Literature may mimic life, but in the end, that is what it is -- made up

School is unbearably restricting. Theory. That's all the professors care about. Not your thoughts. You can't read a piece of literature without connecting it to some piece of theory. The novel is to be seen as a subsidiary to the theoretical piece; the novel is only used to support the theory. That is not how I think, how I feel one should think. The novel is the most important bit, any abstract theory should be taken into consideration but is not necessary. So now that I am faced with writing these two essays, I am having a terrible time of it, because I have some great thoughts but no theory pieces to connect them to.

I feel rather estranged in London. I love it here so much, but I don't feel necessarily attached to the place, and particularly the people. I went to the pub last night for this professor/student end of the term thing and hung out with some of the students who are rather nice, but, I must admit, rather boring. At one point, they began talking about how horrid facebook is and my favourite student about how she doesn't know how to type and never uses a computer. At home, I was always the ultra-serious one that was awkward and old-fashioned; now I'm still awkward but only because I am rebellious and not serious enough.

They're all really good at this theory stuff. They say brilliant things in class -- or at least things that the professors rather like. I never receive any positive remarks from my professors. Anything I say is never good enough. Other students say things and the professor say's, "Right that is so interesting," and then go off on it, and I say something and it is like, "Oh, yeah, okay, moving on then." Because what I say is always very grounded. Theory stuff is relevant, I'm sure, but the classes are so set on it, that they neglect the other elements -- the EMOTION element of a novel, or the mere interaction between characters, the themes that are present, the authors life and literary intention, the real social issues at work. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Last week we were reading some theory author and the professor was dead set on connecting it to BLEAK HOUSE. None of the students could think up anything and then the prof. turned to me b/c I hadn't spoken all class and I said, quite truthfully, "Well, there probably isn't any connection," to which the students laughed. They thought I was making a joke.

What I find most interesting is that the students take it all as a matter of course. They never challenge the professor or the works themselves that are apparently this or that as pronounced by some literary critic. What I have always loved about literature is how open-ended it is. Challenging what one person or another say's about it. But the students just sit in class with these naive expressions of total belief that what is being told to them is absolutely correct, or what they believe about a piece is correct, when almost everything these students spout out is so relative, could so easily be wrong. The ridiculous stuff they say and with such assurance. They all seem to live in another world, one that is pretty, and nice, and where no one fights one another. But I suppose that is what it is to be an English student. Most live in a fantasy land made up of people that don't really exist, for which mammoth amounts of critical texts are created to evolve some sort of substantive worldly meaning to it all. Literature may mimic life, but in the end, that is what it is -- made up. It really has hit me recently as I sit in class listening to these students so serious, with their hand gestures and their rumpled brows, spouting off about Hardy's fictional world Wessex and what sort of space this made-up world represents -- just how pathetic it all is. There are people dying in Africa, and I'm sitting in a classroom with students who are getting hot and heavy about a place that doesn't even exist.

In short, I have doubts about becoming a professor. I think I would be good enough to teach undergrad and I am passionate about literature and about teaching other people about what I find particularly interesting and relevant about literature, and more than anything being a good role model for students, both on an intellectual plane and a humane one.

But I don't know if I'll ever believe in this theory stuff and if I'm going to have to work deeply with it in order to get my PhD (which in the states takes 7 years to complete), then I'm just going to be miserable. Unless, in some way, I learn to understand it...but I really don't know if I can understand it or appreciate it on the level I need to.

A friend of mine said to me recently that blogs are for expelling our unhappiness, so this is just one helping.

[photo: Gillian Anderson]