Those Shoes

This thing is now a place to deposit notes

2009-04-11T21:18:35Z

In Search of Alias Grace - Atwood

- A mediation (originally a lecture) on how she, as an historical novelist, approached questions of time and memory. She is speaking specifically about Canadian lit, but general points can be extricated.

'fiction is where individual memory and experience and collective memory and experience come together' (1504) - readers recognise the individual details of a characters life, but inevitably place them within a broader historical context, 'of geology, weather, economic forces, social classes, culural references, wars and plagues and such big public events'

- Atwood also acknowledges a writer layers in, not only the character's time but his/her own historical circumstances (every reader and writer comes to a piece of fiction with their own story, their own construction of understanding/knowledge/meaning).

- Atwood argues that just as a novel is constructed from indivdual particulars (character memories - this is what she thinks a novelist works by, images and fragments rather than grand themes/schemes), so history is constructed from banal details of life, 'history may intend to provide us with grand patterns and overall schemes, but without day-by-day foundations it would collapse' (1505)

Historical Novel

'(Scott) Grandaddy of the form' (1508)

Atwood notes that all novels are somewhat historical, concerned with setting the stage in a certain past. As soon as a reader finishes a book it too is past.

'But there is the past tense...then there is The Past, capital P, capital T' (1508)

- Makes an interesting (qualitative?) distinction between romantic bodice rippers and, 'novels set in the historical past' (1509)

'when is the past considered old enough to be historic?...I suppose you could say it's anything before the time at which the novel writer comes to conciousness' (1510)

Sees historical novels as less about big historical events than about human nature in that context (1516), they reflect what the writer and audience need from the past. They infuse meaning according to the re-telling, the construction of memory.

'the past belongs to us, because we are the ones who need it' (1516)

Memory

'memory, history and story all intersect, it would take only one step more to bring all of them into the realm of fiction' (1505)

- Historical fiction is engaged with challenging memory (a reflection of a modern era when all memory, including the widest memory of all, history is called into question), asking WHY we remember certain things over others (ie her example that we never remember bad mothers on mothers day). And why do we think memories are authentic, where does this confidence and knowledge come from?

'there can be no history, and no novel, without memory of some sort; but when it comes down to it how reliable is memory itself - our individual memory or collective memory as a society?' (1506 - in other words, memory is not just an object, and unchangable penny, it changes from person to person - see Fergus/Pearce conversation)

'the novel, above all else, concerns itself with time,' (1506) - a plot has to concern itself with temporality (one thing occuring in relation to something else)

As a novel is character driven, the temporal history found in its pages comes in the form of memory. However, in the 20th century huge amounts of energy have gone into forgetting, into focusing on how suppressed time forges identity (ie Freud's unconcious theories). European art seemed to lose it's faith in the reliability of memory.

Atwood sees memory and history (The Past) constructed of paper, thoughts and opinions wirtten down that proliferate throughout the ages. These papers are as multiplcitous and unreliable as writers are now. What's more, they tend to only record big events rather than the banal details of life (why would we need to record banal details? people live them in their everyday lives, they don't need to be told about them)

'if you're after the truth, the whole and detailed truth...you're going to have a thin time of it if you trust to paper, but, with the past, its almost all you've got' (1514)

Twentieth Century Historical Novel

- Why then (in all this forgetting) has the historical novel becomes so popular at the turn of the century (Atwood notes that in Canadian fiction the genre was practically abandoned until the 1960s/70s)?

- One theory is the lure of the unmentionable. Even as history became something to ignore, novelists were picking away at it's presumptions, holes and constructions (why were the spaces of history where they were, why was a certain form of history being fed to the reader?)

- Like Wallace, a recognition of the way in which the past can be used as a reference point for the present. Similarly a recogntion of the way in which an author's vision of the present shapes their preoccuption of the past (authorial intention in historical novel? - basic account, reconstruction, re-interpretation, new stories)

- Another theory - a greater preoccupation with self. A need to know where we have sprung from, rather than to forget it/accept it blindly (a world movement linked to ex-colonies looking towards their colonial history with an historically crittical eye. For example, subaltern studies within last 20 years)

- A form of escapism, a balm to worries about the future as when a book is set in the past we KNOW it's resolution, it's immediate future (again this relies on an idea of past as static facts). Basically an illusion.

'some might say, the past is safer...(when) sense of self is literally torn to piece, it feels comforting to escape backwards...with the past at least we know what happens' (1511)

- However, as Atwood notes, the past of Historical novels is rarely safe and cosy (even Lukacs placed the historical novel as a dialectic zone of tension)

Cultural Anthropology

- Perhaps now the central importance of the historical novel is the oppertunity it offers to investigate mankind and their proliferation of memories. Atwood describes culture itself (ie self awareness of individuality) as middle aged, like a 50 year old looking back through the family tree. The revolution has come (nb again linking historical novel to retrospective processing of huge historical flux - see Lukacs and his idea that the French Rev birthed the classical historical novel), now socities ask what next?

'by taking a long hard look backwards we place ourselves' (1512)

'here we are, right at the back end of the twentieth century with our own uneasiness about the trustworthiness of memory, the reliability of story and continuity of time' (1515 - why not express that through historical fiction? Each novelist can investigate a different version of the past. Each reader can construct a different story from the memories represented in a book)

'truth is sometimes unknowable, at least by us' (1515 - contrast to Fleishman's universal truth)

The Nightwatch Reviews

The Guardian - Justine Jordan (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/feb/04/fiction.sarahwaters)

- Structural engine is reverse chronology from 1947 ('exhausted present') - 1944 - 1941

- Notes the book is in dispassionate third person rather than the intimate first person experience of her previous novels. Sees the beginning as, 'curiously unrooted,' - a mass of fragments (ie artefact of headscarf with tanks and spitfires) and foreshadowing dust with little exposition. First section is also noticably banal (ie interior settings, vernacular lang, picnics etc). Link to Atwood's idea of day to day life of history, individualised past in order to receive universal historical truths.

- Middle section (1944) is the narrative/explosive heart of the novel. Note this is when actual historical events happen also. Look at blitz section (how wider time prompts action - lesbian romance founded on explosions at St Paul's, language of exposure and bloody progression) "So many impossible things were becoming ordinary, just then," as Helen remarks of her first relationship with a woman' - a fluidity to both identity and time in this section of the novel?
- Many descriptions/fragments of the past ar provoked by individualised, sensory descriptions.
'Waters brings such a clear-eyed honesty and fresh interest to the everyday that she could probably make drying paint a lively read.'
'we leave her characters as we meet them; and it is we, not they, who feel older, wiser and sadder at the novel's end.'
- Waters preoccupation with unearthing the causality of the past is aptly expressed by Kay's penchant for entering the cinema halfway throgh a film in order to see the second half before the first.
'Waters is a mystery writer, and here the mystery is the jigsaw of identity, amassed piece by piece.'
- These constructions of identity inevitably hinge around gender (Kay the masculine girl, Duncan the infantile, effeminate man, the sexual struggles of Viv, the public face of Helen at war with her interior insecuirites)
The Independant - Michele Roberts (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-night-watch-by-sarah-waters-524632.html)
- Waters calls her own novels 'faux,' historical fiction, blending sexual politics with historical settings.
'An ex-academic who knows that writers, however committed, must also be voracious readers, she writes in the feminist tradition that draws on both male and female writers for inspiration. She is a sophisticated storyteller who enjoys playing carnivalesque games with plots, and with readers' expectations.' (the whole concept of multiplicity. Roberts also goes onto a not particularly interesting rant about how Waters appropriates genres according to her portrayal of sexual politics. So Tipping the Velvt used the pennydreadful margins to promote the other of lesbian. Why then is she using the historical novel genre - in a much more relaistic sense than she normally does - here? Is it to convey some form of universal truth?)
- Roberts sees this novel as much more realistic (ie in the genre of realism) than Waters previous, 'carnivalesque,' work. Men and women are now intertwined into a tapestry of historical realism. (a total mix of 4 main characters, gender, gay and straight relationships) 'emotions can be fluid and volatile' - each choice the character makes is an action of identity in a time of upheaval.
'this is a tremendously confident foray into realism' (although the male characters are criticised for being more thinly drawn than the female, the long conversations on lesbian politics sometimes seem too didactic - a revelation of authors time layered into conceptions of historical novel?).
'Waters is a very generous writer, who seems to want to give and tell us everything,' - she lets the reader see everything (look at her descriptions, the style of observation in her writing) and construct from that point? Or does she guide the reader to a particular historical persepctive?
Interviews
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jun/01/hayfestival2006.hayfestival
' Waters described these effects on her naturally lavish style as a drying-out and paring-down, with the result that "the lushness slipped away". Indeed, the prose in The Night Watch is as smooth and clear as a pair of nylon stockings...one of Waters' strengths is the way she lightly pins her novels with period detail (talc on the windows, gin gimlets), while avoiding the cliches of so much historical fiction.'
- Heavily reearched novel - she visited musesums and the locations in her book, she listened to 1940s recordings to get the tone and idioms of her dialogue correct (pressue of upholding a sense of reality when writing about the recent past?)
- Began working on novel in Sept 2001 after looking at pictures of the blitz, then the planes went into the world trade centre and a parallel chaos was born (AUTHOR CONTEXT)
"I was looking at pictures of the Blitz, images of people trapped in buildings, and I came out and there was another sort of blitz going on, and from that point on there seemed to be blitzes all over the world. I can't honestly say that I've brought any big musings on war to the novel. I didn't. I was much more interested in finding new stories to tell about the people who lived through it."
- On the narrative structure - calls it an, 'emotional detective story' (symbols proliferate of passions and losses, an undestanding of what went wrong by going back to when it was right. Feeding into quite fatalistic historical determinism or more postmodern concepts of the fragmentation of time and self?)
'with The Night Watch, she felt she was "working in the dark, very, very close to what I was writing'
"It's precisely the difference of the past that makes it exciting for me. I think we always need to be reminded that the moment that we live in is very temporary. Historical fiction at its best can remind us of that".

The Historical Novel - Lecture 11

Middlemarch (1871-3) and The Nightwatch (2006) are both case studies of novels that use historical fact (reality?) as a framework for their fiction. Both novels are framed by modern time (see previous lecture - Anderson's concept of clock and calender time, newspapers and the spontaneity of action), allowing the novels narrative to take place at the same time as historical events

- Middlemarch's historical time frame takes places within the 18 months in 1831/2 when parliament debated to reform voting in the British Isles. The Great Reform Act.
- Nightwatch takes place during WW2, from 1941-47 (although it is a backwards narrative, jumping from 47 to 44 to 41)

The Historical Novel

Is seen as a literary genre, combining strong dramatic plots with historical events, rather than a type of (accurate) writing about history.

All novels are set in some sort of time period (another type of space), how long ago must a novel be set to make it an historical novel? Sir Walter Scott (first real historical novelist?) said the perfect time was 60 years, long enough that the reader was not famaliar with the events/the writer was not giving a mere account of remembrance (something Middlemarch could be accused of, Elliot was 12 during the reform act and still living in Coventry), short enough to provoke some sort of nostalgia, a feeling of capturing the recent past (ie Nightwatch, written precisely 60 years after its setting)

The subject of the historical novel is one seeped in questions of time. Of real time and manipulated time, how historical facts can create a time structure for someone who is not a historian. How time is used in an imagined reality.

