Am looking forward to reading her new book to determine what she considers to be good fiction. Just read A CHANGED MAN, and at first, I put the book down after reading a few pages. I thought she was trying too hard to be clever (she should read Ed Abbey's fiction for effective satire), but I felt perhaps I was not being fair, so I did finish the book. Still not overly impressed, though.
Just read some lines from the intervew which struck me as very insightful as I am also considering dropping out of the PhD program: "I don’t really feel that I had a choice. Graduate school was driving me quite literally insane. I wanted a different approach to the work. I just felt that the passion I felt as a reader was not being reflected by my professors and by my future colleagues. I don’t know what they were doing, but it wasn’t what I was doing. And I don’t know how they were reading, but it wasn’t the way I was reading. When I look at the list of papers presented at an MLA convention, I still get that same feeling of What are these people talking about? It was extremely alienating, because in theory we were all talking about the same (as they would say) “texts,” but I really, literally could not understand. I had never thought of myself as the stupidest person in the room, but suddenly that’s what I had become. Nothing anyone was saying made any particular sense to me. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t have great teachers. I did. The book is dedicated to three of them, one of whom was my teacher both in college and graduate school. But they certainly weren’t in the majority."
I must say, that after reading the interview, I do agree with her insight into academia. Perhaps I should read more of her fiction...
Am looking forward to reading her new book to determine what she considers to be good fiction. Just read A CHANGED MAN, and at first, I put the book down after reading a few pages. I thought she was trying too hard to be clever (she should read Ed Abbey's fiction for effective satire), but I felt perhaps I was not being fair, so I did finish the book. Still not overly impressed, though.
ReplyDeleteJust read some lines from the intervew which struck me as very insightful as I am also considering dropping out of the PhD program:
ReplyDelete"I don’t really feel that I had a choice. Graduate school was driving me quite literally insane. I wanted a different approach to the work. I just felt that the passion I felt as a reader was not being reflected by my professors and by my future colleagues. I don’t know what they were doing, but it wasn’t what I was doing. And I don’t know how they were reading, but it wasn’t the way I was reading. When I look at the list of papers presented at an MLA convention, I still get that same feeling of What are these people talking about? It was extremely alienating, because in theory we were all talking about the same (as they would say) “texts,” but I really, literally could not understand. I had never thought of myself as the stupidest person in the room, but suddenly that’s what I had become. Nothing anyone was saying made any particular sense to me. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t have great teachers. I did. The book is dedicated to three of them, one of whom was my teacher both in college and graduate school. But they certainly weren’t in the majority."
I must say, that after reading the interview, I do agree with her insight into academia. Perhaps I should read more of her fiction...