13 May, 2008 | 4 Comments

You probably won’t hear from me again until this weekend. I have the deadline for my PhD upgrade on Friday and I still have massive amounts of work to do. If I stay up until 3:00 a.m. each night, I might just make it.

Right about now I’m starting to wonder if it was smart to choose Fight Club as one of the novels I’m examining for the academic part of my dissertation. I could have chosen Jane Austen or something. What is wrong with me?

Fight Club has lines like this:

“It’s easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die. On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero.”

or this:

“Everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash. Anything you’re ever proud of will be thrown away.”

I also get to write about the fear of castration and all sorts of fun things. This is such a strange subject matter for a feminist like me to be writing about. On the bright side, I’m hoping to be the only person in the history of my university to submit a dissertation with the sentence “F–k Martha Stewart” in it. Fingers crossed.

11 May, 2008 | Comments

To my dear maman and all the mothers out there…Happy Mother’s Day!

Mother’s Day in Britain was back in March, so I’m proud of myself for remembering this.

This YouTube video on Mother’s Day is hysterical, though I fear you may have to be American to fully appreciate it…

9 May, 2008 | 1 Comment

An update to my previous rant…

Today I met with my supervisor, a well-respected novelist. She read three of my chapters this week and she said, regarding my concerns raised in the previous post:

1) I worry too much.

2) I am writing a novel that is highly publishable.

That’s a good way to end the week, at least.

I am stressed right now because I have to upgrade soon. When you register for a PhD, you are technically an MPhil student. You have to upgrade to full PhD status, usually at the end of your first year. I took a leave of absence at the end of my first year, so I am upgrading now at the end of my second year. At my school, this is a formal affair — I must submit completed chapters, a bibliography, an outline of my dissertation, etc. I must go through a mini-viva and then participate in a conference where I have to give a reading of my work and take questions from the audience.

I am quite nervous about this (duh — as if I wouldn’t be!). My materials must be submitted one week from today and I am frantically racing to get things done. I’m not used to having deadlines like this. It’s a shock to the system, actually. Normally I just email my supervisor when I want a meeting, which is all very laid back. This is major stress now. I’m not in the habit of doing academic writing, either. I have been working on my novel all year but now I must submit academic work for the upgrade in addition to the novel. Academic writing is hard, dammit. Fiction writing is harder, of course, but academic writing uses a different part of the brain. Fiction writers just get to make sh*t up. Now you want me to use citations?

As a result of all this cruel stress, I have not been sleeping well. I have the hugest bags under my eyes to prove it. Plus I’ve had headaches every day. Part of this is thanks to the change in the weather - it’s suddenly quite warm and summery and because of that, the students in the hall where I live have gone berserk and make so much noise outside at night that I can’t sleep. Still, if this little upgrade can impact me like this, imagine what I’ll be like when I actually have to submit my PhD. I may need around-the-clock psychiatric care.

7 May, 2008 | 5 Comments

<start of rant>

Today at a meeting of PhD students, the head of the English department invited us all to submit our CVs so we can be considered for teaching work for the autumn term. Oh, except those of us doing PhDs in creative writing need not apply. Apparently, the students refuse to be taught by anyone who hasn’t already published a novel. After the meeting, I asked him if I should at least submit my CV, you know, just in case something opens up. He said not to bother.

This is the major downside of doing a PhD in the UK, at least in a subject like English. There aren’t many (if any) opportunities to teach, which kinda sucks if you want to have a career as a university lecturer. I mean, what am I paying these people for? I thought it was to train me for my career. Newsflash: PhD students, particularly int’l ones like me, are not just cash machines. If you’re a student in the UK right now, you should know that there’s a good chance your university lecturers haven’t been trained to teach at all. See, that’s the flip side of this idiotic system.

In other news, we also learned today that our department has a very high rate of placing their PhDs in teaching positions. Their high rate of success is…drumroll…50%.