Professional Historians, History Teaching, and Novels

Why do professional historians put a fictional work such as the Nightwatch on a university reading list? It does not offer reliable factual evidence or new intellectal arguments about the blitz. At most a novel can be said to add the the, 'cultural feeling,' of a historians awareness of a given time period. History then is not just about facts and events, but about a constant process of understanding the past, studying how past events are represented and written about (and why?) New social and cultural history treats the representation and memorialisationof history as part of the historical story.
Historians themseleves are writers of the past. As much as novelists, they have choices in how they tell stories: what they emphasise, and what they leave out.
For example, Boyd Hilton and EP Thomson are two very current historians writing about the 1830s reform act. Hilton ('Mad, Bad, & Dangerous People? England 1783-1846?') writes a political history of the period, only concerned with rural provinces in the extent to which riots (etc) influenced parliamentary action. Thomson (Making of the English Working Class (1963)) instead is a social historian who focuses his work and research on rural ribbon workers who rioted against the rising price of bread. Neither of these men takes a cultural approach and studies how the period was subsequently represented/represented in the immediate period (ie Middlemarch) In terms of time such writing is fixed in the boundaries of an historical timeframe, cultural history seems to be more fluid.
Novel Writers
The cultural history of an historical novel therefore can be said to reflect the authors time of writing as much as the time period they are writing about. Historical novels offer a complex palimpsest of time between novel, author and reader.
Interestingly, whilst Middlemarch creates a stepped structure of time, something like this:
- The novel represents the 1830s reform act period
- The author was writing from the 1860s 2nd reform agenda
- The reader steps back 180 years from the modern 2008.
Nightwatch offers a much more condensed time period (due, as much as anything, to it's recent publishing date). The author AND the readers share a time space, they view the war from the same 21st century perspective of, '60 years since.' Perhaps when reading a so called historical novel more attention should be paid to the question, 'Is the author writing from the same historical perspective that I am reaidng from?'
For example, did Elliot, writing from remembrance, use Middlemarch as a vehicle for cultural comment - and thus shape a modern readers view of the 1830s period? (In the story of Will Ladislaw, the intertwined history of capitalism, Protestantism and Judaism is writ large. That history was available to a highly educated reader of the 1860s - a reader like George Eliot - but it wasn’t available in the 1820s. By shaping a figure of the 1820s by its tenets, was Eliot making an original historical connection - actually `writing history’ in our modern sense?)
Does Waters writing infact offer a historial study into the authors background of gender studies and gay rights movements of the 1960s-80s. All novels offer a cornocopia of time and historical, 'reality.'
It also has to be considered towhat extent the authors approched the subject of history within their own novel. What importance does a novel writer place on history as compared to say characteristion or narrative thread?
Futhermore how do different authors reasearch history. Elliot did research in the British Museum Reading Room, yet couldn't photocopy (obviously) and had limited resources. Her research into 19th century medicine and physiology (for Lydgate) was extremely detailed, however her political reasearch was limited and fairly superficial. Moreover, as she could not return to Cov, she had no access to local records. When compared to the long list of sources Waters gives at the beginning of The Nightwatch, Elliot falls short.
If the success of a historical novel is measured on its accuracy of portraying a specific time period then authors are being subjected to a critera of only historical accuracy. Arguably it is more enlightening to examine the motivation for an authors presentation of history - to examine the time period of a book AND it's writer. Not least because it demonstrates the ideological and political circumstances out of which all history-writing, including the historical novel, is necessarily produced.
Authorial Motivation
`Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand’ - Middlemarch
Examine how authors themselves approach history in order to understand their presentation of it. For example Elliot's narrator in Middlemarch compares him/herself to Herodotus, historian of classical antiquity and constantly refers to a female Destiny hovering over the lives of Middlemarch. This Destiny is an ironic, sarcastic creature and Eliot is approaching he acts as events that have already happened, recounted by the narrator on the page. In this case history is inevitable, the place of the men/women of Middlemarch are already determined, sarcasm is all they are worth and Elliot uses history as a device to judge?
In contrast Waters unravels time backwards. Whilst the narrator/author of Middlemarch knew what was coming next, it is the READER in The Nightwatch who held history (in the sense of a knowledge of the end, the deed already done) in their hand. We are - strangely - let in to The Night Watch, given permission by the writer - as a historian might give permission - to know what will happen, because it is already history before it begins. Waters unique relationship with history, her modern writing draw attention to the fact that the historical novel is not only concerned with a specific TIME period, but with an sequence of time.
The historical novel is inexorably connected to the chronology and layers of time, time running through novel, author and reader.

Undoubtedly fiction holds the ability to imprison characters and deprive them of autonomy. Gilbert and Gubar argue that the reproductive drive of the male Author, a simaltaneous urge towards creation and control, has dominated Enligh Literature in the modern era. In the wake of what they term, 'the metaphor of literary paternity,' the female character is imprisoned in an alternating mask of angel/monster, a dichotomous archetype that both freezes woman as an idealised vessel for the Phallic pen, and punishes any move towards feminine autonomy. That fairytales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, attempt to soldify th

This rant is brought to you by this weeks seminar readings...

2009-03-08T20:27:56Z

I hate the Holocaust. I suspect that this, in itself, is not an unpopular opinion. However, I specifically have Holocaust fatigue.

Apparently all my modules (across three different departments) have independantly concluded the Holocaust is the defining moment in 20th century modernity, and have proceded to shove it down our throats accordingly. This term alone I have studied Sophies Choice, Hannah Ardent, Lytoard's Auschwitz differend, Charlotte Delbo's concentration camp poetry, Frueds theories in regards to Nazi mentality, and I'm sure many more exciting things will follow...

I find it somewhat ironic that the Holocaust, universally acknowledged as an unspeakable act in History, has such a proliferation of writing about it.

Learning about the Holocaust is also making me a bad person. I was in Coventry city centre on Holocaust Memorial Day and they were having a rememberance parade. When I read one of the banners (6 Million Jews Dead) and realised what parade was for my automatic reaction was, 'fucking hell not the Jews again!' which, as you can imagine, did not go down very well!

Hitler ruined everything for everyone, damnit.

Oscars 2009

2009-02-23T17:46:24Z

God I haven't posted on this thing in fucking ages, I've been busy, busy, busy. However, now in an attempt to avoid writing an essay, some thoughts on the Oscars last night.

- They are always so long. Every year I think it'll be a breeze, 3 and a half hours, no problem! Staying up until 5am, sure I'll be able to go into uni in the morning. Yeah, like that happened.

- Hugh Jackman's opening number was the gayest thing that ever Oscared. As such, it was amazing. I especially enjoyed him soulfully singing to Kate Winslet about swimming through excretement, the unabashedly shit Benjamin Button backdrop and Anne Hathaway (playing Richard Nixon, lol) hitting a ridiculously high note then headbanging. Bonus points for touching Mickey Rourke without getting crabs, and telling Meryl Streep she is on steroids without getting the drama queen eyebrow raised in return.

- Oh wait, the absolute BEST thing about the opening song and dance number was the Kraftwerkesque, 'The Reader, I haven't seen The Reader...' (because really who would want to see The Reader?)

- Regardless of Hugh Jackman's talents, I miss Jon Stewart in all his silver haired glory

- I really liked the way they presented the acting categories this year, using 5 previous winners to pay tribute to that night's nominees. Predictably it ended up with at least half the nominees in tears. There were also really entertaining montages of past winners before each acting award (seemingly every Supporting Actress that has ever won started her speech with, 'Oh my God')

- The floating camera constantly panning over the In Memorium segment gave me something akin to sea sickness.

- The set design was a little bit awkward I thought. I like the idea of a semi-circle auditorium, but the stage was so close to the first row of seating that Winslet, Streep, Penn, Jolie and Pitt probably got accidently spat on a few times

- In regards to the presenters: Jennifer Aniston (plus inevitable jump cut to Angelina), Jack Black, Will Smith, Jessica Biel - could have done without. The dude from Twilight is even whiter than I am, but Amanda Seyfried is gorgeous so she balanced him out. All the past winners (bar Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman's strange plastic head) get a big thumbs up. Everytime Christopher Walken speaks I wish he would be my crazy, mildly threatening, uncle. Tina Fey looked amazing in her sparkly concotion, plus she and Steve Martin brought the funny.

- The kissing scenes from Milk were shown several times and nobody in the Bible Belt states burst into flames.

- My favourite montage was the Apatow written skit wherein James Franco and Seth Rogen got stoned and watched various movies. Is this version of Take a Chance On Me (I swear I have some sort of Mamma Mia sickness) not genius?

It stars James Bond
And the chick from Doubt
And that girl fom Mean Girls
And that Irish guy
I think he's in Gangs of New York, I'm not sure
Take a Chance on meee....

...(still singing) Orlando Bloom's Dad in Pirates of the Carribbean!
That's it, Take a chance on meeeee

- Fashion wise no one looked spectacularly awful, which is disappointing because I always love at least one cracked out, 'Bijork wears a swan,' moment, Amy Adams did have a huge bejewelled necklace on that clashed with everything. Oh and Tilda Swinton looked like a Rivita cracker, but that's pretty normal for her. Kate Winslet's dress loked like someone had sown her net curtains into it, but oddly it worked. Meryl Streep managed to flip her fashion coin and land on elegant, rather than kooky 1970s bag lady. Angelina Jolie (in black splt upto her lady parts and beautiful green earrings) and Anne Hathaway (sparkly mermaid) both looked fantastic. My favourite was Marion Cotillard who wore basically a full length black/blue embroidered tulle tutu. It was much nicer than that sounds.

Who cares what the boys wore?

- I loved when the curtains didn't upon at the beginning and you heard one of the tech guys hiss, 'open the curtains Steve!'

- The Winners I can't comment on too throughly as I am the only person left in Britain who hasn't seen Slumdog Millionaire. In regards to what I have seen:

- I am glad Milk won best orginal screenplay, although In Bruges pulling the upset would have been brilliant (I also love that the only clip they could find of In Bruges without any swearing was about 2 seconds long). I am happy Wall E won animated film and amazed that Waltz with Bashir did not win foreign film.

- I have not seen Vicky Christy Barcelona (Woody Allen aversion) but I have heard Penelope Cruz was very good in it and I am as amenable to her winning as anyone else. Of course Heath Legder won, he deserved it but can we now let the whole thing go? Hate Sean Penn, but thought he was excellent in Milk plus he seems to be developing a sense of humour about himself in his middle age.

- The Best Actress cluster fuck - well Kate Winslet won as expected. I love her body of work (and body full stop - inappropriate comment) but I saw The Reader yesterday and I wish feverently that she hadn't won for that. Just an offensive film and a horribly overacted performance. Sure Meryl Streep overacts all over Doubt, but that seemed to work in the more theatrical context of her film. I would have given it to Anne Hathaway, which believe me I never thought I'd say because she always reminded me more of a horse than a human being. I firmly believe they gave that award to Kate because she was way overdue in wins to nominations ratio (0 for 5). Which just creates problems down the line when the inevitable happens in a few years and Winslet puts in an incredible, deserving performance. This will promptly be ignored bcause the voters have realised Streep hasn't won in a zillion years and they need to bestow the Queen of Oscars with something before she dies.

- I'm sad Jai Ho beat O Saya in original song, but GO TEAM BOLLYWOOD!

First draft of Freud essay

2009-01-08T13:57:34Z

Freud. Mind doctor? Novelist? Historian?

Throughout the twentieth century, studies of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) have been adopted and appropriated by any number of disciplines. His examination of the unconcious self, the repressed instinctual desires that drive human action, can be found in the abstract symbolism of literature just as easily as in scientific psychology. Indeed, in retrospect, it is possible to locate Freudian theories in almost any field of academic and popular culture. However, in attempting to categorise Freud as a mind doctor, novelist or historian, it is important to distinguish between his subsequent interdisplinary influence and his actual aims, methods and organisation. In the strictest sense Freud was a trained scientist, a doctor who grauduated from the University of Vienna in 1881, dedicated to rational categorisation of the mind. However, in pioneering a method of pyschotherapy that priveleged dreams as the route to the human pysche, Freud moved into the writer's arena of signification, imaginative interpretation and narrative construction. Furthermore, in placing emphasis on the formative importance of childhood development, the hidden past of the self, Freud offered an organised theory of individual progress akin to historical models of causality. Any examination of Freud as a mind doctor, novelist or historian is not an excercise in definative categorisation. Instead, the question offers a recognition of the tension between Freud's training as a nineteenth century doctor, his unconventional methods of imaginative interpretation and the possibility of historical organisation therein.

Despite such multiplicity, Freud's work is ostensibly most applicable to the scientific role of mind doctor. As noted, Freud trained as a doctor at the University of Vienna and it is arguable that a nineteenth century drive towards positivism, the rational organisation of scientific facts and human characteristics, grounded even his most subversive theories. For Peter Gay, Freud's training as a doctor manifested itself most clearly in the influence of his mentor, the physiologist Brucke (1819-1892). Gay argues that Freud's central aim was to find, 'practical psychological causes for physiological effects' that, despite his move from a study of the body to examination of the mind, Freud's work maintained Brucke's scepticism towards supstitious notions of involuntary movement (1). It is notable that, even as Freud substantially complicated the human subject, his conception of the mind remained ruthlessly organised, split into clear preconscious (developmental), unconscious (repressed) and conscious (intentional) systems (2). Rather than surrendering man to the irrational desires he unearthed, Freudian theory can be understood as a drive towards knowledge, and possible control, of the pysche via scientific compartmentalisation. In this manner, it is possible to root Freud's aims in the prevelant empricism of the period.

Moreover, that Freud pursued and developed his studies whilst working as a psychotherapist transforms his scientific aims into the practical purposes of a doctor. In his overview of the etymology of the word, 'unconscious,' Bill Schwarz posits that, during the decade immediately preceding Freud's work, the term had become short hand for unexplainable mental illness, 'the site of unexplainable delusions, possession and hysteria' (3). Conversely, Freud's practice as a psychotherapist pioneered a conception of the unconscious, more specifically therapy of the unconscious, as a route to curing mental illness. In one of his most famous case studies, rather than labelling the hysteria of a teenage girl, 'Dora,' as mysterious feminine degeneration, Freud concisely stated, 'hysterical symptoms are the expression of (a patients) most secret and repressed wishes' (4). Such a rational explanation of supposedly irrational symptoms created a space where Freud could work towards categorising, 'repressed wishes,' in order to cure volatile actions. It is no coincidence that Dora's father famously delivered her to the doctor with the plea, 'please cure her and bring her to reason.' (5). At the very least, select Viennese society perceived Freud as a practicing doctor of the mind, a man dedicated to applying palative reason to the diseased pysche.

