Week Twelve: Thesis Envy

Though I interpreted it as an order, I received some good advice this week: don’t work for a while. Edict or recommendation, I don’t care: I’m stopping working on my prospectus on Tuesday and not starting again until next weekend. I need a break. I started rereading Gravity’s Rainbow from page one this week, looking for some fresh perspective and new insight, but all endeavor’s really accomplished is to remind me that I’m dealing with a humongous novel to which I’m applying complicated theory that I don’t fully grasp. Instead of cracking the code, I’ve just made myself more anxious.

In the meeting this week, I discussed having too much to cover in my thesis: the Sublime, sex, paranoia, and a big-ass novel. I almost wonder if any thesis about Gravity’s Rainbow should be ventured at all. I don’t know how Seth makes dealing with Moby-Dick, to which Gravity’s Rainbow is the 20^th c. corollary, look so manageable. I’m itchy with envy right now.

To scale this project down to a reasonable scope, I find myself jettisoning things left and right. The conversation I had the other day focused on which form of the Sublime to abandon. Do I lose Kant or do I lose the postmodernists? I’m still wobbling on that decision. And while that quandary still hangs in the air, I need to shed additional matter. Do I lose paranoia or sex?

I mean, historically I’ve definitely had more of the former than the latter, but …

Week Eleven: Inspiration Disparity

I don’t have a wealth of things to write about this week. Having completed my prospectus conclusion, I assembled all of my prospectus bits the other night. I laid them out on my kitchen table, page after page. Eight and a half pages. Seems somehow meager, even if the whole shebang only requires forty pages. I plan on revisiting my rough (but existing) prospectus one more time before taking Dr. Christie’s advice and scrapping everything. Recreating the prospectus from memory will be my Saturday/Sunday project.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how many of my classmates have read my work this semester. I’m kind of weirded out by it. I didn’t start feeling this way until I reflected on it the other night, but I feel naked. Not intellectually naked – I don’t feel stripped down in any greater existential sense, but I do feel exposed.

The “workshopping” element to the class has revealed my work ethic, if not my very capability. And standing next to some of the minds in this semester’s 8001, I feel as if I’ve squandered the opportunity be goaded, driven by some of my classmates.

Seth, in particular, is doing a masterful job of putting his prospectus together, and every time I read his work, I feel a combination of regret, envy, fascination, and –greatest – respect. Too, Sally obviously heeds some inner compulsion that not flagged yet, even this late in the semester.

I’m tired. I need some of whatever they’re drinking.

Week Ten: Half-assing it

In addition to taking 8001, I’m also enrolled in Dr. Thomas’s Beckett, Bersani, Badiou class – an interesting class consisting mostly of theory with a smattering of fiction. The class has two requirements (besides the tacit requisite that we attend class regularly: a presentation and a final paper. 50/50.

This week, I presented on the relation of Beckett’s fiction to the Kantian and postmodern sublime, and to be honest, I’m pretty proud of myself. I’m not gloating over having done an amazing job presenting, however. Instead, I’m taking some pride in having finally learned what I assume to be a necessity of grad school life: manipulation of previous, concurrent, and future assignments into discrete projects.

After a year and a half of busting my ass and (typically) trying to run in multiple directions at once, I made life a little easier on myself by adapting my thesis work into a presentation for Dr. Thomas’s class. While researching my Pynchon thesis, I noted Beckett’s work brought up frequently, both as reference point for the postmodern sublime and as an influence on Pynchon’s work. So, using the groundwork that I’ve done on the Pynchonian sublime, I built my Beckett presentation.

I felt as if I were taking the easy way out at first – half-assing it – but not only do I now feel as if I created a well-researched presentation, I also think that my further research for the project helped me get a better sense of what I need to my thesis.

My other big development this week is that Dr. Thomas agreed to read for me. I feel as if I’m assembling a dream team; this must be what successful fantasy football players feel like.

The semester is creeping to a close, and I feel pretty good.