In short, I’d rather have no literature courses at all than this kind of superficial thing that treats literature as an afterthought, a box to be checked for appearance’s sake. 

Next semester I’m teaching:

1. my signature Hispanic Civilization course (in English), which is always fun

2. Intermediate Spanish II, which will be great because I only have 9 students (the course is offered off sequence) and I can REALLY teach them to speak fluently in such a cozy group

3. And the course that I dread teaching. It’s the second part of Advanced Spanish called “Introduction to Reading Literature.” I taught it once, and it was a complete and utter failure. 

What we are supposed to do in the course is spend the first month reviewing grammar rules (again! for the 6th semester in a row!) and dedicate the rest of the semester to reading entirely unconnected literary texts from the textbook. A short story by Borges, a poem by Quevedo, a short story by Clarin, a play by a Mexican playwright from the 1990s, a poem by Vallejo, a short novel by Unamuno. 

My problem is that I don’t know how to teach literature out of context. Of course, I’ll ditch the stupid grammar overview, that’s the easy part. But I can’t talk about works of literature when they are ripped completely out of the historical, regional, chronological, and cultural context. Call me old-fashioned, but I think context matters. And I don’t know how to teach St John of the Cross without talking about the Spain he knew, the culture that nourished him, the terror and the ecstasy of his religion. I don’t get how one can skip from Lorca to the realists to medieval moralists and then all the way to the Mexican revolution. 

So I’m stumped. This is, incidentally, the reason I was having trouble in grad school. I don’t see a work of literature as a closed world that is fully self-sufficient and detached from surrounding reality. I’m simply a very different kind of literary critic. I hate the idea of anybody being “a universal writer.” 

So you know how one always has to explain to idiots that freedom of speech guarantees you the right to speak but doesn’t provide you with a captive audience? The RNC doesn’t get the distinction:

In a comment filed with the FCC on Friday, the RNC said it felt the telecom agency should clear the way for organizations — including, apparently, itself — to auto-dial directly to voicemail inboxes with prerecorded pitches. Failing to permit the practice, the RNC warned, could threaten the First Amendment rights of political groups.

Like dumb trolls who insist that their right to be heard on the blog that belongs to somebody else is protected by First Amendment, the RNC believes it should have the right to inundate the mailbox you pay for with its messages.

The TV was on when one of those Timelife commercials for a country music CD collection came on. N and I were about to switch it off because we don’t get country music but somehow ended up watching the 30-minute ad until the end because. . . we loved the music. We are staring at each other in confusion because all of a sudden we both dig stuff like “Okie from Muscogee.”

Midwest is messing with our heads something major. 

The woman in this comic is abusive and I hate her. I know she’s supposed to be some sort of a victim but I detest passive aggressive people of this sort. 

My blood pressure shot up like an angry squirrel when I saw the strip. Hate, hate, hate people who flip out on you because you didn’t read their fucking mind when and how they expected to.  It’s especially tough on a child who lives in permanent terror of mommy yelling at daddy for no reason that can be anticipated. 

Any child would much much rather live in a messy house and eat out of a can than have to be saddled with life-long anxiety because of mommy’s fucking mental loads!

I’m especially insulted that this vile piece of trash used the word “feminism.” 

Fuck these fuckers.

Wow, this really hit home.

All of a sudden, Assange is defending Kushner. 

Hmm, I wonder what that means. Might they both even. . . perish the thought! . . serve the same master?

So is it true that Macron is married to an old pedophile or are Russians bulshitting, as usual?

The reason why the genre of “I’m so wounded by this tiny little thing that I’m about to die” is so popular is the same why Hunger Games is a bestseller and many well to do people in this culture enjoy fantasies of an impending apocalypse. This is simply a way for an opulent society to signal its opulence. 

Who is more likely to exclaim in front of others, “Oh God, I have absolutely nothing to wear!”, a rich person with an overflowing wardrobe or a person who lives in poverty and truly has nothing to wear? Who is more likely to say publicly, “I’m so broke!”, a person who just declared personal bankruptcy or a person who didn’t? Who’s more likely to say to her friends, “I’m so fat, I don’t know what to do”, somebody skinny or somebody really fat? Come to think of it, who’s more likely to say, “I’m completely out of ideas and don’t know how I will get anything published”, a person who does or doesn’t have this problem?

Enacting extreme hurt over something trivial is a way of signaling how easy amd great one’s life really is. 

Klara brought me my shoes (that look huge like boats next to her) and repeated “sioux! sioux!” until I put them on. 

Then she brought her shoes and again repeated “sioux! sioux!” (that’s the closest to how she pronounces it)  until I put them on her. 

Then she brought me her jacket and got me to put it on her. 

Then she went to the front door and tugged at it until I opened it and let her out. 

Outside she went to the gate we have around our mimosa tree and shook it until I took off the look she kept pointing at and gave it to her. 

She clutched the lock in her little hand, smiled, and said “Appey.” (Which means “happy.”)

Then she walked around clutching the lock and repeating “appey” for 20 minutes. And then she fell asleep. 

So Putin is up for reelection next year. He has a bunch of fake opponents, created to pretend that Russia is a democracy. You’ve got to playact democracy even if you hate it and go around telling the world how useless it is. 

He also has a real opponent. It’s Navalny, the Russian LePen. And gosh, it’s so funny that Putin, who feeds the LePens of the world, should have his own badgering him at home. If you don’t know who Navalny is, please look up my posts about him using the search function. 

Everything I observe (and I’ll spare you the details) tells me that Putin is seriously worried about Navalny. Why is a total mystery. Navalny is conducting a talented campaign but he can’t get on TV. And if you can’t get on TV in Russia, it means most voters will never hear about you. 

Besides, Putin will, of course, falsify away any percentage of votes that he doesn’t like. This will be accompanied by, “That’s what democracy is like. See, even Americans are investigating if their elections were falsified.” So I see no reason for him to worry. Yet he does.