However, not withstanding such rational aims, Freud's excavation of a zone of repressed wishes involved inherently uncoventional investigations and inferments into how the fragmented mind may work. It is notable that in treating the supposedly unknowable unconcious, Freud pursued therapy, such as hypnotism, that veered distinctly from contemporary medical methods (6). Arguably, Freud's pursual of the, 'ghostly dimension,' of the human pysche revealed the constraints of a strictly rational nineteenth century doctor, forcing him to move into a new realm of imaginative signification and interpretation (7). With the publication of On Dreams, an explication of the way in which dream imagery can stand for and release the tension of unconscious urges, Freud produced a model almost completely analogous with literary metaphor. When he writes of translating, 'manifest,' dream content, that is the signification of imagery, into a, 'language of meaning,' Freud is defining a transference between latent intention and symbolic representation, that lies at the heart of both his own studies and the world of literature (8). As Gay notes, Freud himself recognised the parallels between the role of the dream interpreter and the role of the creative writer when he acknowleged nine novelists, rather than nine scientists, at the beginning of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (9). Whilst Freud may have initially proceded as a mind doctor, the nature of the mind itself precipitated unique forays into abstract translation.

From this position, attempts to categorise Freud as a novelist seem relatively plausible. Many scholars, particularly psychoanalytic literary critics, have claimed Freudian dream theory layers intention under imagery in a manner similar to the narrative construction of a novel. As Peter Brooks argues, the novelist utilises plot as, 'a psychic process in which (he) translates desire through a need for coherence and understanding' (10). Such a definition particularly suits Freud's work, emphasising the imaginative governance that underpins his synthesis of empirical aims with more abstract methods of interpretation. The extent to which Freud operated as a novelist can be observed in his Preface to Dora's Case Study, a passage littered with literary terms (ie roman a clef) and composed around a novelistic conception of narrative, 'I have restored what is missing,' from, 'piecemeal imagery, woven into various contexts,' seemingly more suited to artistic invention than any medical study (11).

Nevertheless, despite such authorial methods, to conclusively label Freud a novelist would be as reductive as relegating him to the constraints of pure science. Interestingly, Brooks delineates the novel as a consistant circling around neurosis, propelled by a need for resolution, or, 'death of the plot' (12). In this context, it is significant that, due to the Dora's refusal of treatment after three weeks, her case remained a, 'fragment,' rather than, 'killing,' of hysteria. As a doctor Freud was prevented from curing Dora. More interestingly, as a potential novelist, Freud was unable to resolve Dora's plot, bound ultimately by a loyalty to reality rather than fictional transcendence. Brooks reads such lack of narrative closure as a nod towards the fragmentation of identity, and multiplicty of truth (endings), found in the modernist novel (13). However, such an alignment between an embryonic literary genre and Freud's unique work seems decidely revisionist, aided by a retrospective organisation of turn of the century movements. Instead, Dora's Case can be read as an expression of the conflict that lay at the heart of Freud's work. An integral tension between imaginative construction and scientific categorisation .

For, arguably, Freud was a doctor looking for a form of writing that could adequetely organise both scientific studies and abstract ideas. Interestingly, Schwarz argues that the historical academy experienced similar flux in the nineteenth century, '(when) debate raged...between the poetic and scientific (ie political, economic) dimensions of history' (14). Such concurrence points to the possibility of Freud operating as a Historian; a scholar engaged in an imaginative excavation of unconscious past in order to rationally trace the chronology of self development. This conception of Freud's profession is probably best expressed by Italian historian Ginzburg who, in an extraordinarily perceptive essay, traces links between Morelli, an art historian who came to Freud's attention in 1910, and the process of psychoanalysis (15). According to Ginzburg, Morelli's ability to identify individual artists using hidden details in their paintings mirrored Freud's, 'diagnosis through (repressed) clues,' of the human psyche (16). Here, Freudian study aligned with the dialectical debate within history, producing a, 'conjectural paradigm,' that utilised creative interpretation of clues (brush strokes, dream signification, or historical events) in order to attribute rational meaning, or causation, to human development (17).

Such parallels certainly seem convincing. Some historians, such as Peter Gay, have gone so far as to propose psychoanalytic historiography based on the conjecture that, 'the professional historian has always been a psychologist' (18). Whilst Gay's words should be tempered with a cautious acknowledgement of his professional aim to overhaul 1980s historical theory, the fact that Freud described himself as an, 'archeologist,' of the mind underlines the applicability of historical practice to his work (19). Perhaps the greatest benefit of casting Freud in the role of historian comes when, 'history principally signifies a retelling of past events which is professedly true' (20). Within such a defintion of, 'retelling,' and, 'professed,' truth Freudian theory is granted a flexibility that neither rigid scientific structuralism, nor the novel's need for closure allow. It is of note that Freud often heavily footnoted and revised his work. For example, Dora's therapy took place in 1899, was published in 1905 and underwent further re-structuring in 1923. Such revision could be used to relegate Freud's work to a vague zone of flux and fiction. However, as with the historian's ability to offer protean paths through the complexities of past society, Freud was engaged in a re-telling and re-organisation of the vicissitudes of the human mind. Like the elastic rigour of history, Freudian theory, 'remained open. Yet not formless or chaotic' (21).

Freud could reasonably be categorised as a mind doctor, novelist or historian. In undergoing a medical education, and studying symptoms of the mind, Freud ostensibly held the scientific aims of a doctor. Yet, as he noted with marked self perception, 'I have never been a doctor in the proper sense...(I wanted to) understand something of the riddles of the world in which we live and perhaps contribute something to their solution' (22). Significantly, Freud chose to pursue such understanding via examination of the unconscious, a move that necessitated unconvential methods and a turn towards imaginative interpretation. However, to recognise an element of creative writing in Freud's work is not to definatively claim he was a novelist. In contrast, rather than following the prescriptive narrative construction of a novel, Freud's theories reveal a form of organisation akin to historical chronology. In his work Freud practiced a minute form a history, a construction of rational causation from the scattered clues of the unconscious. As with a historian, Freud attempted to solve riddles through a re-telling of human activity.

Endnote

1. Peter Gay, 'Introduction', in Peter Gay(ed), The Freud Reader, (London, 1995), p. 20.
2. Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg and Megan Morris (eds), New Keywords: a revised vocabulary of culture and society, (Oxford, 2005), p. 360.
3. Ibid
4. Sigmund Freud, 'A Fragment of Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,' in James Stratchey (ed), Case Histories One: "Dora" and "Little Hans", (Harmondsworth, 1977), p.8. - In the case of Dora (real name Ida Bauer) her hysteria allegedly operated as a manifestation of the sexual advances, both real and imagined, of her father's friend, 'Herr K'. Dora's father was himself engaged in an affair with Herr K's wife.
5. Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane, In Dora's Case. Freud, Hysteria, Feminism, (London, 1985), p.20.
6. Bernheimer and Kahane, In Dora's Case, p.7. - The authors refer specifically to the influence of French neurologist Charcot on Freud's treatment of hysteria. Charcot was well known for his use of hypnotism to produce and remove hysterical symptoms in patients at his female only hospital in Paris, Freud was witness to many of the hypnotism sessions Charcot would publically stage.
7. Bennett, Grossberg and Morris, New Keywords, p. 360.
8. Sigmund Freud, On Dreams, (New York, 1952), p. 131.
9. Gay, 'Introduction', in Gay(ed), The Freud Reader, (London, 1995), p. 21.
10. Peter Brooks, Psycho-analysis and Storytelling, (Oxford, 1994), p. 3.
11. Freud, 'A Fragment of Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,' in Stratchey (ed), Case Histories One: "Dora" and "Little Hans", pp. 9-12.
12. Brooks, Psycho-analysis and Storytelling, p. 5. - according to Brooks death of the plot is most commonly acheived by a wedding or character death at the end of a novel.
13. Brooks, Psycho-analysis and Storytelling, p.7.
14. Bennett, Grossberg and Morris, New Keywords, p. 158.
15. Carlo Ginzburg `Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes’ in Umberto Eco & Thomas A. Sebeok (eds), The Sign of Three, (1984), p.10.
16. Ginzburg `Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes’ in Eco & Sebeok (eds), The Sign of Three, p.11.
17. Ginzburg `Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes’ in Eco & Sebeok (eds), The Sign of Three, p.15.
18. Peter Gay, Freud for Historians, (Oxford, 1985), p. 6.
19. Freud, 'A Fragment of Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,' in Stratchey (ed), Case Histories One: "Dora" and "Little Hans", p. 12.
20. Bennett, Grossberg and Morris, New Keywords, p. 156.
21. Gay, Freud for Historians, p. 28.
22. Sigmund Freud, 'The Question of Lay Analysis,' in Peter Gay (ed), The Freud Reader, (London, 1995), p. 679.

Bibliography

Bennett, Tony, Grossberg, Lawrence and Morris, Megan (eds), New Keywords: a revised vocabulary of culture and society, (Oxford, 2005).

Bernheimer, Charles and Kahane, Claire, In Dora's Case. Freud, Hysteria, Feminism, (London, 1985).

Brooks, Peter, Psycho-analysis and Storytelling, (Oxford, 1994).

Freud, Sigmund, 'A Fragment of Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,' in Stratchey, James (ed), Case Histories One: "Dora" and "Little Hans", (Harmondsworth, 1977).

Freud, Sigmund, On Dreams, (New York, 1952).

Freud, Sigmund, 'The Question of Lay Analysis,' in Gay, Peter (ed), The Freud Reader, (London, 1995).

Gay, Peter, Freud for Historians, (Oxford, 1985).

Gay, Peter, 'Introduction', Gay, Peter (ed), The Freud Reader, (London, 1995).

Ginzburg, Carlo `Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes’ in Eco, Umberto & Sebeok, Thomas A. (eds), The Sign of Three, (1984).

Why hello 2009!

2009-01-01T00:03:45Z

Good bye and good riddance to a fankly awful 2008. Hopefully a hello to a happy new year...

Repost because apparently, 'delete,' and, 'edit,' look the same to me.

2008-07-04T22:15:27Z

Move along, nothing to see here. Just an old entry moved for easier usage.

I am going to try to keep a little log of all the books I read this year. I say log for a few reasons,

a) I am far too lazy to write an actual book diary
b) It reminds me of space ships

I will come back to this at various moments of boredom to edit in books and thoughts. However for now, this year I have read:

The Well of Lonliness - Radcliffe Hall,
I have been meaning to read this for years as it is, 'a seminal classic of lesbian literature,' or so I imagine it says on the back.

The problem with lesbian literature is that, in my experience, not a lot of it is very good. Instead the canon is composed of any books where girls kiss. Now, 'The Well of Lonliness,' is an undoubtedly important book, written in the 1920s it must have been radical at the time, however I don't think it's necessarily a good book. Hall places too much stock on obvious metaphors and screaming melodrama.

What I did find interesting was the way the book clearly linked gender with sexuality. I feel Steven is a man in eveything but body, if she were a real person today I would almost say she was transgender, not a lesbian. I found it fascinating that Hall repeatedly described Steven's gender as a mistake, her lesbianism was the outward abhorence, but the character ws always inwardly unhappy, even before she was attracted to women.

Of course the biggest issue I had with the book was the propogation that lesbianism = tragedy. However on an historical level I don't suppose Hall could have come to any other conclusion and still had her novel published.

So yes, paradoxically I found the book very interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it.

The Magic Toyshop - Angela Carter

I read this book for my course. For the record I hate reading books I enjoy/know I will enjoy for English, as they subsquently get ripped into a thousand little pieces of pointless analysis and introspection. This book was a prime candidate for, 'post analysis hatred,' yet I still love it.

The biggest thing I love about Carter's writing is her appropriation of the structure of the fairy tale. It's what I love about J. Winterson and Atwood as well, their ability to weave a fable, to myth make. Because all 3 authors understand the conventions they are working within, they can subvert them.

Carter in particular takes the magic realism of fairytales and makes it concrete. 'The Magic Toyshop,' is all about making the subconcious explicit. I just love the idea of the dreamscape as reality, I love questioning why, 'reality,' is accepted in everyday life, when the symbolism of fairytales is just as pertinent. Conversely I also love looking at why people believe certain stories (be they religious, mythological or fairytales). What need does the fairytale fufill?

The other thing I love about Carter is her feminism. However, 'The Magic Toyshop,' is more about feminine sexuality than political feminism, so the feminist rant is one I'll save for another day ;)

The Outsiders - SE Hinton
This is a teenage book that I believe everyone in America above the age of 15 (kind of like Lord of the Flies in the UK) had read before I even heard of it. I'm glad that my stay in Canadia alerted me to it's existance.

Yeah it's somewhat simple, and incredibly indebted to, 'Rebel Without a Cause,' (mind you the main character does say in his first sentence he has been watching a James Dean movie), but it is beautiful because of that. I love good teenage fiction. At the risk of sounding like a wanker, the book is just so pure in its angst. Plus, the way the Frost poem is used is genius.

Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith

The Budha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureshi

10 Bad Dates with De Niro - Various

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime - Mark Haddon

Fantastic. This is one of those rare boks where I completely entered into the character's space. I usually read books with a certain critical detachment, I can't help but be aware of techniques and themes and all that English student shit. I enjoy reading that way, however sometimes it is nice to appreciate a book on a purely emotional level. That was certainly the case with this book, I felt like I was sitting in the character's head.