Basically, if I want a teaching career in creative writing (and I’ll have to teach creative writing — given that I’ve specialized, no one will consider me to teach straight English, apparently) then I need to publish my novel. It needs to be published by a reputable publisher and get reviewed well. If I can’t manage to pull this off in the next couple years, I won’t have a career. Then what will I do for a living? I really have no idea. It’s not as if I didn’t know this already. I did. But the stark reality is just hitting me. It’s difficult enough writing a book but now I have to live each day with the knowledge that my whole future is depending on it.

</end of rant>

5 May, 2008 | 5 Comments

I went to a conference recently called Narratives in Transition: Literary and Cultural Change since 1989. I only went because I needed to fill my quota of conferences and seminars for the year, but it turned out to be a fantastic experience. Not only was it super informative, but it felt good to get out of the house and mingle with actual humans. Now that I have become a full-time writer, I am essentially a recluse, which is a bit sad. Note to self: Attend more conferences. Did I mention there were lots of cute thirtysomething English professors there? By “English professor” I don’t mean “professor who is English” but rather “professor who teaches English,” even though they were all English anyway.

During one of the many coffee breaks (where I ate too much shortbread), one of these gents taught me how to pronounce Toibin, as in Colm Toibin, the Irish writer. The answer is: Toe-bean. Ahhh, one of life’s mysteries solved. [There was still, however, much disagreement over how to pronounce Coetzee. I’m getting tired of this debate. I suggest someone get Coetzee’s phone number and call him. He’d either answer the phone (doubtful) or even better, his voicemail would pick up: “Hello, this is J.M. —. I’m not home right now, please leave a message.” Problem solved.]

Anyway, on to the substance of the conference. There was a lot of discussion regarding narratives of trauma. I am particularly interested in this, since the narrator of my novel has suffered a trauma and it’s difficult to portray this in a way that is not self-pitying. While the conference was primarily academic in that it was aimed at scholars, not practitioners of creative writing like me, I got many good ideas and insights into my own work.

(more…)

2 May, 2008 | 2 Comments

Is Obama giving Hillary Clinton the finger? You can see the offending moment here. CBS News offers a longer and clearer video, but you have to watch a commercial first. On the CBS video, you can also see Obama doing another gesture — pretending to wipe dirt off his shoulders (the dirt being Hillary Clinton’s negative comments). According to The Atlantic’s blogger, this action is a reference to a Jay-Z song (a song which is filled with the n-word). I’m not hip enough to comment on this aspect of it.

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1 May, 2008 | 6 Comments

Someone please explain the appeal of Ian McEwan to me. Please. I beg you.

I just finished reading Enduring Love. I have never read a McEwan novel before, but I did see the film adaptation of Atonement (which I found to be problematic on many levels). I attended a conference recently during which someone gave a paper on McEwan and his name kept coming up in the ‘q and a’ discussion of other panels. Mainly, people where amused that McEwan’s name seems to be synonymous with “contemporary literary fiction” these days. Everyone was wondering how this happened, not so much as a comment on the quality of his work, but just marveling at his ascendancy to such a supreme place in the public’s literary consciousness.

After the conference, I was in a bookshop and decided to browse through a few of his novels. Enduring Love caught my eye because it has a first-person narrator. My novel is told in the first-person and I’m always on the lookout for good first-person novels. I hesitated, since I had seen the film version of Enduring Love and didn’t like it, but I decided I needed to read something by McEwan so I gave it a go.

(more…)

30 April, 2008 | 6 Comments

My court case is officially over — finally! The Paris Bar wired the money into my bank account, representing 100% of the judgment awarded to me by the court in February. This includes the original deposit, plus damages and legal fees. The last piece of the puzzle was getting the evil landlady to officially give up her right to appeal in writing, which I’m pleased to say she did this week. So that’s it. Case closed.

I didn’t think it would end this way. I thought there’d be more drama. At first she threatened to appeal the verdict and then attempted to essentially blackmail me into accepting a lesser amount. I thought I was in for another long fight, with more stress and even more money spent. But for reasons I’ll never understand, the landlady suddenly gave up and paid me everything. It’s a real mystery. Now this whole ugly business is finished. At last.

