Week Six: Pomo Pervs

Things are finally beginning to take shape. After becoming attached to a thesis early in the semester, I totally abandoned it and started over.

Now, I’m thankful for the process and for what I learned. My original thesis required me to read a lot of queer theory, an area of criticism to which I hadn’t had much exposure. So, even though I don’t intent to salvage any part of my original thesis, I’m happy that I had the opportunity to read Bodies That Matter and Gender Trouble closely; I don’t know that I would have read them (and like texts) had I not felt the pressure of my thesis weighing down upon me.

My current – and last, dammit! – thesis sees me return to my favorite author, Thomas Pynchon (who should have won the Nobel Prize this week), and his novel, Gravity’s Rainbow.

I had a fantastic conversation with Dr. Kocela earlier this week, and not only did he agree to be my adviser, but he also provided me some much needed direction on whittling my thesis down to manageable size. I moved from “the sublime and Gravity’s Rainbow” to something much more specific. I’m going to be researching the convergence of paranoia, sexual perversity, and the postmodern sublime in Gravity’s Rainbow. That specific enough?

I scrambled to assemble this week’s annotated bibliography in the wake of my meeting with Kocela, and I was a frustrated that I could find little in the way of clear “conversation” lineage discussing my topic. At best, it looks as if I will have to pick up a couple of threads and try to stitch them together.

I suppose that I shouldn’t really be complaining; I could find literally nothing about my previous topic. Now I just need to start manufacturing something (besides piles of books on and around my kitchen table). This may be an impossible dream, but I’d actually like to get ahead and not feel the stress of last minute writing.