Of Fatigue, Frustration, and Verbal Fornication
Yes, I've been pretty delinquent with this blog of late, but, as I've said before, it's March, otherwise known as the crap time of the year (I'll resist the ancient temptation to make the oh-so-obvious revision of Eliot's famous line about April). Sitting down to write has been as tempting as a dinner plate of slugs and rat foeces, and I can't say I've been particularly inspired, either. This weekend my uncle came up from Pennsylvania for my year-old cousin's christening. My uncle is cool and always good for a laugh, and he and I wound up watching
My Boss' Daughter which turned out to be not quite as horrible as I'd expected based on the reviews at the time, although I'm sure poor Terence Stamp will be looking for parts in future that will keep Ashton Kutcher's face out of his ass. Then there was the christening, and I have to say that I was reminded all-too-well why I don't attend services much anymore, especially as the minister delivered a reading of the Prodigal Son story that was flabbergastingly misguided. Then, of course, there was the post-ceremony reception which necessarily entailed Doctor J being swarmed with little-ones, mainly my two five year-old cousins insisting on piggy-backs and the like. Oh, children, god love them, but I can't help but confess that I needed a serious nap afterwards. For whatever horrible things people might say about Doctor J, warranted or not, I don't think anyone could say that he's bad with kids (or animals, for that matter). It seems that every time children are around, Da Doc becomes a living jungle-jim. Blessed be that they are not my own children; I think I'd die of exhaustion within a week. Frankly, though, I love kids and animals because (well, among other reasons) they have no idea of pretense, no notion of falsehood; they simply are, and they can enjoy life, even the simplest things about it, without any of the catches, contingencies, and qualifications that most of us end up stipulating to every fact as we supposedly mature. I did get that nap, by the way, and, damn, did I need it.
In other news, Doc J is -- supposedly-- soon to come into possession of two relatively-difficult-to-find texts, a hardback reissue of T.S. Eliot's
Homage to John Dryden, and a hardcover 1920 first edition of H.G. Wells'
Outline of History. Looking forward to receiving them, providing the sky doesn't collapse sometime in the next while. Also, there are two weeks left in "normal class time," which means it's time to start tying together loose strands and crossing my fingers and hoping that
mes eleves are ready for the final crunch. In an effort to clarify matters for my kids, I've promised to write a discussion of the course texts and post it on our group blog, but it's going to be a bitch to write. Why?, I'm sure you're thinking. Well, with fourteen plays, all of the sonnets and
The Rape of Lucrece having been on the docket this year, the scope of the discursive territory is huge, and the trick of the task will be deciding what not to say rather than what to say. To write adequately about such a broad expanse, I could probably use the advantage of a book, and not just a single column/post/entry. More energy, I'm sure, that will by-and-large end up wasted, as it generally seems such things are read at best by 30-40% of the class. And, of course, I'll be putting all this together while I'm trying to trudge through a coming batch of essays to mark. Oh well, c'est la vie, n'est-ce pas? I remind myself that I do such things for those that are truly interested and want to know more, and for those that can use all the extra help that they can get. There's also a kind of turn-about-is-fair-play mentality at work there, too. I won't ask my students to do anything that I won't do myself, and I always think it's important that instructors prove their willingness to step into the trenches themselves. It can become too easy for instructors to come in, do their basic job, and retreat into the hills as soon as possible. Never trust a general that won't fight along side his troops.
It's probably a bit presumptuous to write this, but I can't say I've particularly enjoyed teaching this year. I'm not complaining too much about my students, most of whom seem a good lot, even if the
extremely high truancy rate has me worried for several of them. No, I'm more frustrated by the fact that the course this year didn't really demand someone of my experience and skills. Yes, that probably sounds shamelessly egotistical, and perhaps it is to a point. I can't help but feel, though, that this year was more about keeping up with the Joneses rather than providing the class with genuine insights about Shakespeare. My process, such as it is, is to try to keep in tandem as much as possible the centripetal and the centrifugal dimensions of a text, to maintain what Blake called a double vision: to alternate between close-reading and appropriate-generalization, to keep in tandem with one another the processes of interpretation and criticism. Now, of course, we've done some of that this year, but not to my own satisfaction, in large part because the course was so hurried in its approach and so comprehensive in its nature. It just doesn't seem to me that we were able to get a sufficient grounding in "the things you need to know about Shakespeare" or "the things you need to know about XXXX text" before being compelled by time-constraints to move on to the next issue or the next text.