I think I was able to truely immerse myself in the book because Haddon is writing from an autistic perception. Alienation is turned into something eye opening. Haddon's language and imagery is discordant, but not distancing- it's simplicity it forces the reader to develop a whole new semiotic system in line with the protaganist's.

The only other book that I have had remotely the same reaction to was Golding's, 'The Inheritors.'

The Quiet American - Graeme Green

The Snow Goose - Anon

This was a beautiful kids fairy tale and I honestly don't know why it isn't more well known. It's ingredients are not that unique (swans, beautiful girls, hunchback - your standard faiy tale fodder) but by transposing the fairy tale to the very real setting of Dunkirk something unique is created. The grime of war adds the necessary shadow to a simple story of sacrafice, allowing the good to shine.

This book really acts as an example of why fairytales fascinate me. It is an apotheosis of the stories people tell themselves to keep going, of the primal human need to believe in something.

Son of a Witch - Gregory Macguire

As a sequel to, 'Wicked,' I had high expectations of this book. At first I was disappointed. A big theme of the book is acceptance of history, how all characters and events are interconnected through time. Unfortunately this meant that the beginning of the book relied very heavily on knowing winks to the first book and The Wizard of Oz. These cameos made it very hard to care for the new protaganist, but maybe that was the point, as at the beginning he himself is a character in search of an identity

As the book progressed I enjoyed it more. The book really reminded me of a comment from Tolkein on whether Lord of the Rings was allegorical and, if so, what was it all representative of. He replied that there is a difference between allegory and applicability, that often allegory creates a paper thin novel, full of ideas but little else, whilst a pertinent story can be applicable to any number of situations. Son of a Witch is laden with references applicable to current America (fundamentalist religion, a scarecrow leader, the conflict between patriotic loyalty and personal repsonsibility) but it is not a simple allegory anymore than it is a straightforward fantasy novel. It is in the subtle layering of recognisble reality with total fiction that Macguire creates something memorable

The Pact - Jodi Picoult

If I think Son of a Witch is a great example of what popular fiction can be, this book is pretty much the exact opposite.

My therapist told me I should read some, 'trash,' because I, 'have a tendancy to polarise everything when, in reality, there is a middle ground.' This was meant to be a nice light read, to prove to myself I didn't need to be reading, 'good,' literature all the time.

On the one hand this is definately a compulsive read. Picoult writes excellent dailogue and, whilst her plot was dramatic (2 17 year olds enter into a suicide pact, one survives and is charged with murder. O.M.G!) it was interesting and, mostly,believable.

On the flip side I just can't see the point in Picoult's writing (which probably says more about me than her). She lays all these issues out on the table and then refuses to examine them in any depth. An example - the dead girl was suicidal because she was sexually abused as a child. What was intially an interesting character trait for a seventeen year old, sexual frigidity (is that even a word?), was explained by introducing a 10 foot high ISSUE that was not dealt with in any form beyond being the cliche of the day to explain away an entire character.

Picoult only knows RIGHT and WRONG, there was no place for ambiguity in her novel. For the most part I found this mildly insulting, I don't like to have my hand held throughout an entire novel. However I switched from mildly insulted to downright offended within the last 50 pages. All of a sudden the imprisoned boy finds God, reveals himself to be pro-life and is acquitted by a jury when he tells the, 'one truth.' Hand holding I have an issue with, guiding me through the merry fields of right wing propoganda I can not stand.

So yes, a failed experiment all round.

On Beauty - Zade Smith

Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr - David Bret

Some enjoyable trash! As an introduction to Joan Cawford's era and career it was adequete, giving a nice overview of her life and movies. As a biography of a person it completely failed to offer anything beyond cheap titallation (abused childhood! prostituion! casting couch! gay men! gay women! alcohol! abuse of her own children!). I didn't feel like I was any closer to understanding why a girl called Lucille Laseur would go to a fledgling Hollywood and make herself a star.

Of course, from what I have read since, I think that is probably how Joan Crawford would have wanted it. Of all the 1920-40s stars she fascinates me most because she was possibly the ultimate movie star. Joan Crawford was a character created for the screen who, once she was fabricated frame by frame, had to be played 24/7. I think Crawford was the closest Hollwood (and by that I mean the studio system, the media and her own ruthless ambition) came to obliterating a person in favour of an icon. What interests me is the all encompassing power of, 'the image,' something the book didn't address at all.

The Divine Feud - Shaun Cassidine

The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton

Raiders of the Lost Arc Novelisation - Some Guy

I am such a lame fangirl sometimes. I bought this for 2p to refresh my memory before I went to see Crystal Skull. It was actually suprisingly gritty, apparently Marion was actually a prostitute in Nepal, oh and Indy committed child abuse when they intially got together since she was only 15. Fun times. In the book such tidbits had their worth, and it certainly was a good read, but I'm glad the novelisation's tone was not reflective of the film.

Now I want to watch Raiders (and Last Crusade) again. Jones!

Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson

Storms, My Life With Fleetwood Mac - Carol Ann Harris

Conversations with Aanis Nin

1984 -Orwell

Number 9 Dream - David Mitchell

The Plot Against America - Philip Roth

Drowned World - JG Ballard

Mysterious Skin - S Heim

A Fine Balance - Mistry

Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Finis

I fail

2008-03-17T20:40:36Z

I have come to the conclusion that I am incapable of being in a functional relationship. What do you do when you can't cope with real life? Why, come to lj to whine about it of course.

This particular pity party is motivated by my latest break up. I have been going out with a girl called Jem for a couple of months. Now Jem is a nice girl, and we definately have a lot in common, if we had been dating casually we'd probably still be together. However the spanner in the works of my life is the fact that I have known Jemma for years (from the internet, ha) and she lives in Winchester. To break it down,

Longdistance + existing friendship = cloyingly serious relationship.

Apparently I am a committment-phobe, and not in an amusing Chandleresque way. I just couldn't cope with having to visit Jem and pretend to be a practically married couple every single time. The problem with leaping the gap between (predominantly) internet friendship and dating is that you are basically doing things back to front. On the one hand Jemma knows things about me very few people know, on the other she has only really been around me for a month (ish) in real time. Of course another issue is just my general abohrence of smushy romance of any sort. Everytime she called me, 'sweetie,' I wanted to punch her in the ovaries. I think I have a problem.

Oh so many repressed relationship issues. I wish I was still in my one night stand phase.

Apart from reading books (and acting like an intellectual) the thing that alleviates the pain is perving over the female celebrities that http://www.afterellen.com tells me to like. Random thoughts in that vein:

- Jodie Foster's latest film (Nim's Island) is out in a few weeks and is a kids film. I am strangly excited by the prospect of watching Jodie make corny jokes and run into things in a slapstick manner. Seeing as I was about minus 15 years old last time she made a crappy kids film I feel like I am allowed this small indulgence.

Plus I was actually really disappointed by, 'The Brave One,' it was the first time I felt that Foster's need to be the strong, single female got in the way of the narrative progression of the film. She is a woman that, lest we forget, goes on a bender and murders at least 5 people before the final scene. The only reason I can find for the character's redemption is Foster's chosen moral stereotype. Ever since the jump from the rape in, 'The Accused,' to Clarice Starling she has been the unasailable, 'saviour of helpless women.' In, 'The Brave One,' her character started as a victim but was a killer by the end, she should have died. So yes, her run of strong women in peril movies is now wearing thin, hopefully, 'Nims Island,' will be a welcome change

Woah tangent! Whilst I'm on one I might as well say that I love that Jodie Foster is now a certified lesbian. CNN did a story on her thanking her female partner, she must be officially gay now. *rolls eyes*

- Somewhat related to above. Disney must be so bummed. They have certainly downgraded in childstars. Jodie Foster > Lindsay Lohan > Miley Cyrus. Butch but freakishly talented > Inappropriately attractive but a coke whore > Looks like a horse.

- Tina Fey's only film as an actress is out in a month. I'm just plain scared for it. She was good on SNL, 'Mean Girls,' was amusing, even seminal (every female in my age bracket has seen it) and, '30 Rock,' is just plain frickin' awesome. Surely Tina is due for a fall? Everyone loves her now, but what about if, 'Baby Mamma,' is shitty, sub par SNL material? Will Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and Rachel Dratch (she's gotta be bitter) line up to kick her whilst she's down? I think so. Plus the trailer isn't all that great beyond the massive GAY of Tina Fey + Amy Poehler.

Oh well, I'm keeping the faith cause Sigourney Weaver is in it.

- Realated to, '30 Rock,' Alec Baldwin was in my dream last night. Which was somewhat disurbing.

- I hated, 'Will and Grace,' when it was on air - really, really loathed it. Infact the only time I ever watched it was when I fell asleep after, 'Friends,' and woke up in a nightmarish state to the shrill sound of Debra Messing's laugh. However whilst I visited Jem we watched a lot of, 'Will and Grace,' and it grew on me like a homosexual fungus. I still think that you really have to be in musical theatre to fully enjoy, however I have a certain fondness for the fags and hags now.

Of course this is mainly related to my new crush on Megan Mullally. I always thought she was the only funny thing about the show. Now I think she's funny AND hot. She's a short, talented brunette with big boobs and fantastic hair, how was I not gonna be on board?

Other things that make me happy that I am too tired to talk about: My new piercings, Flight of the Conchords, Futurama movies, the new F1 season (I love that no traction control means that no one can drive the cars anymore. Ha), those strange people called friends.

dumbmonkeygirl @ 2007-11-08T17:09:00

2007-11-08T19:15:45Z

Public Sphere and Private Life - Dena Goodman

- The entire discussion rooted in the 18th century, 'when an authentic public sphere was articulated and establshed for the first and only time' (p.12)

- A long standing tradition of seperating the public sphere (Habermas - The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere) from the private life (A History of the Private Life - Chartier, both published in 1989) Goodman aims to bring a synthesis of the public and private - 'the public sphere...is a dimension of the private sphere.' (p.2)

The Public Sphere - Habermas and Koselleck

- Koselleck's public sphere, one based on political absolutism (reason d'etat - politics outside the realm of moral consideration) and intellectual criticism (the republic of letters, the philsophes who eventually turned criticism to the realm of absolutism - Masonic Lodges/Illuminati- leading to the Jacobin Republic?) which created a dialectic discourse from which the French Revolution emerged.

- 'Kollselleck sets up a fundamental opposition between the public sphere of absolutism and the private sphere of relgious conscience,' (p.3) Goodman sees this as the fundamental weakness of his argument, an oversimplication in order to gain the oppositional forces of his dialectic.

- Habermas' argument is more nuanced - looks at the derivation of the term, 'public sphere.' In the middle ages public was merely a social status, 'it represented the power of the person rather than articulating a sphere of social action' (p.4) Whereas Koselleck sees private conscience arising from poltical absolutism, Habermas sees the development of the public and private spheres as simaltaneous, with differing origins

- 'What the state did create however was it's own object: the public,' (p.4) initially an object of state power, transferring into the reading public (the bourgeoise)

- Hab. also sees criticism as, not a reaction to absolutism, but something in constant contact with the monarchy, a form of communication between state and subjects, 'in which private people come together as a public.' (p.5) Unlike Kollsellecks model which set up the public sphere as a type of pseudo politics, Habermas' model shows the public sphere as an area of socialibility to challenge the political secrets of the state.

- Habermas has 2 public spheres - the inauthentic (merely a zone of state power) and the authentic (where the private people come together to create a public - ie the rep. of letters)

'the authentic public sphere is the ground that mediates between the private life of individuals as producers and reproducers, and their public roles a subjects and (later) citizens of the state.' (p.6)

- Areas of bourgeoise sociability therefore become the social structures of the authentic public sphere, a form of civil society that was reknowned publically. 'the bougeoise publc sphere was authentic precisely because it was open...the veil lay not over the real, hidden, economic interest of the bougeoise but over the political practices of the state.' (p.7)

- Although he is a Marxist historian Habermas' work has been taken up by post Marxist historiography because his model of the authentic public sphere, 'provides a social and material base for the, 'political culture,' ' of subsequent work (p.8)

'Habermas sees the authentic public sphere and the Enlightenment that shaped it as something of a lost paradise that emerged in the 18th century and then collapsed in the 19th, Koselleck sees that same formation as the origin of the hypocritical deceptions of the 20th' (p.8)

Private Life: Ares and Chartier

- The historian Ares designates Habermas' socialability of the authentic public sphere (ie letter writing, coffee houses, reading outloud) to the private sphere as it belonged to private life of individuals. ' As I see it, Ares reflects, the entire history of private life comes down to a change in the forms of socialbility' (p.10)

- In this way work on the public sphere and private life were infact two sides of the same coin.

