Sticking to What I Said...

I am sticking to what I said about Maureen Corrigan's "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading." The book is a tour de force on reading and enjoying the reading habit. The only minuscule fault I've found on the book is that it politicizes some things that are better off as simply literature. She seems to take the previously enjoyable "female extreme adventure" a bit too far. Half way through Chapter 3, we are still talking about it. I don't have a problem with it so much as I am making the statement that this part of the book might be a bit over-done. I do have some problems with passages like this one:
"Feminist detective-fiction heroines take a lickin', but they always come back tickin', ultimately (if only temporary) clearing their patch of the evil infestation of the patriarchy."

Also, "[these heroines] dodge bullets and disarm thugs to aim their own suggestively phallic pistols at male-dominated institution like the Catholic Church and the banking and insurance industries that have given women grief for so long."

I know for a fact that Ms. Corrigan is a feminist because she states it clearly enough in the text. I also understand that as a college professor (and one at a very liberal and elite institution such as Georgetown) she "reads" at times like--how else shall we put it--a college professor. Having spent four years of my life in graduate school, and being part of academia I recognize that these interpretations are valid. I just didn't expect to find them in a book that seems pitched to a general/lay person audience. Having said that, there are very interesting moments in the second half of the book. Her inclusion of Mark Edmundson is excellent; he is "the" last word on "reading." I have great faith in all that Maureen Corrigan states about the future of reading. We shall all wait and see.

Teaching and Time to Write

Maureen Corrigan writes beautifully about her appreciation of literature. Books like these make one wonder why on earth is someone else writing what we ourselves could have written years ago. She explain the excitement she feels while reading the extreme-adventure stories, especially when it is a woman protagonist of the same. She defines the extreme-adventure books as "Into Thin Air," and "The Perfect Storm." I can see both of those stories populated by eager heroines, ready to embrace whatever the world throws at them. I am wanting to read more and hopefully this weekend I will make time to do so.
This weekend the students began reading "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" by Stephen Crane. I have taught this novella before; it is an extraordinary story to introduce students not only to the Naturalist/Realism movement, but also to help them interpret the story from a nihilist/existentialist perspective. I've had little problems with the novella in the past, so this next week might prove for one with little or no inconvenience.
I signed up for the National Novel Writing Month (November) program. The goal is to write a 50,000 words or 175 page novel in 30 days. The good thing about it is that you only have to keep the story moving; editing is done after the first draft is completed. Then you can take the rest of the year fixing it up. We have to agree that the most challenging part of writing is getting that first draft out. What is difficult is to keep going; being a perfectionist, I know this will be very hard. I have plots swimming in my head since I left Washington DC, and I know with a much better discipline I would have finished at least one of them in the past. No crying over spilled milk, though, and I am taking this project seriously. I feel so much better when I fancy myself a writer! :-)