What am I complaining about? Well, it doesn't seem that we were able to develop some of the most important dimensions of good critical study: intimacy with the subject texts; intimacy with the process of literary inquiry; developing a sense of academic gravitas; developing, too, a sense of intellectual play; developing the necessary understanding of dramaturgy and poesis; and, perhaps most importantly, getting past the idea of "study" as "course." That last point needs some elaboration, I think. I'm not sure that this year we ever got past the idea that we were in a "course on Shakespeare" to enter into that more valuable (and more lasting) state of personal investment in the subject matter. The air of what I call "assignmentism" never seemed to clear. I'm not sure if any of my students will leave my class this year with a sense of qualitative engagement with Shakespeare himself, with a feeling that Shakespeare means something substantial to their experience as thinkers. This is usually one of my strengths, one of the things I do better than most of my colleagues, but I don't think I was able to do that as well this year, largely because this sort of thing takes time and needs to be cultivated with patience and intellectual attention. Crude as this may sound, good intellectual development is like good love-making: it requires an intimacy of knowledge not just of one's subject but also of oneself, and it requires qualities so seldom encouraged in the academy these days, careful-listening, openness, flexibility, but also rigour, intensity, and thoughtfulness. And, yes, passion.
I don't blame my students for this, because I'm sure several of them were willing to develop these things with the material, and some of them may have done so regardless, and to them I'll doff my hat in respect. I partially blame the design of the course this year, which has tended to foster limited knowledge of a number of texts rather than intimate knowledge of truly significant texts and issues-- and it's in this regard that I think my particular skills seem to have been under-utilized. But, no, I put the larger blame on myself, because something in my says that I should have been able to make things happen in spite of the temporal limitations, that I should have been able to translate my skills more effectively to this slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am format. I can't say I didn't try, and I can't say some of it didn't seep through now and again, but I can't help but think the fault is my own. Maybe I should have done another lecture or two to establish a more concrete model for my students. Maybe I should have been at my computer every week writing out all the stuff I couldn't get to in the scope of our weekly meetings. Maybe I should have come into class each week with a different approach, one more determined on emphasizing basic points rather than resting on my traditional free-form policy. Maybe, maybe, maybe. After every class, I wind up thinking about what happened, replaying the proverbial seventh-inning, and wondering if the game would have been different if I'd done this or that-- a process I think most good teachers go through. (Never trust a teacher that doesn't question whether or not they did things as well they should have.) But my overarching sense this year, as opposed to previous years, is this, that I'm not sure my calls in that seventh-inning were necessarily the best ones. Frankly, I don't know anymore. Perhaps one of the biggest problems for me this year was one of control: as I've said to several people (and possibly on this blog, but I don't frankly remember anymore), it's felt this year very much like plugging holes in a dam with my appendages, knowing eventually I was going to run out of appendages and the damned thing would burst. In previous years, there was always a stronger sense of personal control of matters, but this year, no. In previous years, there was always the sense that I could come back to key issues later if we didn't develop them according to schedule, but not this year, or, rather, not so much this year. I can't help but feel that this year's been inauspisciously vague. It's one thing to generalize, it's quite another to be general, and I'm nagged by a very strong sense that we've done more of the latter than the former this year. And, yes, I guess ultimately it
is my own fault.
There is another possibility, of course, which is that I'm frustrated by the fact that I wasn't able to do things as well as I wanted to do them, and that I wasn't able to them in the way I believe wisest. In other words, I'm worrying more about my own standards than about other standards. That's a very real possibility, and, in which case, my error this year may well have been one of
hubris, and this would explain too my own sense of very personal frustration. Perhaps I'm worrying too much about what I believe to be the right thing instead of changing my own stance to meet the climate of the current situation. Perhaps. I said earlier that I think good intellectual development is a lot like good love-making, but perhaps I should have changed my stance on this for the year, and taught according to "the delight of the series of one-night stands." By this principle, each text is a conquest, an experience in the memory to be compared to a litany of other conquests, and understood accordingly. I don't like the word "understood" there, because such an understanding would be limited and finally prone to misinterpretation and reductionism. On the flip-side, though, there is a value to such "experiencing," even though I have serious ideological and pedagogical problems with such a programme of action. Maybe I am too entrenched in my own way of thinking on all this. That said, as much as one can learn from the one-night-stand approach, I still find my stomach unsettled by it: after all, the texts become little more than objects, to be briefly known and experienced and not necessarily to be understood with attention and detail. Maybe I just wasn't the best person to lead my group on this sort of expedition. Fact is, I can't pretend to know anymore.
Yeah, I've now thoroughly niggled my way through this, though I'm no more certain of anything than I was when I started to let myself mumble-out my own thoughts and doubts. Too many doubts, in fact. I don't think I've ever quite been so daunted by the idea of personal failure, even though, certainly, the effort was there.
Personal failure. Failing by my own standards. Yeah, that's probably the problem. I can't help but feeling that I've only given my class this year part of the knowledge to which I think they're entitled, and I suppose I can't help but think they've been jipped.
Or maybe I should just stop worrying. Yeah, right, like
that's gonna happen....
To those of you that've actually read this whole thing: pardon if my introspection has veered into solipsism. This entry started out as an update and, well.... How about I just shut up now? Good idea? Methinks so, too. Cheers everyone.
