Thursday, December 17, 2015

End of Year Thoughts from Hamlet's Ophelia

Greetings, fellow readers! This semester has been exceptionally stressful and difficult for me because of grad school applications and general anxiety about the future, so I hope you will forgive me for not being as diligent in my posting as usual. As my penultimate semester of undergrad draws to a close, I've been thinking a lot about one of my favorite lines from Hamlet--funny, I know, how I always seem to come back to this particular play. The quote comes from Ophelia's mad scene, when she addresses the members of the court with striking directness. She says, "We know what we are, not what we may become."

This semester has been a struggle to live in the absolute present: I have very few concrete directions in which my life will go after graduation. Most notably, I won't know which, if any, grad schools I'm accepted to until March. All I know is who I am and what I have made of my life these past four years at UF. I'd like to think that when graduation comes (in four short months, wow!) I'll have left something meaningful behind.

I'm super uncertain about a lot of things, but whenever I feel my jitters about the future starting to stress me out, I try to think of what Ophelia says. I could never have anticipated what I would become during my time at UF, and no matter where I end up after, I have similar expectations that I will do extraordinary things.

That, dear readers, is my state of mind at the end of the year. I hope all your finals/end of year reports/work-related activities are going well, and I wish you all a healthy and happy holiday season.

Until next time,

Anna

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

End of Semester Reading Roundup

Greetings, fellow readers! Freedom from academic reading is nigh, and with the summer comes my return to my job at the bookstore, where I can borrow any book I want from work for free--such bliss! I have several titles I cannot wait to read, including:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which I have dipped into on and off over the past two weeks or so. It's about a group of post-apocalyptic traveling Shakespeare actors, so of course, it's right up my alley. I'm not very far into it, but I find the characters' arguments about whether to perform comedies or tragedies when everyone's dropping dead from the superflu particularly prescient. So much of the discourse in English and humanities circles right now centers on the utility of these disciplines in a world where concrete production is often prized over abstract reasoning. The traveling players are literally enacting the current Great Struggle of my field right now, and I'm excited to see where they go with it. Of course, I'm also looking forward to picking apart all the Shakespeare references.

The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen. This is the much-anticipated sequel to The Queen of the Tearling, a fantasy novel which I discovered at work last summer and loved. This is one of those books which cries out to be made into a series, and when the new installment comes, it'll be like Christmas in July.

City of Thieves by David Benioff. I found this book randomly on Goodreads (yes, I redownloaded the app, after much internal conflict), and it seems like the perfect way to continue my Russian literature kick. By the way, if any of you have good Russian lit recommendations, do let me know. It's mostly new terrain for me, aside from obvious titles like Anna Karenina, etc.

Also, if you want to follow me on Goodreads and share your recs that way, you can do so here.

The Complete Tales by Edgar Allan Poe. This one is slightly work-related, since it's very likely I'll be writing my senior thesis on Poe this spring. Still, I've been a fan of his stories ever since "The Tell-Tale Heart" scared the bejeezus out of me at the ripe old age of eight. It's going to be fun to go back and reread some old favorites, as well as discover new ones, and if I get any good thesis ideas, well, you won't hear any complaints!

This last one isn't really a reading book per se, but The Essential New York Times Cookbook edited by the incomparable Amanda Hesser has recently joined the literary tomes on my shelves. I picked it up for $5 at the Friends of the Library booksale this weekend, and it's chock full of so many good things to cook, I don't know where to start! I'm moving out of the dorms and into an apartment this year, so I'll finally be able to do some real cooking, and summer is the perfect time to practice.

Until next time,

Anna

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Pure Imagination: A New Look at Seneca's "Thyestes"

Greetings, fellow readers! This week in my Latin literature class, we've been reading a play by Seneca called "Thyestes." It's a story about two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, who both desire the same throne. Atreus also wants to get revenge on Thyestes because Thyestes had an affair with Atreus's wife, so he devises a plan to enact the worst possible vengeance: he invites his brother to a banquet where the main dish is the cooked bodies of Thyestes's own sons.

Pretty messed up, right? In the original myth, this is only one gruesome episode of many caused by an old family curse: you may know of Tantalus, one of the more famous members of the house of Atreus, who was condemned to eternal hunger and thirst in the underworld, all while delicious fruit and water lay within his sight, but not his reach. (Fun fact: he's also where we get our word tantalize from.)

