Spelling block

Tonight, while typing up some notes, I had to rely on spellcheck to correct "Odyssey" (as in, Homer). Even though I've read the Odyssey in a Classics course and therefore also wrote about it (and had to spell it), I must still deliberately peck it out on the keyboard every time.

Spelling block also happens to me with "paraphernalia", which I could not spell during a game of Cranium a few years ago. (I mix up the "e" and the "r".) And, oddly, I balk at "niece" because I want to put the "e" before the "i".

Anyone care to share the words they just can't spell?

P.S. I spellchecked this entry before posting it and Blogger's Spell Checker flagged "spellcheck". I had also misspelled "neice".

More Places to Go! (3)

Though Robert Adam designed many exteriors, he is best known for his interior work. One of his interior-only projects was Syon House. Do check out the website and take the virtual tour. Imagine walking in and being greeted by this hall:


On a less majestic note, I should also go to the historical archives at the Soane Museum, which has over 8,800 (yes, over eight thousand) drawings by Robert and James Adam (his brother), including drawings of furniture.

And still on the archive front, I need to check out the Royal Institute of British Architects and its papers.

See? Being a grad student isn't all gallivanting around England taking pictures of 200-year-old houses. Sometimes you have to read things.

18 hours of daylight

One of the advantages of living in the northernmost provincial capital of Canada: I can read outside on my balcony at 10 p.m. two days after summer solstice. The natural light is still that good. Of course, the converse is that it gets dark at 4 p.m. for winter solstice (Dec. 21), right when everyone's writing term papers and study for finals. What gets me through the winters? Thinking about the summers.

Words! Shoes!

I subscribe to daily A Word A Day e-mails. Tonight (after midnight), this showed up in my inbox for Monday.

Shoes! Words about shoes! All week! I think I'm hyperventilating!

Hee!

Distraction

http://jacksonpollock.org

My exam structure

Anna asked me tonight exactly what my exams would be like, and I figured that other people would want to know as well. So...

I am currently making my way through three reading lists which I compiled with input from my committee (my supervisor, first reader and second reader). The lists essentially test my ability to write my dissertation and demonstrate knowledge in my field (18th century British). I sit one exam per list. Each exam takes three hours, and I have to write two essays based on a list of around 6-10 questions. The exams are written in a windowless room in the Humanities building where I'll have a computer (apparently there's a Mac in there, thankfully). About 10 days after writing my last exam, there's a candidacy exam in the form of an oral defence of what I wrote. The defence is chaired, and I will be questioned by my committee as well as an external reader from the department.

My exams are tentatively scheduled for afternoons of Aug. 28, 30, and Sept. 1 (MWF). We're not sure about the defence yet, since that depends on availability.

There's been a lot of discussion in the department about revising the exam structures to be more useful and less stressful for students, especially since none of us will ever have to replicate this kind of scenario again in our careers. Other English departments around the world have different exam structures (some radically so), and other departments within the Faculty of Arts also do things differently. Essentially, there is no consistency about exams within or outside of the university, which only makes things more complicated.

The bottom line? Expect me to be stressed as hell the last two weeks of August. Wheee!

Oh, the places I'll go (Part 2)

Met with my supervisor today, who just got back from London and recommended more places that I should see:

Samuel Johnson's House: Man of letters, author of the first English dictionary, subject of the English-speaking world's most famous biography (Boswell's Life of Johnson), he even had his own entourage.
The Victoria and Albert Museum: While the 18th century holdings are just okay, it should still be a standard stop for any academic researching British history.
Geffrye Museum: It's the Museum of Historical English Interiors, starting from 1660. How can I not go?
Dennis Severs' House, 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields, London: Formerly owned by an eccentric artist, the house is done up in 18th century style with an emphasis of conveying the 18th century experience to the visitor. Looks kind of cool; certainly not historically accurate but a must-see (and apparently a must-smell, too).

More Robert Adam: Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire. A country house with preserved interiors.

The list is growing. How long will it be when I'm actually finished all my reading?

Penny drops

There's a lot of information in my head right now and for the most part it's lying dormant until I need to call it up for written responses or my exams. However, there's also a lot of Austen knowledge sitting underneath everything and either a) affecting how I read things or b) being illuminated by what I read.

Today, b) happened as I was flipping through some books about 18th century architect Robert Adam at the university library, books which included some beautiful colour pictures. One noticeable aspect of all the rooms is just how big they are. And suddenly I realized that when Miss Bingley asks Elizabeth Bennet to "take a turn about the room" at Netherfield in Pride and Prejudice, it's not as silly a suggestion as it sounds to modern ears. Plans for drawing rooms at this time featured measurements as large as 20 feet by 25 feet, or 23x23 feet. The BBC miniseries adaptation of the novel shows this, but one thing (of many) that I hated about the 2005 Keira Knightley adaptation is how small the room is in the comparable scene. Poor Miss Bingley and Miss Eliza walk dizzyingly around Darcy and the room feels more stuffy than it should. After all, ceilings in contemporaneous houses ranged from 13-15 feet high. Can you imagine? 15 feet high ceilings? And many of them ornamented? The mind boggles.

