From Picnic on Paradise published 1968, which I scored in Knoxville at McKay Used Books for 75 cents (pp. 94-95):

He sighed. It was rather peaceful, actually.

"Look, dear," he said quietly, "I've done my best. But if you want me, myself, you'll have to do without; I've heard that too often. Do you think they don't want me out there? Sure they do! They want me to open up my" (she could not catch the word) "like a God damned" (or that one) "and show them everything that's inside, all my feelings, or what they call feelings. They talk about their complexities and their reactions and their impressions and their interactions and their patterns and their neuroses and their childhoods and their rebellions and their utterly unspeakable insides until I want to vomit. I have no insides. I will not have any. I certainly will not let anyone see any. I do things and I do them well; that's all. If you want that, you can have it. Otherwise, my love, I am simply not at home. Understood?"

What are all the novels that purport to be autobiographies? I can think of three off the top of my head:

1. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein
2. The Autobiography of My Mother, by Jamaica Kincaid
3. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, by Ernest Gaines

An Amazon search reveals an "autobiography" of Santa Claus, of Henry VIII, of God, and others. I realize this is a pretty stupid question, but is there an article in a literary studies journal that discusses these? Does writing a fictional autobiography, in addition to allowing the author to experiment with voice and point of view, also allow the author to skewer subtly some of the conventions of autobiography as a genre? I mean, why use "the autobiography of" in the title? Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is a story told from the point of view of Offred, a handmaid (spoken into a tape recorder like Gaines' Pittman), but it isn't called an autobiography. What is gained by the autobiography label?

Another installment of Over My Shoulder, a tradition started by Rad Geek (the rules). This passage comes from Saving the World by Julia Alvarez, an author from the Dominican Republic whose protagonists (in this case Alma) are also usually women from the Dominican Republic.

But she couldn't let it go. This periodic homeland rage that would crop up out of nowhere, even though she had been in the United States almost forty years, this feeling that her own luckiness was off the backs of other people, not because her family had been exploiters but because the pool of the lucky was so small in that poor little place that God forgot. In the United States there was a larger pool of luck, and the overspill trickled down: extra toilet paper in the stalls, soup kitchens, social service programs, sliding scales, legal aid, free clinics, adjunct teaching posts and art enrichment grants so that people like Tera, like Helen, like Alma before she lucked out with her novels and marriage to Richard managed to scrape by. (275-276)

The New Yorker describes my current affliction:

INFLUENZA 529, or Entrenched Ditty Derangement. The infected person displays an inability (in the worst cases, lasting months) to rid his cortex of an unusually repugnant melody. (In some extreme cases, lyrics are part of the malady.)

Symptoms: Early signs include innocuous humming in the workplace. In later stages, the sufferer may believe that he hears voices in his head. A large body of clinical literature exists on the topic (see “ ‘Horse with No Name’ Phenomenon”; “Complications Arising from the Theme to ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ ”). In one famous case in New Jersey (known in medical circles as Embedded “Jessie’s Girl” Phenomenon), manslaughter resulted.

In my case, this is the culprit. This song has been in my mind for what seems like years (in reality, more like months):

For Jonathan it's:

He was able to exorcise that last night, though, I believe, by watching the video and laughing at the ridiculous intercutting of scenes between fighter planes and a sweaty Kenny Loggins lounging around in a hotel room lip-syncing.

The comp class blogs didn't go so well this semester. It wasn't a disaster by any means; it's just that the participation was a lot more forced than I would have liked. I attribute this to a couple of factors:

1.) I was teaching three classes, all of which had (group) blogs, and what with my adjustment to my new job and all, I wasn't able to be as active on all of the blogs than I had been before, when I was teaching a 2-1 load. In fact, the semesters I've used blogs in my teaching before had been the ones in which I'd taught only one class. I didn't leave as many comments under posts as I probably should have. I did, of course, leave comments and post to the blog, but not as often as I had before.

2.) Facebook and MySpace. The way I have used blogs in my teaching has been as a type of community-building writing space; that is to say, community building was the primary goal of the blogging activity. I had worked to achieve this goal by suggesting topics for blog posts, but encouraging the students to blog about other topics they were interested in instead, if they chose. The class blogs were, in practice, a very expressivist environment. This worked out pretty well because the major writing assignments were research-oriented, so the blog was a space for personal writing. However, the class blog became superfluous in terms of social software; Facebook and MySpace are the killer apps for that. It bears mentioning that the last time I taught using blogs was Fall 2004. In Spring 2005 I taught speech and only had a blog for making class announcements, and I had a dissertation fellowship in academic year 2005-2006. Needless to say, Facebook and MySpace have really taken off since 2004.

So next semester I'm going to try something different. I have Moodle sites set up for the two classes I'm teaching, and while I'm still definitely going to have a once-per-week posting requirement, it's going to be much more oriented toward the course content. In composition classes, the content is often chosen by the students (depending on how one does it, of course), so there may not be the kind of shared content you'd have with a literature course. The classes I'm teaching next semester are content-driven, so it'll be easier to write weekly prompts that are tightly integrated with the content of the course, with posts consisting of reading responses for the most part.