What really interested me is the fact that Seneca was writing this during the reign of Nero, the infamous emperor who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned. (As it turns out, that's probably an anachronism, but we won't get into that now.) Seneca himself was Nero's childhood tutor, and later lived through some of the worst atrocities of Nero's reign before his exile and eventual suicide.

Seneca was also known for being a Stoic philosopher, or one who accepts what happens to them as the inexorable will of the gods. Stoics were known for their impassive, emotionless attitude towards misfortune, their praise of intellectual virtue, and their belief in retreat from society to lead a life of the mind.

So why does Seneca, the sage old Stoic, write a play about the will to power and this toxic family feud? Perhaps it's because of what he saw around him every day: the ruling family of imperial Rome at the time was not exactly known for being mentally sound, nor were the majority of them good leaders. Nero himself bankrupted the state to fund public entertainments and theatrics, and he took advantage of those who lost their homes in the Great Fire by claiming their land to build his palatial Golden House.

"Thyestes" raises a lot of questions about what constitutes the right to rule, and whether any one person can truly claim such a right, especially if the ruler is not mentally sound. We've been talking a lot in this class about whether the Roman emperors became corrupt because they were bad to begin with, or whether their unmitigated power had a degenerative effect on their sense of right and wrong. In the historical cases, I'm inclined to say it was a combination of both, and so it is in "Thyestes."

There is something fundamentally rotten at the heart of this story, and Atreus himself knows it. As he explains his murderous plans to his servant in the opening scenes, he declares "Evil is not avenged, it is outdone." Likewise, he refers to the banquet he will serve his brother as so monstrous it will dampen even Tantalus's insatiable appetite.

In addition to reading the play, we also watched excerpts from various stage adaptations. My favorite was the Barnard/Columbia student production, which set the play in a Wonka-esque space tinged with elements of a horror movie. In this production, both Atreus and Thyestes look like grotesque carnival clowns, Thyestes's children are nothing more than wooden puppets, and the entire set looks eerily like the scribbles of a deranged four-year-old. Spooky music from the "Wonka" movie soundtrack echoes throughout, signifying to the audience that a world of pure imagination might not be as delightful as it sounds.

While Atreus comes up with the evil plan, Thyestes still chooses to eat the children. All protestations about the Fates aside, I suspect this is what Seneca was trying to work through: the guilt of being not the evil mastermind of a plan, but of being a willing accomplice who never tried to stand up to Nero and his excesses. In the Barnard/Columbia adaptation, there is little to no difference between Atreus and Thyestes; likewise, there are no guiltless characters, except perhaps the children. However, the children are puppets, not people, which renders their innocence or guilt irrelevant.

The play mirrors the Wonka story because there is no clear hero or villian: Wonka and Slugworth (or Thyestes and Atreus) are two sides of the same manipulative coin, continuously proving that nothing is sacred, even--perhaps especially--within families.

Until next time,

Anna

Saturday, March 28, 2015

So it's been a while . . .

Greetings, fellow readers! It has been too long since I've given you an update; thank you for your patience. Final paper season is upon us, and I've been buried in a morass of summaries, research proposals, and draft revisions, as well as one bizarre fact-gathering mission at the library that, I swear, could have been lifted out of a Kafka short story.

I haven't had much time for pleasure reading, but I'm hoping to change that with the onset of the summer and the return of my daily lunch breaks from working at the bookstore. I have been reading one book my friend Elli gave me last year. It's called The Book of Ruth, and it's a novel about a girl growing up in rural Illinois during the Vietnam War. If you're a fan of unreliable narrators, this is the book for you! The writing is plain and Midwestern, reminiscent of the novels of Willa Cather or Ernest Hemingway. If this book were a landscape, it would be a wide open prairie, dotted with a few solitary trees here and there, beautiful in all its loneliness.

I've been doing much more reading for class, including the research for my final paper for the American Lit seminar. I'm planning on writing on Edgar Allan Poe's second detective fiction, "The Mystery of Marie Roget." In it, Detective Dupin proposes to solve the mystery of a young girl's disappearance and death before the police do, using the newspapers as his only source of information.

This story is really weird and difficult to read, leading some critics to write it off as a failure. What I'm arguing is that Poe's story, which was based on historical events, actually has more to tell us about the problems of interpretation and the dangers of making assumptions about people based on their gender than a simple whodunit. This tale doesn't follow the typical narrative strategy of the murder mystery, but that turns out to be an asset, rather than a weakness. I've just submitted a short analysis paper, which I'm hoping to turn into a longer project, so I'll be keeping you posted with how that goes.