New Word

Tonight I learned a new word, theobromine, from my sister.

I particularly like this part of the Wikipedia entry:

Theobromine has very different effects on the human body from caffeine; it is a mild, lasting stimulant with a mood improving effect, whereas caffeine has a strong, immediate effect and increases stress

because now, instead of just cutting back on coffee, I feel justified in eating more chocolate!

But isn't it art?

This is why art has a credibility problem.

And yet, it's also an interesting working example of the Intentional Fallacy, the literary concept that a text can mean something that the author didn't intend it to (i.e., relying solely on authorial intent is the fallacy). The Intentional Fallacy certainly allows readers/art viewers to interpret a piece of work without being restricted by the question, "what did the author/artist mean by that?"

Of course, this incident takes the concept even further by questioning the artist's very definition of "art" and what constitutes a complete piece of artwork. If the artist does not believe that it's art, but other people do, and if these other people hold positions of authority in the field (i.e., have cultural capital), is it art? Mind you, the artist in this case also possesses cultural capital by virtue of being a university professor of art. So we have two sides, both representing powerful state and cultural institutions, debating the artistic merit of a slate base and stick of wood.

I could (and will) take this post even further down tangential lane by noting that there is a fine tradition of making art from fragments. The Modernists loved fragmentation, the breakdown of traditional language forms to "make it new" (see: Joyce, Eliot, Emerson, the Dadaists, etc.). Reaching even further back, the few of Greek poet Sappho's poems we know of are fragments. In the case of the Modernists, the fragmentation is purposeful and effective. In the case of Sappho, does knowing that all we have are fragments compromise the integrity of her work? Would we read her poems differently if we didn't know that they were incomplete? Do we bring a bias against incomplete works to our readings? Have readers always insisted on completion, or does this need arise from cultural and social forces?

I think there is a basic human need for things to end in a satisfactory (not necessarily happy) manner. Why else is there all this talk about needing "closure" or starting a new chapter in our lives? And maybe when real life doesn't end up as clearly delineated as we would like, we turn to entertainment to give us that sense of closure instead. Only, I also think that some of the best writing out there explodes the concept of unity. Does art imitate life, or is life imitating art?

Oh, the places I'll go

Having finished up my Restoration and 18th-century drama readings (though not having written my response yet--oops), I started reading/skimming 18th-century architectural treatises and handbooks this week. As a result, I've also started compiling a list of possible houses to visit on a future research trip (next summer! Yay!). Some of these are still tentative, since I don't know if the buildings still exist and/or are open to visitors.

The list so far:

Architect: Inigo Jones (a little early for my area, but influential. Also, he designed sets!)
Houses: Banqueting House at Whitehall, England; Queen's House at Greenwich.

Architect: Robert Adam (important architect of the second half of the 18th century, particularly in the high Georgian era. Like many pre-1800 architects, designed interiors as well as exteriors)
Houses: Green Park Ranger's House, London; Williams Wynne House at 20 St. James's Square.

Unfortunately, none of these houses retain their Georgian interiors (the furniture, facades, paint colours), so while actually experiencing the space will be invaluable, it won't be the same if there's an IKEA coffee table in the middle of the drawing room.

Aaawww...

Check out the entrance requirements for this London park.

Coffee. Java. Joe. Espresso. Latte.

We all know that caffeine is a stressor, making us perky and/or agitated, depending on how you look at things. Lately I've been having trouble sleeping (I mean more than usual), leading me to think that I should be more disciplined about my coffee intake (note that I didn't say cut back) since I'm already stressed about my exams.

And then I came across this cost of coffee calculator.

My one-cup-a-day habit could get very costly if I buy all my coffee from a coffee shop. It doesn't help that I've developed a taste for the expensive stuff, either. Turns out the coffee at Tim Horton's is not good enough for Mary, and neither is the coffee at Second Cup or Starbucks. No, I have to love the coffee at a local Italian coffee bar. Said coffee bar serves some of the best. coffee. ever. Yes, it is more expensive, but you also get better coffee and generally more caffeine per volume.

And how bad is it that I know of more than 10 coffee houses within a four-block radius of my apartment?

While I am reasonably sure that I don't have a problem (yet?), I will consciously make an effort to make coffee at home more, drink less of it in general, and refrain from drinking any coffee after 2 p.m. If things go well, I might even be able to cut back (gasp!) to one cup every other day. No guarantees about that, though. The withdrawl headaches are a killer.