- Ares attempted to use the history of private life to elucidate aspects of the public sphere, Chartier complicated this picture by studying, 'the privitisation of the state (ie the court and its strict rules of modesty/chivalry) and the publicization of the private sphere.(ie none institutionalised sociabiliy - Habermas' authentic public sphere)' (p.10)

'Chatier has inscribed the public face of the private realm, identifying it with the instituitions of sociability' (p.11 - a synthesis of public/private and political/cultural history is fully explored in Chartier's, 'The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution,' that comes to the paradoxical conclusion that the invention of the private life culminated in the emergence of a revolutionary public sphere. He answers this paradox by stating that the moral values implicit in private life facillitated the growth of the public sphere that was autonomous and critical of state authority)

Convergence and Implications

'We need to get away from rigidly oppositional thinking that assumes two spheres or two discourses, one public and the other private' (p.14) - as sociability was a form of public and private articulation a stable distinction between the two areas is hard to make, 'the 18th century was not an enlightened age but an age of enlightenment, it was in the same sense an age of defintion in which nothing was firmly defined.' (p.14)

- Joan Landes, 'Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of French Revolution' (feminist historical study, an example of, 'a too rigid understanding of the opposition between public and private spheres failsto account for the complexity of the old regime.')

- Lande argues that the Republic that rose from the Revolution was inherently gendered, despite the republics universalist language of, 'the people.' The role of women in revolutionary France was one of domesticity and subsequent female activity has been a struggle for women to re-enter the public sphere. In this theory the public sphere is essentially masculine, 'she sees the public sphere as unitary and the private sphere as its antithesis.' (p. 15) essentially ignoring all the complexities therein.

- Goldman agrees that women were excluded from the revolutionary public sphere but wants to use the complexities rather than dichotomy of public/private to explain how and why.

- Habermas' complicated theory of the authentic public sphere (and its private face as studied by Ares and Chariter) belies a simple model of male public sphere vs. female private sphere (wherein any women operating in the public sphere were, 'transgressing the bounds of the private sphere within which men sought to confine them.' p.16)

- Faults in Landes argument - she doesn't differentiate between women of the court and women of the salon (2 very different publi institutions, see Chartier above), she does not acknowledge that the public space was inherently private so the role of women was acceptable within them (and when the terrors shut down the authentic public sphere and banished women back to the domestic it wasn't just plain misogyny, but a collapse of the nuanced authentic public sphere)

- Landes feels, 'the saloneres were the women against whom men revolted,' (p.17) from grub street hacks to Rousseau, Landes identifies a drive to exclude women from the public sphere (lumping all women, be they prostitutes or salonneires, together)

- Goldman draws a more complex picture of women's role in the growth of the private to a relam of sociability and public voice. She makes a distinction between, 'the role of women in the authentic public sphere and that of women in the public sphere of the state' (court women are portrayed as vessels of secrecy, intrigue and deceit - abetting the privitisation of the state) nb. she does acknowledge that there was an overlap between the two groups of women but generally states, 'each was an institution of a certain kind of sociability and discoursethat corresponds to one of Habermas's two public spheres.' (p.18)

- In contrst to court women, salonnieres were defended by the philosophes who frequented their coffee houses ('the enlightenment salon functioned as a regulated matrix for the dissemination and publication of works that extended this discourse to the literate public and the tribunal of public opinion.' p.18) In the domestic realm of the salon the public role of women was legitimised.

- The central flaw in Landes argument is not recognising that the women in court and the women in the salons were operating in very different spheres, by lumping them together Landes has oversimplified Habermas' complex mapping of state public sphere vs. authentic public sphere and created a false male public/female private dichotomy.

- 'There was no such thing as a public woman in 18th century France. Most women, like most men, functioned within a priavte realm that had a public face.' (p.19)

The Communist Manifesto - Marx
- Bourgeoisie is the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.
- Proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live (both definitions taken from Engels notes, English edition 1888)
Bourgeoise

- Marx sees history as a constant struggle between class (bourg/proleteriat, lord/peasant, oppresser/oppressed) Struggle that ended in either revolution or ruin of the common class.

- However Marx makes a distinction between this written history, and the history of primerval man (a subject of study in his time)

'The inner organization of this primitive Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Morgan's crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of these primeval communities society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes.'
- From this moment onwards Marx sees a progression of class stratification and antagonism (from Roman patricians, knights, plebians, to medieval feudalims to current capitalist class system)
'The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society 'has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.'
- Marx sees globalisation (particularly America) and improvements in communication (the railways) as stretching the reach of the bourgeoise. The manufacturing industry replaced local guilds, manufacturers replaced guild masters. Manufacture stiumlated demand and a cycle of capitalism was established, ever growing in magnitude:
'The place of manufacture was taken by the giant. Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.'
- Marx views the rise of the bourgeoise as a cycle of revolutions (much like Bayly's continuum?) and developments in modes of production. Each step of revolution advanced the bourgiouse as they were the advancing political class. Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country; for its political development, France.
- The bougeoise revolution is seen as one that tears man away from a patriarchal, feudal and idyllic heirarchy and into a nexus of self interest
'It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest.'
'It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade.'
- Marx sees the bourgeoise as rooting everything in money (ie religion becomes secular, the sentimental veil of the family is torn, the wonders of industry are seen as greater than those of mythology - ie pyramids, temples)
'The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.' - whereasn feudalism thrived on stability, the capitalist middle cass only thrive on the production of products for ever expanding markets:
'The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.'
- In such a way capitalism makes the world a cosmopoliton one, and makes industry international (unlike the reactionists national footing for industry), raw materials come from the, 'remotest zones,'. This becomes an enemy to national seclusion, ideas become communal. Marx speaks of a, 'world literature.' Through this communication and product incitement Marx sees even the most barbourous nations becoming civilisation.
'In one word, it creates a world after its own image.'
- Marx also lays urbanisation (gaygaygaygaygaygaygaygaygay) at the feet of the bourgeoise - a centralisation of property to the few hands, ' It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.' (satire?)
- This allegory is extended to a global scale, 'Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.'
'The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground - what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?'
'The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour.'
The Proletariat
-If the bourgeouse revolution was part of an historical conituum of change (feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder), then it has in turn created the new conditions that will be it's downfall:
* Overproduction creates a economic crisis (plunging countries into the babarism of recession) 'The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.' - this process is worsened by governments systematically shutting down old markets of production and opening new ones (a temporary solution that actually worsens thwe problem)
* However industry has also created the class that will overthrown them. Through industry the working class has been expanded from simple labourers to a whole movement
'But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern working class - the proletarians.'
- The indutrial capitalist model makes the worker a commodity, a resource that is purchasable like any other. As a commodity they are subject to the vicissitudes of the market. Devlopments in machinary have both mechanised ('he becomes an appendage of the machine') the worker and are starting to put him out of a job.
'In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.'
- Marx also identifies a usurping of the labourers jobs through women (because labour is less intensive due to mechanisation) this breaks down traditional social barriers, a further homogenisation of the working class
- Not only is the working class wage decreasing but it is being taken up by consumable products (the lower echelons of the bourgeoiuse - the shopkeeper, tradesman are the first hit by recession as they lose this business and sink into the proletariat themselves)
'The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.'

Stages of Proletariat Revolution
'The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie.'
- Firstly the proletariat directs any anger at the machines of bourgeoise development (factories get burnt, machines and wares destroyed)
- 'At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.' (any unionism is the result of the bourgeise utilising the working class as a mass for political ends - against the aristocracy, foreign powers etc. This gives the working class their own socio-political tools and awareness)
- However as industry grows so does the strength of the proleteriat, working man/bourg collisons occur and as a result working class men start to form trade unions. Sporadic outbursts of trade unionism are not important in victory at this point but in the effect they have in creating 'one big union' (aided by increasing global communications)
'And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.'
- In such a way disparate unions become a united working class, a political party who can fight for the rights of the worker (ten hours bill in England)
- As recession becomes increasingly violent, sections of the ruling class take a philosophical/ideological stance with the working class (seeing their emergence as a new socialist, historical force?)
'Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.' (the lower middle class fight to save their existance, not for the existance of others so they are conservative)
- Proleteriat revolution is one of complete destruction of old modes of production (whereas previous revolutions appropriated suitable aspects of the old community/heirarchy)
'All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.'
- Marx sees this revolution as nationlist in form, but not substance - ie proleteriat has to fight their national bourgeoiuse before there can be a global working class

The Wretched of the Earth - preface by Jean Paul Satre

- Satre outlines a world where the western bourgeoise subjagated the native through 'the word.'

'In the colonies the truth stood naked, but the citizens of the mother country preferred it with clothes on.'
The bourgeoise elite created a native elite, training them in the voice of Western nationalism/culture and acting as a go between, between 'man' and, 'native.'
- 'It came to an end; the mouths opened by themselves; the yellow and black voices still spoke of our humanism but only to reproach us with our inhumanity.'
- A form of western arrogance did not take this appropriation of the word seriously, merely as proof of the success of imparting western values of the rights of man to the natives. Men said, 'let them bawl their heads off, it relieves their feelings; dogs that bark don't bite.'
- A fundamental culture clash:
'With unbelievable patience, its writers and poets tried to explain to us that our values and the true facts of their lives did not hang together, and that they could neither reject them completely nor yet assimilate them.'
This clash was rooted in the internal contradiction of liberalism (or what Satre calls humanism) - the white man promoted the rights of man through racial differentiation.
- The bourgeoiuse misinterpereted the native cry as one for integration,
'As to a revolt, we need not worry at all; what native in his senses would go off to massacre the fair sons of Europe simply to become European as they are?'
National differentiation between the West and the colonial man:
- The native does not want intgration, 'Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.'
- A fenchman may produce such a sentiment but Satre posits that at the bottom of it will be an empathy and unity with his fellow countryman. A statement of apparent desolution will infact be one of instruction to improve the country, bound by national intersubjectivity.
- Fanon's book has little concern for the wreck of France - his prediction of doom is a diagnosis rather than a call for change.
- Fanon is more concerned with speaking of the West rather than too the West. He calls for a unifcation of the native to bring about a new era of humanism and change.
'An ex-native, French-speaking, bends that language to new requirements, makes use of it, and speaks to the colonized only: ' Natives of all under-developed countries, unite!'
The emergence of the Third World from Western shadow
'In short, the Third World finds itself and speaks to itself through his voice.' (again location of culture in THE WORD. The language is central to identification. Fanon doesn't care if his book is read in the West - it is addressed to the colonies)
- Satre notes that the third world is not a homogenous zone of freedom fighting (slavery still exists as does differences in level of freedom) but he roots this differentiation in colonial history and a still existing levels of feudalism (native bourgeoise) in some areas.
'Thus Europe has multiplied divisions and opposing groups, has fashioned classes and sometimes even racial prejudices, and has endeavoured by every means to bring about and intensify the stratification of colonized societies.'
- Firstly Fanon attempts to break down these internal barriers. Satre sees a structure of puppet bourgeoise falling inline with the greater power of the native rural masses ('that veritable reservoir of a national revolutionary army') In countries where colonialisation held up capitalist development it is natural the the lowly peasants are the first to rise.
* 'In order to triumph, the national revolution must be socialist.'*
'In this violence which springs from the people, which enables them to hold out for five years - for eight years as the Algerians have done - the military, political and social necessities cannot be separated.'
- This is what Fanon explains in his book - the need for his, 'brothers,' to unite from the bottom of the social ladder upwards to overthrow imperialism ('The reader is sternly put on his guard against the most dangerous will o' the wisps: the cult of the leader and of personalities, Western culture, and what is equally to be feared, the withdrawal into the twilight of past African culture.')
- Satre sees the emancipation of the third world as inivitable ('our methods areout of date.')
'The settler has only recourse to one thing: brute force, when he can command it; the native has only one choice, between servitude or supremacy.'
Why should Europeans read the book?
- The colonies are no longer, 'dark/dead souls,' given a glimpse of the light through western culture. They ignore the European man and are now the revolutionary force that will have an impact worldwide. 'in these shadows from whence a new dawn will break, it is you who are the zombies.'
- Europeans should read the book to
1. view objectively the mechanisms of imperialisam. Give Europe a sense of their responsibility (guilt? shame?) for imperialism, even if they themselves weren't colonisers. The Western states promised to be humane yet by a silence on colonial violence the West infact legitimised and upheld it.
'Violence in the colonies does not only have for its aim the keeping of these enslaved men at arm's length; it seeks to dehumanize them. Everything will be done to wipe out their traditions, to substitute our language for theirs and to destroy their culture without giving them ours'
For if a native is merely a superior monkey then universal humanism can still be claimed by the West.
Every European is implicated in this.
'Have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will make you ashamed, and shame, as Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment.'
2. Fanon is the first since Engels to reveal the processes of history, to strip them away and show, 'the dialectic which liberal hypocrisy hides from you and which is as much responsible for our existence as for his.'
In particular Satre is speaking of the dichomoty between the, 'free worker,' and enforced peasant labour to produce goods/survive in Western capitalism. Fanon's work can be applied to French and English economic/social systems revealing the hypocrisy in Western claims of universal humanism/liberalism
'Laying claim to and denying the human condition at the same time: the contradiction is explosive.'
The capitalist system was also highly responsible for the violence of decolonisation, due to the economic demands to turn the native into a half man/half beast...
Decolonisation - an outlet for violence
- Satre sees decolonisation rooted in the very violence levelled against the natives. If a native is turned into something half man/half beast (because the West tried to 'break in,' the native but stopped the process halfway because a farmhand is always more profitable than a farm animal) then the only way to reverse the machine to to rise up in violence (taught by the West, who oculd not fully degrade the native to animal) against the oppressers.
- Western culture would stamp native uprisings as the very inherent 'bad nature' that he sought to beat out of the colonised slave. Yet Satre says, 'Can he not here recognize his own cruelty turned against himself? In the savagery of these oppressed peasants, does he not find his own settler's savagery, which they have absorbed through every pore and for which there is no cure?'
- If Western culture believes it can rule over the colonies as a gun or a horsewhip, by merely conditioning native reflexes to obey then he underestimates the deep rooted scar Western violence leaves on the native subconcious. The West was infact creating a violent native to decolonise:
'we only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.'
'the ' half-natives' are still humans, through the power and the weakness of the oppressor which is transformed within them into a stubborn refusal of the animal condition.'
- Decolonisation becomes a process of growing fury. The half man native becomes a man through shooting his oppresser, he in turn is shot in retribution ('teach the natives'), making him a matyr to incite more passion. The cycle continues.
- Through this process disorganised resistance becomes mass revolution, 'their agony exalts the terrified masses.'
- Satre does note that if the native does not understand the enemy then their suppressed violence can errupt against each other in tribal warfare. A deep seated urge to murder is acknowledged by Fanon. ('collective subconciousness.'). Also a retreat into tribal culture and primative religious rites can result if the native does not turn the violence outwards.('This is a defence, but it is also the end of the story; the self is disassociated, and the patient heads for madness')
- The other form of defence against violence that the colonised can take is actually embracing western values. To legitimise the term, 'native,' through consent.
Revolution
'we are living at the moment when the match is put to the fuse. When the rising birthrate brings wider famine in its wake, when these newcomers have life to fear rather more than death, the torrent of violence sweeps away all barriers.'
- This is referred to by Satre as the third phase of violence (the first being western violence against the native, the second internal tribal violence) - a phase where the westerner is murdered on sight (see Algeria)
- Satre states this form of revolution is peculiar to the native. In the West the liberal recognises their mistake. The Left is embarrassed by the West's mistakes but does not condone the full scale violence of decolonisation.
'Sometimes the Left scolds them . . . 'You're going too far; we won't support you any more.' The natives don't give a damn about their support.'
'They would do well to read Fanon; for he shows clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man re-creating himself.'
- In the native revolution nationalism becomes central, as a tool of unification against the West. Tribal dissentions weaken as they endanger the revolution
- Revolution by it's nature of overthrow has to institute new socio-political orders which will becomes the foundation for peace time order.
- Revolution, because it is rooted in violence, takes losses in it's stride, 'this new man begins his life as a man at the end of it; he considers himself as a potential corpse. He will be killed; not only does he accept this risk, he's sure of it.' Death perpetuates the agony of the masses and uprising.
Progress from decolonisation/revolution
'Here Fanon stops. He has shown the way forward: he is the spokesman of those who are fighting and he has called for union, that is to say the unity of the African continent against all dissensions and all particularisms.'
- However Satre states the implications of Fanon's argument stay with the West:
*'for we in Europe too are being decolonized: that is to say that the settler which is in every one of us is being savagely rooted out.'*
- Humanism is revealed by decolonialisation to be an, 'ideology of lies.' The West has been imobilised by its narcissm:
'Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, patriotism and what have you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty niggers, dirty Jews and dirty Arabs.'
'there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters.'
- The violence of decolonisation has altered Western violence. Whereas once the west practiced violence to harm others without any affect on our own pysche. Now the West is n a state of fear,
'Involution starts; the native re-creates himself, and we, settlers and Europeans, ultras and liberals, we break up.'
'The union of the Algerian people causes the disunion of the French people.'
- The West become, 'nigger hunters,' they become the very savage idea that they used to justify their imperialisam. This is the rise of the right wing facist and internal fragmentation ('civil war is forecast for this autumn'). The colonist turns it's fear inwards, rooting out dissenters within France itself.
- The Left is also under, 'the fever,' through recognition of it's myths and contradictions.
- Satres preface ends with a rousing call for France to vocalise against the government/reign of terror in Algeria (he feels it would be better to devolve into the native rather than bear the shame of Western violence and interrogation)
'This is the end of the dialectic; you condemn this war but do not yet dare to declare yourselves to be on the side of the Algerian fighters.'