(more…)

28 April, 2008 | 1 Comment

I had a sense there’d be a gorgeous sunset tonight. It rained earlier, then cleared up, which almost always equates to a stunning sky at sundown. I wanted to walk down to Waterloo Bridge, but I am on duty in the hall tonight and cannot leave the building. Imagine my delight when I looked up from my computer and saw that the sunset had come to me — as seen from my bedroom window. Perfection.

28 April, 2008 | Comments

Just received and excerpted below for your reading pleasure. This is a ‘welcome back’ message for students returning from the month-long spring break. PhD students didn’t get a spring break, so this is really for those lazy undergrads and master’s students (ha!):

We hope you are all well-rested and as happy as any student can be with the prospect of exams looming…

We would also like to remind you to continue to be vigilant and take care of yourself when in the locality off-campus. There have been a number of incidents reported to us involving one particular group of local youths whose general anti-social behaviour includes harassing students…

Once exams are over, we are sure you will have a seriously good time, but may we draw your attention to the guidelines for responsible partying to make sure your well-earned relaxation doesn’t cause any additional local tension…

So very British.

27 April, 2008 | 3 Comments

Do you have an account on LibraryThing? It’s a website for literary nerds where you can catalog all your books, then compare your library to those of your friends and other users, rate books, write reviews, etc. I’ve used LibraryThing to catalog my books, but I rarely use the other features. [See selections from my library floating over there in the left sidebar.] LibraryThing isn’t really designed in a great way. It’s nothing compared to a website like Flickr, for example, but I think it’s a work-in-progress. They should hire me to retool it. I’d make it much better.

(more…)

26 April, 2008 | 10 Comments

Jason Shinder was a poet who taught at Bennington College, where I did my MFA in creative writing. I didn’t study with him since I’m not a poet, but he was a really sweet and talented guy. One of my fondest memories of graduation from Bennington was when Jason, who was the faculty member chosen to read our names out as we came up to get our diplomas, actually pronounced my name correctly. No one ever says my name correctly at events like these, but he was intent on getting it right. I was so happy that I gave him a hug right there on the stage. For some reason, I’ll always remember that.

Too many people from Bennington have died. It’s really difficult to even comprehend. I wish Jason’s family and friends all the best during this difficult time.

Click through to read one of Jason’s poems:

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24 April, 2008 | 9 Comments

2:14 - Arrive at cash machine, withdraw £50 ($100).

2:22 - Arrive at administrative offices of university, register and pay £20 fee ($40), the cheap-o student rate, for upcoming conference. Have £30 left in wallet.

2:37 - Arrive at Ryman stationery shop, ask to see ink cartridges for Epson printer that I hate (all four cartridges are empty…of course). Shop assistant hands over pack of cartridges, costing £27.99 ($60). Nearly have coronary. Waver between a) not buying ink; and b) purchasing ink for printer that has been empty for three months. Decide this moment will never be less painful, so bite bullet and purchase ink (while being grateful not in possession of actual bullet).

2:41 - Have spent £47.99 in less than one hour. Feel depressed. Have £2.01 in wallet.

2:42 - Walk home and mentally berate self for ink purchase. Feel despondent over empty wallet.

3:02 - Arrive home. Resist urge to give printer the finger, since completely juvenile. (Ah, what the hell.)

3:10 - Eat melon.

3:50 - Begin to write blog post, apologizing to readers for annoying writing style. Am reading Bridget Jones’s Diary, you see. Must read for PhD dissertation. Would never read by choice. Confession: Have read before by choice, when 24 years old. Liked book then, hate book now. Am completely horrified by misogyny in book. More soon, when finished reading.

weight = none of your business; alcohol units = 0; cigarettes = 0;

calories = don’t care; emotional fuckwits = way too many.

