turning to whitman...

See that hint of pleasure? I sent off my Alcott chapter yesterday. The ending is still unclear and I'm a bit confused about how to tie it all up, but for now I'm putting it aside (that is until I get some feedback). So for the first time in 11 months, I get to turn to something other than that damned Little Woman.

It feels exciting, actually exciting to begin on the Whitman chapter. Part of this comes from my almost complete lack of experience with Whitman. Sure, I've taught him and read him, but unlike my lovely friend Maura, I did not have a picture of him taped to my locker in high school -- which, by the way, is a sure sign that she is doing the right thing in life. I don't know the field or the major criticism, but it feels so fantastic to have it ahead of me. For all you Am. Lit folks, what great Whitman work do I have to read? I'm delighted to report that I have yet to locate any work on Whitman and education -- which may suggest the failure of my search terms, the irrelevance of the topic, or luck for the first time.

p.s. working today in the converted asylum in my hometown... perhaps I'll post my writings about it at some point.

i've escaped the angel! just as i was starting to feel antsy about finding a place to work away from the angel -- and eager to find one damn place with a good cup of tea in michigan -- i realized that there's a new and strangely perfect tea house six blocks from my mother's house. so now i sip on a lovely oolong and read through the chapter, which is nearly complete (maybe 2 or 3 more days) and prepared to send it off to my wonderful adviser who is likely ready to fire me for all my ridiculous delays. but it's coming along and i'm in the process of finalizing my boston research plans...a good day indeed.

What does it mean when you think you've been doing better work -- you've been feeling oddly good and content in the process -- and then you go back and read that work that you thought was so improved and you want to poke your eyes out because it's really no better than the other crap you were writing? Does it mean that you're simply a malcontent who will never feel satisfied? Is it the gods trying to tell you that even at your best you should hang it up? Is it that you've lost all perspective? Is it that damned dissertation demon whose strategic torture has simply gotten the better of you?
Whatever it is, this morning i felt like driving to a coffee shop, "accidentally" leaving my computer on a table, and waiting for a thief to relieve me of the burden. That way i could throw up my hands and say "well, there's no going back to it now." But instead, i sit at my mother's dining room table, with arlo at my feet, and the strange pastel angel looking down at me as i type. Come on Christian symbols, work your magic, save me from my writing angst.

as the semester opens in chapel hill, i find myself sitting in the public library in my hometown thinking how lovely it feels to finally -- for the first time in nine years -- have a semester free of teaching. i'm shocked by how much more i enjoy the writing and working on the dissertation when i'm not overwhelmed by preparing classes, grading papers, answering the needs of students. i supposed this must be why professors love and need sabbaticals so much. it also reminds me that my department needs to make dissertation funding a priority for students trying to finish. and while i had been really looking forward to teaching an Alcott class next spring, i'm beginning to feel like playing hookie is even better.

my time in the UP -- that's the Upper Peninsula for all you midwestern neophytes -- was wonderfully productive and i finally (after a pathetic year of pulling out my hair) came to see my project much more clearly. in fact, i think i finally reached an awareness of my work that i suspect my committee has believed that i've had all along. the easiest way to articulate this breakthrough is to say that i realized the limitations of didactic readings of 19th cen. texts (i'll ultimately argue that in didactic texts the content of the lessons trumps the form of teaching) and realized that alcott (along with my other figures) is far less interested in lessons as such and much more invested in methodology or pedagogy. After all, method can be translated broadly whereas particularized right feelings cannot be. I'm now working through this process of reading Little Men against the sentimental, didactic grain, which means concentrating my attention on its trope of reading lessons. It has meant that I needed to entirely rewrite my chapter (and ultimately toss out 95% of my year's research), but this seems like the right decision. so for now, the plan is to avoid chapel hill until the heat passes and until i complete this project (which i hope to do in the next week). and then make a quick trip to north carolina to drop off the pooch, meet with the adviser, and finalize plans for a research trip to boston in october.

more from the UP

freedom of the open road
the neighborhood:

public transportation

beach-side reveries

up north

Arlo and I have settled into our quarters in Jacobsville, MI (pop. 30).

I've come into Houghton for the morning...to check email, search out a fax machine (that seems rather impossible to find at the moment), track down some veggie burgers, and remind myself that the world does continue.

I’ve tried to take a few pictures of the surroundings, to give form to the earlier descriptions. I spent yesterday morning recovering from the 400 mile drive up here from Traverse City, settling in, unloading books, and finally, writing for a couple hours. I think the total silence should do the trick -- not to mention the impetus to create that three soaring bald eagles provides.

the infamous -- and crumbling -- cliffs. the house sits atop the drop.

the main house:

fishing in chilly superior

living room:
view of me:

my view:

Going off the grid

On Thursday I begin my trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It should take about 27 hours – give or take a few – from Andover to Jacobsville, MI. Fortunately, I have the new Harry Potter on audiotape and so I’ll make it to the real bowels of the Midwest before I’m without driving entertainment (save for arlo’s continuous snoring). I’ll be borrowing a place on the shores of Lake Superior for the foreseeable future…or until I want to poke my eyes out because of insufferable loneliness. I hope to make it a month or so. It’s my mother’s boyfriend’s place and he’s been kind enough to let this poor dissertation writer retreat from the world. His description – which cracked me up – is below. Perhaps I'll befriend Harry...