Owsies

2007-11-05T20:08:17Z

So I MAY have slipped and fallen over whilst having a water fight last night. I MAY have pulled all the muscles in my lower back whilst doing so. As a result I have definately discovered that back injuries are the most excruciating pain known to man kind.

I can only lie down or stand stock still, anything in between is agony. I've had a terrible glimpse into my future as an arthritic old lady. Or one of those pregnant women who walks around with their hands on the small of their back all the live long day.

ETA: Essay writing after two years of doing fuck all is almost as painful as crippling yourself whilst being juvenile with tap water. I've written two 2,500 word essays this weekend and I have one to go. They are all unequivocably awful. I would feel sorry for myself, but for the fact that most of my old school friends are writing their dissertations this year so are in a far worse circle of hell than I.

Well it was going to happen sooner or later...

2007-10-25T18:52:24Z

I have such a crush on one of my tutors. Oh dear. She's so pretty and intelligent and funny and young (only 23!)and, and...

I haven't had a crush for years. I feel like I'm 12 years old again (not that I ever thought about doing my seminar tutor when I was twelve ;))

Crispy pancakes

2007-10-23T15:30:40Z

I was reading Davis Mitchell's latest novel (Black Swan Green) which is a nostalgia trip, set in 1983. Anyway his protaganist mentioned crispy pancakes. God damn if I hadn't forgotten about crispy pancakes and the inevitable feeling that you were eating an undercooked, greasy dough covered with gravel.

I now really want to poison myself with a crispy pancake.

I is fucked off

2007-10-14T22:07:01Z

You see this is how it goes;

Josh, 'loves,' Aimee, Aimee flirts with Will, Will likes Kim, Kim sends jealous looks to Aimee, Josh leaves heartbroken, Aimee goes to bed (flirted out for the day), Kim and Will procede to stir the pot of innuendo in the kitchen. Rinse and Repeat.

I meanwhile would love it if my kitchen would stop being a badly acted scene from Hollyoaks. I got in at 5am this morning, have had very little sleep and would like the teenage theatrics to end right now.

Also it would be fantastic if the females in my flat could learn to have a conversation with a boy without disengaging brain matter and turning on giggly bimbo to insufferable levels.

Thank you, goodnight.

dumbmonkeygirl @ 2007-10-03T10:56:00

2007-10-03T10:37:18Z

So I'm at Warwick university now and it's all very strange. I have to go to a seminar in half an hour so I'm going to do this in condensed form. Or maybe I'm just illiterate these days;

The Good

- My flatmates are lovely. There are 5 of us on the floor that actually talk to each other and everyone is a sweetheart. It's also a very international floor. We have one English girl and boy, 3 guys from Hong Kong, a girl from Turkey and a girl from Greece. Plus me with my very strange hybrid of an accent.

- My course looks fucking awesome. I'm doing 2 History modules, The Making of the Modern World and The History of the Novel (chosen for it's English Lit skew), an Introduction to Film module and a Modes of Reading module from the English department. I may go blind from reading so much/watching so many films but it should be worth it.

- Campus itself is beautiful (we have a lake and geese outside our window, I'm happy) and big enough to not feel claustraphobic

- I have the option of doing a year in America next year

- I'm starting to meet people from my various courses now, which brings a bit of variety into my life.

The Bad

- Following on from above, beacuse I'm doing modules in 3 different departments it is abnormally difficult to meet people who haven't already formed little subject cliques.

- My resisdence is a million miles (slight exaggeration) from the centre of campus. It is also a postgraduate residence, bar 50 undergraduates, so is somewhat quiet and unsociable.

- I haven't met anyone one I've really clicked with yet. I've been somewhat spoilt in the past because I've met people I've got on with exceptionally well very early on in my travels to PGL/Canada. This is not given me the art of patience and friendship building. Saying that, the people on my floor are perfectly lovely they're just more friends by situation than shared interest at the moment.

Books

The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
The Passion of a New Eve - Angela Carter
The Accidental
The Prestige
Wicked - Gregory Maguire
The Time Traveller's Wife
Notes on a Scandal
The Lovely Bones - Alice Seobold
The Old Man and the Sea - Hemmingway
A Passage to India - EM Foster
The Dead Zone - Stephen King
Bluebeards Egg and Other Stories - Margaret Atwood
Desperate Networks
Mirror Mirror - Gregory Maguire
Middlesex - Jeffery Eugenides
Atonement - Ian McEwan

Films

Baise Moi
Last House on the Left
Transamerica
The Hunger
Irreversible
Manhunter
A Ma Soeur
Slither
Cabin Fever
Knocked Up
Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Freaky Friday (2001)
The Lives of Others
Pans Labryinth
Children of Men
Happy Feet
Grindhouse
28 Weeks Later
The Simpsons Movie
Chak De India
Fanaa
Dil Se
Kal Ho Na Ho
Kabie Kushie Kabhie Gham
The Painted Veil
The Brave One
Dhoom 2
Rang De Basanti
Shortbus
Brick
Sommer '04 an de Schlei

Comments on various books and films to be added at a later date, possibly never

I never thought I'd say this since I think CSI is the vastly superior, albeit still hilariously overrated, American drama - however I thought the DH premiere was the best thing I watched on tv last week. Bar Edie's fake suicide, which made me wish for a length of rope to tie her up myself, everyone kept me entertained. Even Susan. I know.

I especially enjoyed Lynette's atrocious wig, Bree's ridunkulous baby belly and Nathan Fillion bringing some Firefly charm. My favourite part however was Marcia Cross and Dana Delaney's Bree-off. I think they should just write out Susan and Edie (and Mike) so that I could enjoy hours of uninterrupted, red haired, suburban repression.

CSI on the other hand, well there was a lot of wandering through the desert. A lot. I admired the aesthetics of it all and the balls the show had to go for, 'Sara of Arabia,' instead of showing a frantic rescue ala, 'Grave Danger,' but wow it lagged in the middle. I did however enjoy watching Jorja Fox have something to do other than pick lint up off the crapet inquisitively. There was car-fu and coyotes and arm breaking so it was all fun.

Plus I am glad that Sara lived as she is my favourite character, the fact that Fox is leaving the show in 6 episodes time irregardless is a bummer but I'll enjoy her whilst she lasts. Unlike certain fans who are sending campaigning letters and flying banners over CBS to keep her on a show she chose to leave of her own accord. Sometimes the interweb scares me.

One last tv ramble. Carrie Fisher is going to be on 30 Rock in a few weeks. Which is entirely too awse for my brain to comprehend. Tina Fey and Carrie Fisher in one place! A place I have also been over summer! And Liz Lemon is totally obsessed with Princess Leia! So much synergy.

And now I'm going to stop being a dork and actually do some work

Listomatic

2007-09-11T00:02:16Z

As ever I will use lj as a dumping place for pointless lists in the middle of the night.

Things to keep me happy/at least occupied in cold, grey England in the weeks proceeding the entertainment that is university

1. Seeing all the peoples again. My family I am already sick of, my friends I know I will have more of a stomach for.

2. Switching back to a UK sleeping pattern. It is not fun but it is necessary. I view it as a sort of marathon, an endurance test between my concious thought and my eyelids to see which can stay open for longer.

3. Contemplating how awesome, 'The Penelopiad,' is going to be at the Theatre Royal. I thought I had missed the adaptation of Atwood's book, as it was starting it's theatre run in Ottawa just as I was leaving. However it is coming to Newcastle. Oh heavenly days.

4. 'The Brave One.' I thought Jodie Foster's new film didn't open here until January, I was wrong. Two weeks baby. Two weeks until Jodie Foster gays up a tank top and a gun.

5. Hunting down as many Amitabh Bachchan movies as possible. Oh Amitabh you have drawn me into Bollywood with your sexy, silver bearded ways. I would also like to see Chak de India again. Oh my flatmates in Warwick are going to get sick of Bollywood soooo quickly.

6. Snakebite

7. American Fall TV. I am looking forward to downloading the following and watching them in varying crappy color on my laptop:
a) The Emmy awards. Come on 30 Rock! I hope neither the Black Crusaders nor the powerful bread lobby thwart your success. Or you know, The Office.
b) On that note - new season of 30 Rock. It doesn't start until Oct 4th, how will I survive without Tina Fey on my tv every week until then?
c) Desperate Housewives with Dana Delaney. I had lost all interest in DH until I read they had cast Dana Delaney as the new neighbour. Delaney vs. Cross. Steely redheaded joy!
d) CSI premiere. It just looks so awesomely dramatic. Sara captured by a psychopath under a car! Drowning! With a bone crunchingly broken arm! And a coyote! The only thing more awesome than that is the prospect of Grissom crying. And also Marg Helgenberger flipping her hair in slow motion angst.