At least for next semester, then, my course discussion spaces are going to be spaces for discussion about the course topics specifically. Many of us have talked about blogging's becoming domesticated as more and more instructors start using it in writing courses. I think that's probably inevitable. The writing context (the university, the classroom, the GRADE) is, of course, going to determine to some extent the attitudes of students and of instructors in the blog space. That's not at all a new observation. I guess my point is that as long as the writing on course weblogs is going to be determined somewhat by the institutional context, it isn't necessarily bad to go ahead and make it a Writing Space for This Class. There is a writing-to-learn rationale for that approach, after all, and it does help students hone skills in adapting their writing styles for different occasions and contexts.

Making a class blog as much like a regular old blog in the 'sphere as possible, the way I've done before, is fine, but whereas the writing may be more "real" and done with the student's "authentic voice," (quotes definitely intended to scare) the exercise may not really teach them much. Writing for an audience besides the teacher, perhaps, but they learn this through Facebook and MySpace.

I kind of like this shirt -- not really age appropriate for me, but for someone else...

From Bookish Gifts, several of which are nice.

Also, did you know that Vera Bradley makes stationery and various office supplies now? Yet another purchase might have to happen (holiday shopping):

and

Which reminds me: I've been meaning to post about Vera Bradley bags for a while now. I have three, but I just got them a year ago. Before that, I used to see some women carrying them around, and I liked them, but I didn't know where to get them. In my mind, I just called them "those quilted bags." For years it was, to me, like the women carrying them were almost a secret society. I only had one friend who had a Vera Bradley, and it never occurred to me to say, "Hey, where'd you get that bag?" There seems to be such a specific customer base for them. For example, I don't believe I've ever seen anyone outside the southeast United States carrying one. Even within that narrow geographical area, the women who carry them fit a certain southern belle, sorority profile. I carry mine all the time, especially my New Hope messenger bag:

and as I do, I'm a bit concerned that they don't look professional (too "girly"), but I don't really worry about it. Still, I notice that I'm sometimes carrying a bag that resembles, or even matches perfectly, some of the bags students bring to my classes. I wonder if it looks too much like I'm aligned with those particular students. Ultimately, though, I don't think it's a big deal, but I would love to read your thoughts on "those quilted bags."

It's about time I succumb and link to this meme for MLA.

Okay, now that that's done, on to another succumbing, this time to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I ordered two six-packs of samples (called imps). Had to get the Rosalind one on principle, as she's my favorite character in Shakespeare -- yes, how predictable. These are the ones I chose:

Florence: "The pearl of the Italian Renaissance. Elegant iris, bright berries, gilded amber and velvety spices."

Gluttony: "Thick, sugared and bloated with sweetness. Dark chocolate, vanilla, buttercream, and hops with pralines, hazelnut, toffee and caramel."

Cordelia: "The essence of faith, love and devotion: lilac, lemon, green tea, wisteria, osmanthus, white cedar, and Chinese musk."

Rosalind: "Dew-covered berries and fresh green grasses with a faint breath of spring flowers."

Athens: "A reformulation and modernization of a true Classical Greek perfume, myrrhine: voluptuous myrrh, golden honey, red wine, and sweet flowers."

Versailles: "Grand, courtly and robust: a glittering, golden scent that would do Louis XIV proud. Gilded red and gold citrus with amber, ruby roses, jasmine and orris."

The Caterpillar: "Heavy incense notes waft lazily through a mix of carnation, jasmine, bergamot, and neroli over a lush bed of dark mosses, iris blossom, deep patchouli and indolent vetiver."

Lady Macbeth: "The essence of ambition, covetousness and manipulation: sweet Bordeaux wine, blood red currant, thyme and wild berries."

The Red Queen: "Deep mahogany and rich, velvety woods lacquered with sweet, black-red cherries and currant."

Carnal: "Bold, bright mandarin paired with the sweet, sensual earthiness of fig."

The Lady of Shalott: "The scent of calm waters just before a raging storm, limned with achingly-beautiful blooms, an icy scent, but somehow warm, and mirror-bright: bold gardenia, crystalline musk, muguet, water blossoms, clear, slightly tart aquatic notes and a crush of white ginger."

Lolita: "Bright, sweet and youthful, but swelling with a poisonous sexuality. Glittering heliotrope, honeysuckle, orange blossom and lemon verbena."

This weekend, between student drafts, I'm going to finish the book I started yesterday, Julia Alvarez's latest: Saving the World. It seems to be getting mixed reviews, but I've read everything else Alvarez has written, and I feel compelled to read this one too. It's fast reading.

Then, I'm not sure. I still want to finish The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which I started in the summer. This Collected Stories of Amy Hempel sounds pretty good too, in addition to a couple of those nonfiction books. Fiction (or creative nonfiction, or autobiographical romans à clef) is my priority, though.