I wish I had more to give you, but it seems we must wait until the dust settles and I can read more books.

Until next time,

Anna

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Reading Recap: Midterm

Greetings, fellow readers! My sincerest apologies for neglecting you all for nearly a month--I will try to remedy my absenteeism with an especially thought-provoking post today.

We've now reached the midpoint in the semester: everyone's heading home for spring break, and I, for one, cannot wait to curl up on the couch with a blanket and a giant stack of books and a never ending supply of tea. Some titles I'm particularly looking forward to are:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, which I started reading last weekend, knowing full well I would want some uninterrupted spurts of free time to truly enjoy this novel. I'm only about 100 pages in, so take this with a grain of salt, but I really like the novel's structure: its chapters are arranged like Russian nesting dolls or atomic orbitals, each embedded within another, bigger shell, yet all connected as part of an organic whole. I like some of the styles and voices better than others (Adam Ewing's delightfully verbose diary, for example), and while I'm still not entirely sure where the story is going, I have high hopes that I'll enjoy the ride.

Another book I have queued up is The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt. This one is of particular interest to me because it details the rediscovery of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura in manuscript form by an Italian monk during the Renaissance. I had to read Lucretius's book, which is a philosophical discussion of atomic theory and the question of free will, for my Latin Literature class this semester. Also, my Shakespeare professor last semester was constantly citing instances of Lucretius's influence on Shakespeare, which is part of what Greenblatt discusses in his book.

These next few books I haven't started yet, so I'll just stick to my reasons for reading them.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty is one I found at the public library. It caught my eye because of the author's unique perspective within the memoir genre.

The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Modern Science by Armand Marie Leroi is another public library find. It's pretty long, hence I saved it for spring break.

Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with your Favorite Literary Characters by Mallory Ortberg looks to be a fun treat in the tradition of Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook. Not a novel, but seems enjoyable.

Love Cake by Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha. This book of modern poetry is one my friend Sally gave me for my birthday. The author is a queer feminist poet who takes on topics as diverse as terrorism, romance, sexual abuse, and our definitions of beauty. Sally's review made this book sound amazing, and I can't wait to read it.

Until next time,

Anna

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Let's Talk Timelines

Greetings, fellow readers! So last week, I went a little Venn Diagram crazy on you, and I thought I'd make it up to you by keeping this post a little more . . . linear, shall we say. I made a timeline of the important moments in my life for a class project; it's not a blog post per se, but it should keep you busy while I get some more reading done. Enjoy!

Until next time,

Anna

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Nerd, Geek, Dork

Greetings, fellow readers! Many of you have approached me with questions about the video I posted earlier this week: why did you make this video? How come you and your roommate have such good chemistry on screen? Where can I get Shakespeare socks like yours? Can I have your autograph?

Ok, that last one isn't true, but I will do my best to assuage your curiosity on the previous counts. As I have mentioned before, my roommate Allison is one of my best friends and a person I consider a member of my family. She and I were randomly assigned roommates in the Honors dorm at UF our freshman year, and we've been living together, thick as thieves ever since then (going on three years, woo hoo!)

The Shakespeare socks are from the internet (where else?) and of course, you may have my autograph, preferably on the frontispiece of my Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, release date TBD.

But Anna, I can hear you asking, what about the most important question, the one which holds the key to all the mysteries of life: why did you make this video in the first place? Patience, young padawans. You will learn when you are ready.

As I have mentioned before, I am taking a one credit (fun credit, really) class called Talk Nerdy to Me, and our first project was to make a vlog about when we became a nerd. Blessed with both beauty and talent, not to mention excellent chemistry, Allison and I decided to make this video together, little knowing what a hit it would be.

Fast forward a bit and you'll find me today in the midst of a conversation with my friend Sean about what it means to be a nerd, specifically as distinct from being a geek or a dork.

Like any word nerd worth her salt, I decided to begin by looking it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines a nerd as "An insignificant or contemptible person, one who is conventional, affected, or studious; a 'square,' a 'swot.'" The first recorded incidence of the word "nerd" was in the 1950 picture book If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss, who wrote, "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!"