8. Sorting out my hair. This dead animal on my head needs hair dye badly. And possibly conditioning.

9. Researching good tattoo places in the UK. Because there sure as hell aren't any in Newcastle.

Wow lj still exists.

2007-08-27T22:00:31Z

It's my last day in Ottawa today and, true to form, everyone is running around like a headless chicken. I left my house yesterday but we are currently trying to pack up Mel's room as she is moving straight after we come back from New York. Given that half my stuff is in there I am being not at all helpful by sitting typing on ye olde abandoned lj.

I am going to miss Ottawa a lot, it is a beautiful city and this has been a wonderful summer (perhaps I'll tell you all about it one day!) But yes, I'm going to New York for a week, and then Toronto for the Toronto film festival, so I guess it's not all quite over yet. However going on holiday is a lot different from living somewhere and Ottawa did feel like a home.

I am not looking forward to being in the grey UK again, where no one knows what poutine is and my accent can not be exploited to get a job/free drinks/make interesting friends.

On the plus side of life:

Things to do in New York

- Go to Central Park and ride on the carosel from Catcher in the Rye. Learn how to spell carosel
- Get free hat from Macys as promised in last months Glamour
- Broadway show (Hairspray?)
- Eat some of the best ice cream in the world
- Get another piercing
- Coney Island
- DUMBO
- Stanten Island Ferry (don't bother actually going up the Statue of Liberty)
- Dork out in front of 30 Rock
- Buy something from the NBC store
- Buy my mother a cheap, touristy present as requested
- Times Square
- Break the sleep cycle acquired from working night shifts for the last 3 weeks
- Ground Zero
- Empire State Building
- Free Bollywood film on Wednesday
- Do not get mugged
- Sing 42nd Street on 42nd Street
- Sing New York, New York loudly in order to be as irritating as possible
- UN Headquarters
- UCB Show (the youtube one if I can persuade any of the 5 people I'm with to accompany me)
- Attempt to see Talk Radio if tickts are cheap.
- Remember to do all the other things I meant to put on his list

OH I found the card, they're from your Mom...so tell your gay Mom I said thanks

2007-02-23T08:05:07Z

List of things to do in Canada/USA:

- Get a job and have money (the boring things first...)

- Pick up a cool Canadian accent so that when I come home I say aboot

- Find some sort of Magaret Atwood museum and read all the Atwood books I haven't read yet

- Try to catch a Stevie Nicks and Tori Amos gig whilst I'm in North America (sidenote: eeeeep for Tori's new album and Stevie's Best Of! No eeeeeps for the fact that as of now Tori is touring the UK, not America, whilst I am in the Americas, not the UK)

- Eat my weight in Lucky Charms

- Go to at least 3 Canadian cities (Toronto, Ottawa and ?)

- Stalk New York city in the hope that I'll spot any SNL or Law and Order cast member

- Failing that, go to New York and nerd out in front of the 30 Rock building and Friends exterior shot locations

- Convince the Canadian music industry to release the Racoons theme tune as a chart toppng single

- Don't die or get AIDS (my Mum is convinced I'm going to get some horrible STI in Canada)

- Actually learn something (anything!) about Canadian politics and some history beyond, 'Canada is made up of a bunch of immigrants.'

- Buy a laptop

- Buy lots of cheap clothes whilst the £ is strong against the Canadian $ (then have to pay ridiculous amounts when my baggage is way over limit)

- Sing, 'Oh Canada,' on Canada day in Canada (bonus points if Mel and Shut Up are there)

TBC as I think of more...

This is untoward, this is NOT toward

2007-01-27T20:10:44Z

It amuses me greatly that DFS now has lesbians in it's sofa ads. Equality in home decor for all!

I have a job for a month. I will be working in a call centre for the local city council. I know it is hard to detect intonation in typing, but lets just say I am sarcastically thrilled about this work.

I whine too much.

My godmother offered me £6,000 on Friday. I don't know how to begin to process this offer.

How DARE you Liz Lemon, I'm not on time for work - I'm just on a bacon run.

2007-01-22T02:12:25Z

Oh my poor neglected lj. I really don't have anything to say on here anymore. Consider this an extended, none sensical eulogy.

I'm going back to PGL. Just for 2 months ('catch her for a limited time only...') whilst I wait for my back logged Canadian visa to come through. But yeah, looking after children whilst singing songs about the Crazy Moose, drinking too much snake bite, singing Total Eclipse of the Heart out of tune repeatedly, sleeping on other people's floors, not really sleeping that much at all - here I come for two months. I go mid February and plan to fly to Canada mid April. I am insanely excited about seeing all my PGL people again, if my fucking visa would just come through I would be excited about going to the land of Mel and Maple Syrup also.

I wish I could sleep right now. On the other hand my Dad has taped 24 episodes of, 'Diagnosis Murder,' and I have found this holy grail of a tape. I may just embrace insomnia and watch many, many hours of Dick Van Dyke whilst loading up my icons page with far too many, '30 Rock,' icons.

It's not as if I have to get up tomorrow and go searching for a 3 week job or anything. (where the hell is the vertical line key on this keyboard so I can make the wry blank faced emoticon dude?)

I'm sorry the person you're dialling is not at home

2007-01-14T18:25:43Z

Where all the cool kids hang out these days:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=516881811

And by cool I mean socially retarded and bored out of their tiny little minds. Come join me!

High on the hill lived a lonely goat

2006-11-21T19:33:59Z

Call to all Sacred Hearters...I served Mr Robinson in WH Smiths today. It made me laugh. He had no idea who I was and thought I was just laughing at his buck teeth and pinky ring. Which was actually fairly accurate about 5 years ago.

On a general note, Gwen Stefani's, 'Wind it Up,' is the worst thing that has happened to music since Madonna started wearing leotards.

Why do all good things come to an end? (ah melodrama)

2006-11-19T19:17:56Z

And I'm back at home. And I'm starting sentences with 'and,' clearly my grammar has had it's final hole shot through it over the summer. It is very strange to be at home. I liken it to a uni holiday to anybody who asks (as in this is just a 'pitstop' before I hopefully head off to Canada next Feb) but really it is not at all. With university I am imagine there is some sense of continuity, you have started a new life and you know you will return after summer. With PGL I started a new life but chances are I won't see the majority of people I met there ever again. Thinking about that makes me sad.

I got used to seeing a bunch of people (Mel, Mike, Cat, Shells and the dutchies in summer. Then Sarah, Milli, Jan, Chris and Lee in Autumn) everyday and it is sometimes lonely without them.
I would like to have friends from PGL that are a bit closer to me than Canada, S. Africa or Southampton (which admittedly at least is in the same country) to just go out for pizza with once in a while. It's fun telling my PGL stories to other people but they don't really GET it.

All in all though I am alright.I've slipped back into old patterns at home, which is strange. It has hard to get all my PGL stuff into my room when I got home, like merging two lives together - in the end I had to throw out a load of stuff from school/the days of internet obsession (ahh fun times!) but I don't really mind.

I got a Christmas temp job in Wh Smith the week after a came back (the first week was spent being ill and sleeping. My liver took a battering over the last 6 months that I don't think it will ever quite recover from ;)) It is, 'stab myself in the eye,' boring but it's money so I can't complain too much. I've come to the conclusion that I was totally spoilt at school, because I actually like studying I've never really had to experience 7 hours of consecutive boredom until now.

Went out with Becca and Rachel yesterday. We made a dead hedgehog out of chips and ketchup! I love Becca and Rachel, those girls make me smile.

I applied for uni again whilst I was away also. I've applied for history (the subject I really should have been doing all along) in 4 places - Manchester, St Andrews, Warwick and York. So far I've had unconditional offers from York and Manchester. To be honest I'm only really interested in going to York or Warwick. I like York as a place much more but the course at Warwick suits me better (I've applied for a joint honors 'History and Culture,' degree - which basically means I can do history with a splash of English, Film Studies and Geography) - so I'm waiting on a yay or nay from Warwick then I can decide.

After that non-sequitor style of an entry I would like to dedicate it to my not forgotten friend Ez. I wrote you a limerick.

There was was a girl named Erica
Nothing rhymes with Erica.

The End :)

Here is the biggest picture post in the history of the world

2006-08-21T14:07:00Z

	Shew Station Me and Cat rocking the sunglasses at the train station
	Cho Cho Train Me and Mel on the train
	Oh Canada It was Canada day so we all decided to put Canadian flags on our boobs. Except for Mike, who decided to make a grab for the Canadian boobs instead
	Mike in all his glory Taken straight after Mike put a chocolate covered peanut down my top to see if I would have an allergic reaction
	You Cunting Bastard Cat after she managed to pour salt all over her sandwich. I LOVE the 'you have got to be fucking kidding me' look on her face
	Fashionable And here we have Cat modelling this summer's range of attractive beach wear
	The 'Just Good Friends' Club Me, Mel and Mike being just good friends in Swansea
	Itsy witsy teeny weeny black bikini Mel got a bikini free in her magazine that claimed to be 'one size fits all' Here I prove that was false advertising
	Fire! Man (Mike) make fire!
	Emo I love this shot - it makes me look like I'm in a montage shot for an emo music video that you'd see just before something like The OC came on
	Drinking by the fire Warms the cockles of your heart don't it?
	Model Mike There was an article in Mel's mag describing what a guy looks like if he's into you. We followed the description and this is what we came up with. So beware ladies this is the face of lust!
	Where did you sleep last night? Our bedroom for the night
	The morning after the night before Check out my bed head!
	80s Night Dressed up for the joys of 80s night
	Vogue! The 80s is something that should be taken very seriously...Lindsay did not agree ;)
	Shels and Mels Look it's little and large!
	And we drink and we drink! Cheers! Matt (far left) was amusingly wasted on 80s night
	Cat, Angelique and Moi Check out my awesome tan lines from Swansea the weekend before (including the oh so attractive Canadian flag white patch)
	Rawr Tony the tiger says 80s night was grrrrrrrrrrreat!
	Sebastien It's the PGL cat on ma bed! Look how cute and catpif like she is.
	On the road again Me at Euston station. For some reason this sign amused me an unreasonable amount.
	Snakes on a motherfucking bus! What is better than Snakes on a Plane...on a bus? Look at my unbridled joy in this picture
	Mel hostel Look at what I had to see every fucking morning form my bunk bed!
	Alice hostel It's alright, Mel had to deal with that!
	The three of us I took a shining to the spoon at the pub we ate at everyday (seriously the best food EVER) and wanted to steal it - instead I made do with a nice picture of the three of us
	Stool Samples There are many things to mock about this photo a) the way our drinks look like stool smaples b) Mel's crotch c) The inane look on Mel's face However I won't because Mel has a simlarly unflattering phot of me on her computer
	Brighton Lights Me by the pier
	Sleepy Mel Us being drunken in the hallway
	Piercing my nose I fully intend to send this photo to my Grandma in a childish attempt to get a reaction
	Brighton Beach Look how pretty
	Us on the beach Mel had just got her tongue pierced so couldn't smile (or eat, or talk...)
	Sunset on the pier Exactly what it says in the title
	Why God why? Why would anyone wear these shoes? Why?
	Beach Front More of pretty Brighton
	Oh Noes The 'Nuts About You Shop' that could kill me with its deadly wares.
	Water Fight! Mel after we had a water fight in the hostel
	The Swayze The star of Dirty Dancing in all his glory
	Tube station Us taking photos in the train station to distract us from the crazy drunk man who was about to bother us
	Pizza and Patrick One hand touched the Swayze and the othe rhand has pizza in it. Life doesn't get much better for Mel.
	Mike in a girls sweater My favourite Mike photo
	Mike sneaking a peek Mike is actually talking to me (squished behind Mel's head) but I like this photo cause it looks like he's sneaking a peak - which pretty much sums up his character
	Malice and Mannie My favourite photo of me and Mel.
	Indialice Jones Me dressed up as Indianna Jones

PGL Photos!

2006-07-11T15:50:29Z

Hey y'all. I was going to write a proper entry in here but I'm running ut of time on the library computer. Instead I present to you...

Hey Biatches!

I know you all thought I was dead – I know. I want to say sorry for being impossible to contact (as ever) Special sorry and begging for forgiveness to Becca and Liz who I haven’t spoken to at all. I promise to lick your shoes and buy you pretty things when I come home.
Well…where to start? (btw I’m sorry cause some of you will have heard some of this before – but hey I am the awesomeness so you can read it again) I guess first thing to say is I’m not in France. My contract was originally for there but on the first day of training they said they were short staffed here (Boreatton Park, Shropshire) so I just stuck here. It’s not as exotic as France but I really like it here. The countryside is beautiful (fucking hell though I didn’t know there could ever be so much GREEN in one place ;)) and it just feels like home you know?
My job is as a ‘groupie’ (I always knew I’d end up following a rock band around the country and sleeping with random men ;)) which actually translates as ‘person who runs after kids and picks up their crap and shouts at them to do stuff a lot’ It’s a hard job with bizarre hours (I work from 8ish to 9.30, then 12.00 to 2, then 5 to 8.30/9 – and sometimes the morning break as well) but I’m enjoying it. It’s nice doing something that is not stacking shelves in a fucking supermarket. I actually feel like this isn’t a waste of time, I’m interacting and using my brain all the time which is fantastic! Plus kids are so fucking funny. My three favourite exchanges so far have been:

a) The kid who was sick at breakfast perfectly into his rice krispies. It was hilarious he just leant forward and a perfect stream of purple vomit landed neatly in his bowl
b) About 3 or 4 kids have now asked if my hair is a wig. Why did you guys never tell me my hair looks like a drag queen’s 1970’s wig? :p They then pull it to ascertain if it’s actually real…that bit is not so funny.
c) I had to tell an 11 year old boy off for wanking the other week because he was keeping his roommates up at night! Can you imagine me trying to keep a straight face whilst doing that?

