Clarissa's Blog

I’m all for teacher strikes but since when “sit in silence for 50 minutes and stare at the teacher” is a description of anything that can even remotely he called teaching?

A good article on “parental digital distraction” in The Atlantic. The analyst explained it a lot better but it’s good that the mainstream is at least waking up to the idea, even if it does so in this clunky and tortured way.

Trollope is an amazing writer, folks. With almost nothing by way of a plot, he creates the kind of 800-page novel that keeps you on the edge of your seat and frantically turning pages to find out what happened next. I read the new Penguin edition, which is 25% longer than the one normally available because Trollope had had to pare it down massively for publication. I compared both versions, and the unabridged one is definitely better.

This is the last novel in the Palliser series, but as the novel’s characters would say, that doesn’t signify. The novel works perfectly well as a standalone. Today’s writers could learn a lot from Trollope in terms of how to do this without obnoxiously recapping all of the previous novels in the series.

As I said, the plot is very simple. The Duke, a great politician and a man of unrivaled moral character, discovers that his adult children are total shits. They are not bad people. They are just dumb, vain, useless, and, worst of all, weak. This is a crushing blow to the Duke who can’t understand how he could have produced a bunch of such losers. But they are his children, he loves them, so he makes a huge effort and remains gentle, kind and supportive of them. And he even schools himself into doing that sincerely.

It is a great novel because fatherhood is not caricatured in it, as often happens. There are great novelistic depictions of frustrated fatherhood but not that many that depict realistically a relationship between a loving father and equally loving adult children.

There isn’t a whole lot of politics in the novel, and what there is ends up being so similar to the political practices of today that it’s hilarious. The scenes where candidates go out to drum up the vote are priceless.

In the end, the Duke goes back to work because that’s something that is always there to give life meaning and it reconciles him with his immense disappointment in his children. A disappointment that he never allows himself to acknowledge because that’s what a parent’s love is.

A beautiful novel, and I’m glad it was part of my birthday challenge. It might look weird that one puts aside everything else at the end of the academic year and reads a long novel that in no way relates to one’s work but I don’t see the point of leading the sort of life that has no space in it for “useless”, pleasurable reading.

One of the examples of frugal living I saw online was that of a graduate student who was swimming in mounting credit card debt but then adopted the frugal living principles, paid down the debt, and started investing her savings. I was curious because I used to be that grad student who, in spite of a very generous stipend and no kids, was accumulating credit card debt and had zero savings.

It turned out that this graduate student “ate down her pantry” and cancelled her subscriptions, which was quite bizarre because I had no pantry and no subscriptions until I was well into the tenure-track. These savings allowed her to pay off her credit card debt. I’m guessing the credit card debt was about twenty bucks total, if she could pay it down by eating down the pantry for a month. My credit card debt in grad school was up to $16,000 at its highest point, and to pay that off, I would have needed almost my entire yearly stipend.

I wasn’t frugal as a grad student (and that’s an understatement of the year) and I’m not frugal now because there are 3 things I can’t deny myself. First of all, I always eat well. Tons of fresh produce and never anything frozen, boxed or canned. I just can’t make myself, it’s not happening. Today I made a five-bean chili with ground turkey breast, a bit of crackled wheat, asparagus, kale and crushed tomatoes, and oh, goodness. It’s heaven. I can’t make it spicy because Klara is too small for that but it’s still great.

The second thing is that I go on beach vacations and not the kind where you sleep in a crappy motel and schlep 20 minutes to a ratty old beach filled with garbage. I come from a Soviet past where people thought that extreme discomfort was the price you pay for enjoying a beach. And I just can’t do that any more, I’m traumatized by my past.

And the third is that I buy all the books I want and can’t make myself feel bad about it. I wear the same clothes for 10 years (if I can fit into them) and use out the shoes until they literally fall into pieces. But my book needs are sacred.

Another consumerist hobby that I discovered is frugal living. The frugal living website a ran across yesterday starts with a long list of items you need to buy in order to be more frugal. I didn’t get to the end of the shopping list, so I never discovered the secrets of frugality the shopping is supposed to open up to you.

I always thought that most dogmatic and preachy people ever were reformed smokers and recent religious converts. But it turns out that the frugal living folks are easily the most smug and condescending bunch of all.

Yesterday was the last day of winter around here. It had been a good, serious winter, the kind that really counts. And it’s over right in time for my birthday on Wednesday.

It’s great to see my university mentioned as an example of great schools where intellectual inquiry flourishes but, gosh, what a cesspit CUNY is.

I hope the parents of these dumb little creepazoids are lucid enough to feel the shame of having raised such loser kids. Maybe somebody should pay them to write a parenting book where they’d describe exactly what they did to produce these freaks of nature, and then everybody would just do the exact opposite. I’m sure the book would sell.

Klara grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and started scribbling.

“I’m writing a book,” she explained. “My mommy is a big author. And I’m a baby author. I’m writing a book.”

The best part is that, to her, “writing a book” means putting pen to paper.

The difference between

an underachieving academic who wanders uselessly around, has nothing positive to contribute to the lives of people around her, believes she’s been cursed with the worst working conditions known to humanity, and feels that carrying a cup all the way to the kitchen sink is extremely onerous

AND

an overachieving academic and supermom who, since this morning, has written 568 words on a new article, answered a buttload of emails, and crafted a new proposal while engaging in feats of parenting and spousal devotion

CONSISTS OF

two and a half extra hours of sleep.

You are welcome.