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stoutfellowToday I gave a midterm to my independent-study student; the others took it last night. I have no classes on Friday; Monday is a holiday; and my IS student will be out of town all next week, so I don't need to go in Tuesday either. At least as far as classtime is concerned, I'm looking at a five-day weekend.
So, what am I going to do with myself? I'll probably run one of the dogs over to the vet for a tooth-cleaning, and maybe do a few things around the house. Also, of course, those midterms need grading. But that shouldn't take too long; there are only six of them.
Some time, of course, will go to reading. My current bus book (which I'll read at home, some) is Wayne C. Booth's A Rhetoric of Irony. Literary criticism - at least, the theoretical kind - isn't my forte, but I like to dip my toe in once in a while. I enjoyed Booth's A Rhetoric of Fiction, when I read it in grad school. Also, as mentioned, I'm reading Jurgen, and I'm taking a second pass through Pratchett's Wee Free Men.
I'll be celebrating the Fourth in my usual fashion, by watching (on successive nights) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1776, and State of the Union. The last is one of the lesser-known (and more serious) Hepburn/Tracy films; he is a wealthy businessman who is seduced into running for President by Angela Landsbury, a ruthless, conniving and sexy newspaper publisher, and Hepburn is his estranged wife. Virtue triumphs (it's a Frank Capra film); he realizes his folly, withdraws from the race, and returns to his wife in the end. Like many of Capra's films, it depicts a grim and corrupt world. (Capra's films may be corny, but they aren't saccharine; the victory won by the good guys is almost always small-scale, and the forces of evil are still out there, essentially undamaged.)
But mostly I'm just going to relax and enjoy myself.
So, what am I going to do with myself? I'll probably run one of the dogs over to the vet for a tooth-cleaning, and maybe do a few things around the house. Also, of course, those midterms need grading. But that shouldn't take too long; there are only six of them.
Some time, of course, will go to reading. My current bus book (which I'll read at home, some) is Wayne C. Booth's A Rhetoric of Irony. Literary criticism - at least, the theoretical kind - isn't my forte, but I like to dip my toe in once in a while. I enjoyed Booth's A Rhetoric of Fiction, when I read it in grad school. Also, as mentioned, I'm reading Jurgen, and I'm taking a second pass through Pratchett's Wee Free Men.
I'll be celebrating the Fourth in my usual fashion, by watching (on successive nights) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1776, and State of the Union. The last is one of the lesser-known (and more serious) Hepburn/Tracy films; he is a wealthy businessman who is seduced into running for President by Angela Landsbury, a ruthless, conniving and sexy newspaper publisher, and Hepburn is his estranged wife. Virtue triumphs (it's a Frank Capra film); he realizes his folly, withdraws from the race, and returns to his wife in the end. Like many of Capra's films, it depicts a grim and corrupt world. (Capra's films may be corny, but they aren't saccharine; the victory won by the good guys is almost always small-scale, and the forces of evil are still out there, essentially undamaged.)
But mostly I'm just going to relax and enjoy myself.
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Date: 2004-07-01 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-02 09:10 am (UTC)I don't know why Rene Wellek (who was supposed to be our god for literary criticism in the late 70s) seemed so pompous and deliberately obtuse to me. We got a lot of humor mileage out of his tome. My best friend and I also used to giggle over certain *schools* raised in the Lit Crit seminar. The top pick for most pretentious sounding *school* in German Literature went to the group that styled itself "The Chicago Aristotelians." Every time they were mentioned, I'd burst out laughing. But then, as you know, it doesn't take much to make me laugh (g).
Happy 4th of July!