Whilst my job is fun (as is doing activities like archery, climbing and canoeing that I never thought I’d do in a million years) the best part of being here are undoubtedly the people I’ve met. PGL is a strange place as it is generally a pit stop of a job for people not sure what they’re doing with life. Subsequently it has a huge cross section of people and purposes. I love the mixture– I’ve learnt so much and I’ve become a lot more, I want to say open minded, I guess theoretically I was open minded already but I’ve had to put that into practice now and socialize with people I wouldn’t have necessarily spoken to back in the days of school. In that vein I present to you:

Alice’s list of people she will mention in the future so learn their names now y’all.

A little tale first before I start this list with my roommates. For the first week (after training) I was here I lived in a different room. However I had to move out because the girl I was sharing the room with (Laura) would NOT stop shagging her boyfriend whilst I was in the same room. I mean come on people I don’t want to hear that. Besides if she was having sex she WILL get pregnant and die (Mean Girls joke incorporated into my email! Go me!) By the by, my new room is fucking huge. It’s the biggest room on site. Go me again! On with my roommates…

- Eva. She was the girl living in the room before the rest of us got here. She’s…interesting. I’d heard a lot of bad things about her before we moved in (she’d had a group of kids call themselves ‘Thundercunts’ on an activity session once) but she’s actually been nothing but sweet to me and my other roomies. I wouldn’t really count her as a good friend though, we’re friendly but if I had to have a conversation with her for say an hour I think she would annoy me immensely. She reminds me of Sarah Hartley a LOT (but not nearly as mind bogglingly irritating) She tells tall tales about injuries/suicide and whores herself out to random men because she just wants people to like her. I have a lot of sympathy for her and a lot of time but I wouldn’t necessarily count her as anything above an acquaintance.

- Lindsay. She moved with me out of Laura’s so we have the no sex in the room bond going on ;) She’s from Holland so teaches me random Dutch phrases like ‘Peter Post’ (Postman Pat), ‘Bob de Bower’ (Bob the Builder), ‘neuken in de Keuken,’ (fucking in the kitchen!) She’s a sweetie. Sometimes she’s a bit too much of a forceful personality for me cause she’s very obviously an alpha female (likes flirting with the boys a lot and telling me when to be quiet in my own room) but on the whole she’s a darling. Plus she makes sure I eat properly and wear my waterproofs, she’s my Mommy Lindsay!

- Mel. Is my closest friend here in the land of PGL. She fucking rocks – you’d all like her cause she’s like me but Canadian (Rach she says aboot!), a little less saracastic and probably more insane. We just get on, we have the same interests and childish mentality…seriously we think we’re hilarious. Mel makes me smile 

Then there are the other guys that live in my hostel/flat/whatever the hell else you want to call it:

- Mike. Lives next door to our room. He’s from New Zealand so has a cute accent. Mike is a funnyun’ (like an onion with an f) As a friend he’s great, funny and all that jazz. But he’s tried it on with 3 of the girls in our hostel so far and it’s increasingly apparent he’s a bit of a ladykiller. It’s funny cause with each separate girl he dates he seems so genuine but he’ll hop from one girl to the next like they’re hot meals. It makes me wonder if anything he says is actually truthful or if it’s all a front to pull the next girl. Hmmm. It’s a puzzler. Anyways I like him, he’s cool as a friend. (PS. Mike smells. We have a running joke where we try to tell each other they smell as many times a day as possible. I think I’m winning today!)
- Weegie. Is Mike’s roommate. He is a Scotsman (yay for someone who is not foreign!) and that’s all I really need to say about him because he is a stereotypical Scotsman – drunk and rowdy 95% of the time. He’s even scarier at the moment because me and Mel cut a Taxi Driver style Mohawk into his hair last week. Every other word that comes out of his mouth is either ‘fuck’ or ‘cunt’ and I love him for it. Currently I am trying to persuade him to go to hospital cause I think he has a broken toe and he won’t it get it seen to. Moron.

- Shelly, a South African girl who lives down the corridor. I so wouldn’t have spoken to Shelley at school. She is blonde, a bitch and Paris Hilton is her role model! However here I love her, she just has this manner about her that means no matter what is coming out of her mouth (usually gossip) she’s still cute and loveable. She’s very unique and forceful – there’s no one quite like Shels that’s for sure.

- Cat, the other South African who lives down the hall. Cat is one of the nicest people I know (down on the list with Becca and Maria!) she’s just so friendly to everyone and very good for a cuddle when you’re feeling down. Her and Shels are as thick as thieves, they are very entertaining as a comedy gossiping act. Cat has family in Newcastle that she is going to visit before she goes back to S. Africa so you may well meet her sometime this year. I think you’d all like her, she’d be awesome on one of our drunken nights out! You might get confused though and start calling me Cat, everyone here at PGL can’t tell me and Cat apart despite the fact we really look nothing alike. Grr.

- Linda, the Dutch girl who lives down the hall, is absolutely nothing like Shell and Cat who are her roomies (she is always telling them to be quiet when they come in from a night out) Linda is very quiet so it took me a while to get to know her but I think she’s probably my second favorite person here. She doesn’t say much but her presence is reassuring and she’s so kind. I wish I’d realized she was just shy not necessarily very quiet sooner because she is leaving in a week. (Lindsay is leaving too! All my Dutchies are abandoning me. Sob.) I’ll miss her.

So there you go, the people I live with. Mostly I hang around with those losers ;) The thing about PGL is you get to know lots of people quite well (there’s only one pub for Christs sake) but there are only a few people you’d count as friends outside of the PGL bubble. All of my actual ‘real’ friends I live with, apart from maybe a girl called Gemma who I lived with on the 2 week training course. Gemma is awesome. She has dread locked hair and actually manages to not look like a stereotypical hippy freak, which gives you a clue to her level of awesomeness. My fave memory of Gemma is when we got drunk on the last night of training and threw wet toilet roll globs (you know those horrible little balls of goop?) at everybody’s window at 3am in the morning. Ahh, fun times!

As I said above PGL is a strange little bubble, it is so removed from the real world that everyone is much less restricted than they are at home. Translation: everyone is a fucking slut (as a barometer of this – someone told me a story the other week about how someone brought crabs onto the site last year and within a month they had spread through the whole site and everyone’s bedding had to be burnt!)

I’ve managed to behave myself though. It’s a two sided coin – everyone is less inhibited here but since there are only 250 staff on site gossip goes round like a flash fire (seriously we all know who has slept with who, when they did it, what location. Hell we practically know positions!) I have had a few things on the romance front but nothing worth calling the wedding planners in for. I went out with a girl called Yvette for about a week (let me explain something here. A week in PGL time is like a month anywhere else. Mel and Mike were going out for 3 weeks but when they broke up it seemed like the end of a serious relationship because of PGL time!) and spent the majority of that time trying to get out of it because I didn’t really like her that much, she was just the best of a bad bunch. Eventually I managed to get it sorted and we are ‘just good friends’ (Mikes standard break up line) now. Then there is Tom who is the gayest of all the gaylords, but insists he is actually straight. Tom has decided to make it his mission to sleep with me because I show absolutely no sexual interest in him at all and that bugs him. Initially his constant badgering was annoying but we’re actually quite good friends now and it’s kind of become a joke between us. Bar those nothing much has happened and nobody has really caught my eye. Well that’s not 100% true, there is one girl but it is never in a million years going to happen so I’m not going to dwell on it.

I’m trying to think of other things to tell y’all. It’s hard to remember specific events because they all just blend into the fabric of life here. Things like ‘groupie cinema evening’ (Tuesday nights are cheap night at the cinema and we normally go. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 tonight. WOOT. Ah beautiful Johnny…), random dress up nights (it was 80s night last Friday. Me and Mel shook that sucker up. I looked like 1986 Madonna, fabulous of course) and bbqs and campfires are all commonplace…as is crap food and excessive drinking of rum and coke ;) There are lots of in jokes and references that are hard to explain unless you’re here. I guess it’s the same as a uni environment in a lot of ways, lots of 18-20 something year olds bonding and being stupid in a way that is ridiculously hard to explain and still make funny to anybody else. What would have been good to tell you about was the PGL ball we had in June…but to be honest I remember very little of it!

I will tell you what happened the other week that was fun. Me, Mel, Mike and Cat (who coincidentally represent 4 continents – Europe, America, Australasia and Africa. What are the chances of us all being in the same place at the same time?) took a few days off and went to Swansea for the weekend. Because we are all poor/stupid we decided not to book a hostel/hotel (well Mike whined for one all weekend because he is a big woman) and slept on the beach again. We lit a campfire at about 9 bells and all was very merry and gorgeously hot (it was the perfect beach day) until it got dark at 11 and some random charves crashed our fire. They weren’t actually that bad, apart from one girl who started throwing our bread rolls around and asking for vodka whilst eating our Doritos, but Mel and Cat (probably wisely) got freaked out and we had to move up the beach. We then settled down to go to sleep but I thought I had left Mel’s copy of ‘Rebecca’ so we had to traipse all the way back up the beach. Let me tell you it is surreal looking for a book on your pajamas on a beach in Swansea at 1am in the morning. THEN Cat had to pee in the ocean and in our tipsy states doing this with nothing on our bottom halves made perfect sense. Then Mel had to pee so I had to go in the frickin sea again. Urgh.

Finally at about 1.40 Cat and Mike fell asleep and me and Mel did the first watch. It is amazing how many drunken bums and people who want to have sex congregate on the beach in the early hours. At 3 we went to sleep and Cat and Mike did NOT do night watch because they are retards that can’t stay awake longer than 5 seconds. We all awoke the next morning when it started to rain on our sleeping bags and me and Mel promptly drank all the alcohol we hadn’t drank last night then went drunken swimming at 9am in the morning. It was an experience let me tell ya! That’s not even including the fact that Swansea has a shop called ‘The Sheep Shop,’ is that not the most fantastic sounding shop evah?

Anyways I better get going because

a) I need to catch a specific bus so that I can get into Shrewsbury on time to actually use the library internet and post this beast to you all
b) More importantly, it’s lunchtime and I’m hungry.

Things are kind of in upheaval now because Linda is long gone, Lindsay is going home to Holland tomorrow and Shels and Cat are moving into a nicer room today (abandoners!) but I’m sure the next stage of my PGL adventure will be just as fun (how can it not be when one of the guys moving into our flat is called Soapbar?!!) Hopefully I’ll manage to keep in better contact with you all over the next few months, since potentially I could be here until October now. Please comment me back if you have the time, I may not reply immediately, as I have practically no internet time, but I’d love to hear what you’re all up to you crazy biatches. xxx

	Courtyard Bonding Drinking in the hall on the first night we moved in. From left to right it's Shelley, me, Mel, Linda, Weegie, Weasel + Matt (who live int he flat next door) and Mike
	Cheetah will bring the Scones Me contemplating the sponge animal orgy I had created.
	Lindsay/The Grudge This is Linds dancing to Grease but look at that creepy face she is pulling! Hello Japanese girl from The Grudge.
	Sponge animals Linda displaying one of the amazing sponge animals Mel brought from Canada. They start off as tiny little capsules and turn in to animals when you put them in water. Wow!
	Me and Holland Lindsay, me and Linda drinking before we go to the pub.
	P Night It was P night at the pub. Linds = Pearls Me = Pirate Mel = Personal Trainer Mike = Prat
	Mike Girly I decided Mike needed some hair
	I'm so hilarious Me laughing at Mike with hair
	Drunken Scotsman Weegie in his natual environment
	Jacobs Ladder This is Jacobs Ladder, one of the activities we do here. That's Mel, Mike and Shels at the top. Check out all the flattering harness bulge!
	Ball Before Linds, Cat, Me, Eva, Shels and Mel before the ball
	Ball Photie Mel, Shels, Linda and Me getting drunk before the ball!
	In the Navy! Mel, Me and my ball date TJ. Most importantly look at TJ's hat!
	Me and Mel Drunkeness and seeing how much of my tongue we could get on one photo
	Cheesy grins Cat, Linds and Me at the ball
	More Ball Me and Yvette
	Shamu We decided hanging a 7ft inflatable whale outside of our window would be fun. Boredom is a wonderful thing.
	Pen Fight! Ths is why drunk people are not allowed pens
	Birmingham Bull This is me getting close to a real hunk of a male

Because all the popular kids were doing it and I just wanted to be cool...

2005-10-07T07:47:25Z

This journal is Friends Only. Comment to be added :)