Sweet Procrastination

Tonight, instead of reading more De Certeau, I decided to bake cookies.


The results, if I do say so myself, were quite good. I got the recipe from my friend Dave when he brought these to a bake sale we had in the department (we clearly have very sophisticated fund-raising events in English).

In other reading news, I read Sophia Lee's play A Chapter of Accidents today and can't help feeling that it was a waste of my time. The plot is frustrating, the characters underdeveloped and the emotional tone turns on a dime from despair to joyous to anger, etc. It's a mediocre example of "sentimental comedy", one of the most popular forms of theatre in the late 18th century. The one notable aspect of the play is Lee's interest in places where powerless women could be imprisoned by powerful men (a nunnery, a garret, the loft in a stable). I suspect that this will come up again in her novel The Recess, which I also have to read. In the case of the book, though, I fully expect prisons, since it's a gothic novel.

Six Degrees of Separation: Authors' Edition

Did you know that only two degrees separate Jane Austen from James "A Million Little Pieces faux-memoir" Frey?

Frey's formerly-endorsed-by-Oprah memoir was picked up in the UK by publisher John Murray, the same publisher who, about 200 years earlier, published Austen's last four novels.

To bring things full circle, John Murray was bought by a larger publisher, Hodder Headline. Check out Headline's newest covers for Jane Austen's novels (they're in the box on the right). Candy-coloured covers reminiscent of chick-lit does not a happy Austen scholar make.

The World's Debris (De Certeau)

Just finished reading a chapter in Michel De Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life about walking in the city, and walking in general. It's pretty theoretical (a lot of what came before didn't really sink in) but I really took to this chapter like I've never taken to a chapter in any theory book before. De Certeau argues that the act of taking a step is itself an enunication of the space, a "pedestrian speech act". This act is subversive, working within but against the imposed order of The City by deviating from set paths (taking short cuts, window shopping) and creating its own localized spaces. He draws a parallel between the stylistic figures of spatial creation and myths, which he also sees as something without a known origin and taking its components from pre-existing stories, fragments, etc.

This is all a confusing preamble to two lovely quotations. Much of De Certeau's thinking is sophisticated, but now and then he writes some still-sophisticatd-but-also-fine sentences.

First is a description of graffiti in New York:

"the fleeting images, yellowish-green and metallic blue calligraphies that howl without raising their voices and emblazon themselves on the subterranean passages of the city, 'embroideries' composed of letters and numbers, perfect gestures of violence painted with a pistol, Shivas made of written characters, dancing graphics whose fleeing apparitions are accompanied by the rumble of subway trains." (102)

The second is shorter:

"Stories about places are makeshift things. They are composed of the world's debris" (107).

De Certeau ends the chapter by arguing that the everyday practice of space, of our negotiating space, repeats a childhood experience of moving towards another while simultaneously identifying with the other. Gaston Bachelard is similarly interested in childhood in The Poetics of Space, specifically how the childhood home is the prototypical home that we carry with us for the rest of our lives. Even though De Certeau spends the entire chapter discussing urban spaces (specifically New York City), he ends by tracing it back to the most intimate space of all. I find this an intriguing turn that warrants further thought.

What's in a name?

My interest piqued by my friend Ross, I've been watching video of the Whyte Ave. hockey celebrations on YouTube.com (just enter "Whyte Ave" into the search field). I haven't gone down to the celebrations myself, due mostly to lack of interest in the Oilers. However, I do live two blocks up and about four blocks west of the main intersections where the celebrations occur, so I get a lot of noise on the nights that the Oilers win.

I am amused, though, by the utter inability of anyone to coin a nickname for the celebrations à la Calgary's Red Mile a couple of years ago. I have heard the term the Blue Mile, as well as the short-lived Oil Slick, and some neighbourhood business have "You're on the Copper Mile" signs up (because copper is the new orange, apparently). The clincher, though, has to be something I read in the Globe and Mail on Monday: The Copper Kilometre. Come on, people! Just because there's alliteration doesn't make it good! And really, as my sister pointed out, the street's already named like a colour. And besides, two major intersections does not a mile make.

With Roloson out, it's difficult to see how the Oilers can win the series. At least that will give everyone another 16 years to come up with a better nickname.

Welcome 4 a.m.

I have entered the blogging universe for no good reason. I am, as the title of the blog suggests, easily distracted from any tasks at hand, which this summer is largely comprised of reading for my exams. While this blog will serve as a place to vent my frustrations and post any random items that I find interesting, I also hope it will be a way for my friends away to keep track of me.

So here we go.

P.S. I should add that in its original context, the term "excessively diverted" does not mean distracted, but rather, amused. Also, one free beer to the first person to give me the source (be as specific as possible) of the title.