universe should be allowed to pull off, and yet she does).

She was old but she showed you that didn't really mean much. She wasn't that quivering Victorian grandmother who blushed at the slightest sign of indecency. She was a dyed-in-the-wool feminist and considering dates and ages she was probably a part of the second-wave feminism of the 60s and 70s, and also part of the resurgence of psychoanalytic theory in English departments/studies at the time. She gave a powerful reading of Satan's sense of indebtedness to God that shifted into anger and the desire to destroy, all based on (vaguely feminist) psychoanalysis. And she made a powerful argument for Milton as a feminist (though I'm not entirely sure how much modern critics would agree). In fact, rather than being angry with these old works by men who wrote in a time when pretty much only men wrote, she took them and combed them through for signs of understanding of women and an attempt to fairly portray them. She might have been a feminist but she never got righteously angry about it, at least not in the classroom.

But it wasn't just in the classroom where she mattered. I still remember the first time I went to visit her in office hours. I wasn't really liking Chaucer and not quite sure what to say, but I walked in, sat down, and said something lame like, "So. Chaucer." To which she responded, "Oh, not him yet, I still don't know you!" When I came back from spring break after Rick broke up with me and went to her office hours again she asked me how break had gone and I mumbled something before starting in on Spenser, which was greatly preferable to a discussion of my own emotional unrest. And yet a month or so later it came up in our office hours discussion and she told me she'd thought that something was wrong back then, but that she knew I was dealing with it and that I could always come to her with problems.

She wrote me one of the letters of recommendation that got me here, studying abroad in London. The last time I saw her -- at least, the last time I really remember -- was when I walked by her office and picked up that letter. She hadn't sealed it yet when I arrived -- she wanted me to read it over first -- and though I don't remember exactly what it said now, I just remember that it reinforced my feeling that she really somehow understood. She was such a gift.

Janet Adelman is not a woman that I, or anyone, will easily forget. But me especially. She continues to make it into my fiction, lending sometimes her name and sometimes her appearance to a series of benevolent grandmotherly figures who nonetheless know when to shove their children out into the world and help them face it. She is the kind witch of my Printer's Tale who gives Noelle shelter and asks no questions until the time is right -- with her robes and her long white hair and her kind and deep brown eyes. She is a figure of power. And though I'm sad to know that she's gone, I'm full of a certainty that "gone" isn't really too final, and that somewhere out there she's arguing feminism with Milton (and winning).

“Your people do have the idea of being ‘just good friends?’”

He gave her a sidewise look. “For so high and honorable an estate,” Roshaun said, “‘just’ seems a poor modifier to choose.”

--Wizards at War by Diane Duane

I want to go to Berkeley for grad school. Not just because in the new US News & World Report rankings they are the best English grad school in the country. Not just because, according to the same rankings, they are the 2nd best in the nation for 17th-20th century British literature, my general area of concentration. But because I love Berkeley. I love walking down Bancroft in the morning and seeing the Golden Gate Bridge arise out of a misty bay, the sunlight hitting it just right. I love the silence of Doe Library right before finals. I love the faux-Greco-Roman facade of Wheeler Hall, all columns and flourishes and pristine whiteness. I love the scattered coffee shops, the late winter rains, the late summer sunshine, the way that on a good day just walking onto campus makes me feel like part of something bigger, better, and more beautiful than any one person could be.

But I'm afraid. Because the last time I wanted something this much, I didn't get it. And although I'm glad I didn't, I can't bring myself to imagine that I'd be glad not getting this. This is not like Stanford. This is something that I've lived long enough to know that I want. And people think I'm silly for thinking about this so early but I'm just trying to do everything I can to get from where I am to where I want to be.

Overall, I think this vacation has been good for me. I've needed some rest and I've needed some time to be at home. Frankly, I haven't missed my family so much since I left to go to Berkeley for the first time a year and a half ago. And I didn't realize that I missed them until Mom opened the door when I came home and I ran into her arms. It's been good to be back.

Perhaps the only problem with being back home is that I've got more time to myself than I'm used to -- and when I have time like that, I spend it thinking. And thinking, especially hard thinking, especially about my future, is usually not the greatest idea. But it helps to write about the things that are clattering around my brain, so here they are.

1.       Attending graduate school

a.       feels like the right thing to do

b.      will add six more years of school

                                                               i.      and I don’t know where I want to spend those six years

                                                             ii.      that I will have to pay for if my chosen school can’t pay for me

c.       will give me a education I feel like I have to do something with

                                                               i.      and I don’t need a Ph.D. to write or teach high school

1.       so why am I going to pay for six years of grad school?

2.       Teaching

a.       as a college professor

                                                               i.      is one of the only interesting things you can do with a Ph.D. in English

                                                             ii.      would not be that interesting after a long enough while

                                                            iii.      pays better than high school

b.      in a high school

                                                               i.      does not require a Ph.D.

                                                             ii.      entails hellish amounts of work for abysmal pay

                                                            iii.      seems likely to be strangely rewarding

3.       Nonprofits

a.       are very fun and do fantastic things for the world

b.      will make me absolutely no money

4.       Writing

a.       is what I’ve always wanted to do

b.      will make me absolutely no money

                                                               i.      unless I sell out and become

1.       a “literary” writer

2.       the next Stephenie Meyer

                                                             ii.      unless I’m the one person in a million who’s any good at it

1.       and I can’t believe I’m that person

5.       Love

a.       hurts

                                                               i.      a lot

                                                             ii.      and yet I still want it

b.      can be an inconvenience

                                                               i.      especially if I have a career plan to follow

                                                             ii.      until I figure out how to be independent and dependent simultaneously

c.       had better not let me down

                                                               i.      again

                                                             ii.      because the next time, I’ll take it personal

My grandmother just informed me that she doesn't like to read fantasy and would prefer a romance where the girl ends up with the rich man and they live happily ever after any day.

I'm not sure if she gets the ridiculousness of this statement.

I also find it amusing because the story I'm working on right now is "fantasy" in both of these aspects -- it contains elements of the fantastic, the supernatural, the unexpected, but at its heart, it's really a romance in which the girl will end up with the rich man in the end and live happily ever after. Of course it's more original than that sounds but the concepts are the same.

Lately I've been thinking about the differences between a love story and a romance. It seems to me that everyone who falls in love gets to have a love story. But a romance is something bigger and more complicated. A romance is when the obstacles to love are so great, and yet are eventually overcome by a passion so strong, that the story is relevant to everyone and not just the lovers.

I've also often thought about how the most interesting part of a love story, to other people, is the "getting together" part. The "meet-cute," to steal a term from romantic comedy screenwriters. And usually that only takes up a couple of sentences. Once two people are securely in love, they're the only ones to whom their being in love is really, truly interesting. We don't want to read about a relationship unless it's undergoing problems, changes, or upheavals. But we don't want to live relationships during these uneasy stages. Because while reading, we don't mind the unease of others, but our own is another story altogether.

...aaaaaand this is just me not writing my novel, so I'm going to stop now. Only I'm first going to mention that I love it so much that it's hard for me not to go back and re-read stuff I've written, because it's so good. Now I don't say this to be immodest because it's not really that good at all, but it's the first time I've felt good about writing a longer piece while still writing it. Usually I have to have discarded it and picked it up months/years later before I like it. This one, I still like, and I have a premonition I will like it even after I finish!