Walking the Wall

My college semester started this evening and I have to say that I was more than ready to get back into the fall schedule, and have some mental challenge as much as I have enjoyed a lazy summer. I always take two classes, and this semester is no different–so I headed off to my first class early in order to pick up my books, one of my favorite "start of the semester" rituals, and I have to say I got some good ones.

For my Genre Studies class I picked up:

• Dubliners by James Joyce, a collection of short stories about the city of the authors birth, I have not read this and look forward to it greatly.
• The Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway, I’m skeptical of this one, I have never been a fan of Hemingway, the few pieces of his that I read seemed to be skewed negatively at women, we’ll see if any of the reading this semester changes my mind.
• Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver, I haven’t ever read anything by Carver that I know of, but this comment by the Washington Post Book World makes it promising, "Carver has an acute sense of the singularity, the endearing oddity, of each human being; to each person he grants a measure of dignity because, if nothing else at all, this person has the sure distinction that no one else is precisely like him."
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, this looks like it is going to be a very interesting read, I have always been fascinated with the Vietnam era since my aunt married a Vietnam vet in a wheel chair, I have a whole scrapbook full of article clippings and poem upon poem that I wrote about Vietnam and the POWs in Junior High and Highschool.
• The Tell-Tale Heart and other writing by Edgar Allan Poe, I have always loved Poe and fondly remember a trip to the theater to see the Tell-Tall Heart on stage with the sound of the heart thumping in highschool so I’ll be happy to visit with him this semester.

All in all I’m pleased with the selection and interested to get started on this class. For my other class, Studies in Literature and Culture–the "theme", if you will, for the class is "Cannibalism, Consumerism, and the Cultures of Cruelty", that is a mouthful, and I didn’t mean that as the little side joke it is. I was not aware of this theme when I signed up, apparently the theme changes from semester to semester–it will cover this motif/theme from mythology, to Children’s lit (Hansel & Gretal, Little Read Riding Hood, and etc), to colonialism (think The Tempest, Heart of Darkness, Gulliver’s Travels) to more modern times. The two books required are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Naked Lunch. I was surprised by the topic, though certainly intrigued, and looking of the book and movie list given to choose a paper on, there is an amazing amount of cannibalistic/consumeristic themes in books and movies–more than you would think. The professor’s definition is loose, from literal cannibalism to vampires to excessive consumption in other areas, so it seems like it will be interesting. However, tonight was our first night and we had a "surprise" movie and I have to say that I spent 124 minutes feeling disgusting and nauseous watching a British movie called The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover–I do *not* recommend this movie to anyone and don’t see any merit in anyone watching this purely for entertainment. While I can see the stylistic merit to it (the directors use of color was very well done) and while I can appreciate the point to the movie…the juxtaposition between high class and the disgusting…the idea that we are all consumers and cannibals, that while we condemn violence and horrible acts that set certain people outside of societies boundaries–we then turn around and pay money to watch movies that are all about violence and the horrific things that these people commit. What does it say about a society that we watch movies like this? All very interesting, but I would have been happier not having ever watched this movie and I still feel nauseous three hours later–I will say that I don’t forsee myself watching any violent movies or eating any meat for some while.