I’ll be officially off the grid – no easy phone, no internet, no wires, no cables, no mass communication distractions. I figure that if I can’t be productive with absolutely no interference, I might as well hang up my macbook and retreat into the woods for good. In hopes of preserving some sanity, I plan to drive into town (40 minutes away) a couple times a week to check email and have meaningful interpersonal communications with the grocery store clerks and the gas station attendants. If you happen to be in the area, don't hesitate to stop by and say hello...

So here's the scoop:
"1. The property sits on a bluff overlooking Lake Superior's Keweenaw Bay. Across the 7-mile-wide bay is the Abbaye Peninisula (the tip of which I find one of the U.P.'s most delightful spots on a sunny, not-too-windy day). Beyond the thin green strip of the Abbaye Peninsula is another bay you can't see, and beyond that you see the Huron Mountains 25 miles away. A little to the south of them, you can see Mt. Arvon, Michigan's highest point. Looking south across the bay you can make out Pequaming, where Henry Ford built a summer house and taught locals traditional English dances on his front porch. On a clear day you can see all the way to the smokestack of the Celotex plant in L'Anse at the bottom of the bay. Looking north you can see what locals call "Rabbit Island" (Traverse Island on maps) because of that animal's abundance there. The island is directly east of the hamlet Rabbit Bay. Beyond the island you see the open water of Lake Superior, which is about 1,200 feet deep in places. A 140-mile boat ride beyond the island will take you to remote Wah Wah, Ontario.

2. Our property extends 600 feet along the bluff, from the outhouse to the south to a giant white pine to the north (where Red Rock Road turns due north). The bluff is high enough to be quite dangerous. Don't stand too close to the edge, as parts are undercut and may crumble.

3. There's a cabin on the bluff you may enjoy staying in. Another pleasant place I like to read and sleep is the nook in the dormer on the second floor of the house. It has a sweeping view of the bay and mountains beyond. Late at night you can see the flashing light of the Huron Lighthouse on one of the 3 little islands just east of the tip of the Abbaye Peninsula. North of the cabin is a screened-in porch on the bluff with a good (and safe) viewing platform from which you can look down in the water. Sometimes a pair of loons swim past, diving periodically for fish. Eagles and hawks frequently fly along the coast (we have to keep an eye out for them when Stan goes out because one could easily swoop down and snatch him away).

4. There is no cell phone service in the area.

5. It's been a dry summer. Every other day or so it would be nice if you would water the day lillies next to the sauna, the herbs in the garden on the south side of the house, and the marigolds just south of the garden. Also, Harry would probably appreciate your watering his several marijuana plants and potato plants next door.

6. If you want to explore the area, there's an historic quarry across the street about a quarter mile down the mown drive past a summer cottage. (See photos on living room wall of it when in operation in the late 19th century). It suppled some of the highest quality red sandstone in the country, used to build many Keweenaw buildings and shipped as far as NYC to build brownstones and the first Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Entering the quarry is tricky, as most of the rim is sheer and deep. If you head left along the rim, you'll find a place you can make it down (it helps to slide slowly on your butt part of the way). The lush environment is a surprising contrast to the barren landscape seen in the old photos when the quarry was in operation. Nature triumphs in the end."

from indexed.blogspot.com

reading about the horrors of Fruitlands this evening and so the above seemed especially apt.

finding the fanatics

Another day at Orchard House, but sadly, i forgot my camera. Instead, I tried to jot down some of the exchanges I happened to over hear:

This between two gray-haired dames -- one with a thick german accent and the other a boston one --

Boston: "If you grew up not feeling good about all that gender stuff, then Jo's -- who is of course Louisa -- for you."
Berlin: "Women couldn't just go acting like Jo in my father's house."
Boston: "Is that how Little Women saved your life."

Crap, I thought, I missed the prior conversation on Alcott as life saver. But at least I caught the rejoinder:

Berlin: "She [Jo] was the primal source of my passion"

Kinky, huh?

The talk that I had been looking forward to was disappointing, mostly because it was exclusively biographical -- a real hit with the Alcott fanatics (as were the speaker's joke about Bronson Alcott being no Brad Pitt) -- and also a good reminder about what to avoid. But the audience was enraptured, hearing-aids turned to full volume, and a rather rotund but eager fan kept uttering (audibly, very audibly) "yes" and "Ahh" and "yes" and "oh yes" and "umm." It was cracking me up and I exchanged knowing glances with the octogenarian sitting next to me. It seems we were equally bemused and annoyed.

These last two days have reminded me how extraordinary the fanatic can be. She's read everything any of the Alcotts wrote and she accepts it with an unwavering sense of devotion. There's no real room to trouble her neat narrative, reading, as she does, Alcott as minister, mother, master. She evinces a kind of total commitment to that which we, as academics, are trained to be weary. I've realized that there's part of me -- or that there was part of me -- in the fanatic, and on some level it frustrates me that my work has diminished my love. At the end of her talk this morning, Lisa Stepanski mentioned that she thinks all Alcott scholars are engaged with their subject on a personal level, that they play out their own relationships to their father and mother in their work. As she said this, i wanted to stand up and say, "not me, not me," but I suspect that what I really learned from the fanatics today was that I'm as guilty of that charge as anyone. I do wrestle with the legacy of my family when I write about Bronson and Louisa, but I certainly hope those conjurations don't bleed too heavily into my work.