Despite this delightful lilting lyric, I do not think of myself as either insignificant or contemptible, so I moved on to the word "geek," which predates "nerd" by at least fifty years, appearing for the first time in the late nineteenth century. Alas, the dictionary informed me that a geek is "an unfashionable or socially inept person." "Dork" didn't give me too much luck either--it is defined as "a dull, slow-witted, or socially inept person" and derives from an American slang term for "penis" in the 1960's.

With pejoratives on the brain, I at last hearkened to that great fount of internet knowledge, the webcomic xkcd, whose author constructed a very helpful Venn diagram for those of us who care about our stance on these issues:

Geeks and Nerds

You can guess which category of the three I fall into. Here's another, more serious, Venn from the folks over at Laughing Squid:


According to this system, my combination of intelligence and obsession makes me a geek rather than a nerd, which is the word I usually use to describe myself.

Knowing that self-diagnosis had failed me, I took my quest to the next level and found a test purporting to solve my identity crisis once and for all. I scored 91% nerd, 61% geek, and 39% dork, according to the test's definitions of the words, earning me the title of modern, cool nerd. (Spoiler alert: I have no idea what that means, since I don't think of myself as particularly modern or cool. The explanation below is merely my cut-and-paste attempt at sounding smart.)

"The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)! "

Great, I'll take it! My takeaway from all of this is less finding a particular word to describe myself than it is embracing an identity once thought of as an insult. I'm glad I live in a world where geek is chic and nerds can be modern and cool, or at least a world where I can be among fellow geeks and nerds. Remember, make fun of nerds at your own peril: you'll be working for us someday!

Last but not least, the all-important Venn of the Apocalypse:


I can't decide whether I'm pleased or concerned by the fact that my preferences place me squarely into the "death to humans" category. 

Until next time,

Anna

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Happy Blogiversary!

Greetings, fellow readers! This January marks our Blogiversary--Shelf Life has been going strong for two years now! I think this is the longest I've ever stuck with a new year's resolution, and I could never have anticipated the publication this blog has grown into. To continue with this positive trend, I'd like to announce a new resolution for the blog. Many of you have given me positive feedback concerning the videos I posted last fall; therefore, I'd like to resolve to make at least one of my monthly posts a video chronicle. This will keep me growing and learning as a blogger and hopefully provide some entertainment and variety for all of you.

With that being said, let's turn our attention to another significant event of the past week: the start of the spring semester! This semester might just be my favorite class lineup ever. I'm taking:

Latin I, with a professor who just might be the 11th Doctor in disguise (for all you Doctor Who fans out there). In addition to conjugating verbs and making fun of the ridiculous pronunciation guide, I'm keeping a Tie of the Day dossier to document his manifold bow tie choices.

Women Writers and Classical Mythology. This is easily shaping up to be my favorite class of the semester. It's taught by two of my favorite professors, one from the English department and one from Classics. We're reading modern poetry in conjunction with ancient myths and studying the connection between the two, particularly as it concerns the role of women in art and society. In addition to that, the class is curating an exhibit at the Harn Museum of Art and creating our own interpretation of women, myth, and visual culture via Pinterest--stay tuned for more on that once the project's underway.

American Literature Seminar: Sexing the Past. Described by my prof as "graduate school lite," this class is essentially the same as the UF graduate class with the same name, only with about half the reading and writing load. My AmLit teacher from last semester is leading this class, which promises to be an interesting investigation of what we talk about when we talk about sex, and how we can understand and study sex and sexuality when our own understanding of the two is both similar and different to the way we understood sex in the past. This week, we read part of Foucault's History of Sexuality and an excerpt from William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation called "A Terrible Case of Bestiality" for an early American take on sexual deviance.

Talk Nerdy to Me. This is a one-credit class I'm taking for fun with my roommate Allison and Shakespeare buddy David. It's about nerds and nerd culture, and while we haven't gotten too far into it, I'm stoked for our next meeting, which is listed on the syllabus as "I came in like a Pokeball." How can that class possibly be boring?

My last class, The Grandeur that was Rome, doesn't meet until tomorrow, so I have nothing to say about it except that the reading list looks promising. My prof from Classics and Fantasy is teaching it, which means we're sure to have good discussion.

That's all for now, except to say that my A Song of Ice and Fire readthrough has progressed to A Storm of Swords--ah, how I sigh to think of the carnage to come!

Until next time,

Anna