22 April, 2008 | 2 Comments

At last, the warm spring day I’ve been waiting for:

In the gardens of Victoria Embankment…

21 April, 2008 | 3 Comments

In March, I wrote about a former grad school classmate of mine, Bill Ayers, and his connection to Barack Obama. My post gets tons of Google hits each day. Ayers was a leader of the terrorist group known as the Weather Underground. Apparently, Obama’s connection to him got a prominent mention in the recent debate with Clinton in Pennsylvania. Now New Yorker writer George Packer has weighed in on the NY’er blog. Packer was an instructor at Bennington College at the same time Ayers and I were students there. Given this connection, Packer’s musings are particularly interesting to me.

21 April, 2008 | 5 Comments

Don’t you just love this photo of Hillary Clinton currently displayed very prominently on the homepage of the Times:

I can just imagine them publishing such a photo of Obama or McCain. When Hell freezes over. This may seem like something silly, but it’s not. As someone who has worked as a photo editor and seen her fair share of contact sheets, I know for certain that a rather large percentage of photos from any shoot or spontaneous news event will look unflattering or weird like the one above. Such photos are usually always deleted, not placed on the homepage of a “reputable” newspaper like the Times. But then, Hillary Clinton is not always afforded the same respect that her male colleagues receive. For shame.

Good luck tomorrow, Hill!

19 April, 2008 | 6 Comments

I have the blogging blahs. Sorry y’all. Here’s my week in a nutshell: Attending a seminar at the London Book Fair; starting three or four novels and not finishing reading them, leaving them open on my nightstand in a big pile; buying books I can’t afford; staring at my laptop screen for hours each day and waiting for a brilliant idea to help me fix this mess of a chapter (still waiting); feeling a lot of angst about my failure to finish this chapter; having an emergency meeting with my PhD supervisor; worrying about a looming PhD deadline; feeling demoralized about all the work I have to do on my novel; feeling depressed because the subject of my book is so dark and bleak and it’s starting to screw with my head; playing board games; having a Jason Bourne movie marathon that lasted for over six hours; drinking tea in cafés with friends; taking long walks; considering buying a Eurostar ticket to Paris for this weekend, but then deciding against it; forgetting to do my American taxes; eating too much chocolate.

What I really want to know is when spring will arrive. It feels like the dead of winter outside. I don’t mean to complain, but I *need* a nice spring day with sunshine and warmth. How long has it been since we’ve had a day like that — six months? That’s too long. It’s not healthy. Today an American friend told me if she lived here, she’d need to take anti-depressants. London is indeed a very dark place for at least half the year. We’ve earned the right to have spring, dammit. Where is it? If spring would come I could finish my chapter. I’d feel energized. I just know it!

16 April, 2008 | 1 Comment

</patriarchy>

hat tip

14 April, 2008 | 4 Comments

This video on YouTube is a must-see (particularly the first half).  It’s a really chilling look at the vile, misogynist mainstream media attacks against Hillary Clinton.  Just a warning for Hillary supporters: It’s very demoralizing.  The sexism we’ve seen in response to Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidency represents a disgraceful chapter in American history.  Sadly, it’s not just from right-wingers but also from so-called “liberals” and from Obama supporters.  I recently had an Obama supporter tell me Hillary would lose this nomination “because she is a bitch.”  At this point, I have no plans whatsoever to support Obama if he wins the nomination.  I obviously won’t be voting for McCain either.  Perhaps I just won’t vote.

14 April, 2008 | 7 Comments

Today I saw the acclaimed Coen brothers film at the cinema. I know, I’m behind the times. Here is my review:

Good flippin’ grief.

I think that about covers it. I mean, come on. What the heck was that all about? While I admire the skills of the actors and filmmakers, I think it was a deeply flawed film overall. More specifically, it featured a deeply flawed narrative. Actually, I would describe it as an anti-narrative. This review from the Washington Post is one of the only negative reviews out there (and I think it’s right on). I don’t understand the universal acclaim for this film at all. I could write more about it, but the whole experience has drained me and I’d just rather forget about it. One thing is for sure — tonight I will have nightmares about this face (and haircut):

Oy vey.