Ah the joy of being super productive! Finished updating the electronic grade book and have been conducting the reading train like Casey Jones on crack...wait he was on crack. I'm chugging through The Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Fascinating story this guy writes and even more interesting is his story. After he committed suicide, his mother brought the finished manuscript to a professor at Tulane University. The novel was published posthumously and went on to win a pulitzer. Another brilliant mind suffers by the slings and arrows of depression and society. His novel centers around a fat, flatulating, obnoxious, savant, Ignatius J. Reilly, who cruises the French Quarter quixotically with an obsession fixated on Boethius. An attempt to adapt the book to the silver screen has been thwarted on two accounts. The first actor to potentially portray the protagonist was John Belushi. We all know what happened there. The second victim of the Dunces' curse was John Candy. Thus I fear for the life of Will Ferrel who has been the most recent comedian to be tapped for the role. The ex-Saturday Night Live star must have a death wish. Anyway, I've only got about a hundred pages left and I might have it finished by this evening. My next project will be attached to the enigmatic Thomas Pynchon. I will be embarking on a welcomed return to the realm of post-modernism.
Speaking in academic terms, I engaged in some revitalizing discussions with Corey over the break. Over the last two years, she has become inseparable from the writings of Freud. She has currently been dedicating her studies to his essays regarding the "uncanny." She even had me pick her up a survey of the exploits of the Uncanny X-men to include in her paper. Struggling to create a short story that is immersed in the uncanny, we discussed a variety of possibilities after watching a few classic Twilight Zone episodes and she settled on a narrative that pits a man and his doppleganger of a hitchhiker traveling through a darkened American landscape. The story has potential, I just worry about the inevitable cliches seeping between the clever dialogue and exposition. She'll handle it with poise. I thoroughly enjoyed "talking smart," it has been a while. Writing is a good outlet, but how easy it can be to flounder through pop culture and boredom into the land of status quo and repetition. The shock to my outer cortex will inhibit my mental return to Louisiana and perhaps influence and ultimately determine my future conquests in my social, professional, and geographical lifestyle.
Random thought: Using a public bathroom where I am aware of the broken lock on the door can be terrifying. I have been walked in on twice at this local coffee shop, and while both myself and the guilty patron have handled the situation with grace, I now tend to avoid the facility for as long as possible. I enter the lavatory now with a steady string of faux coughs and sneezes that with great hope I intend to alert the offending company. I believe I was first traumatized by a similar experience at the impressionable age of ten. I had been frequenting the Hopewell Valley Tennis Center for years under the pressuring guidance of my father whose desire for me to become a professional tennis player was conceived before I was. An older gentlemen caught me with my pants around my ankles and a face as red as a fire engine. We shared that everlasting moment of awkwardness and yet I probably have carried it with me a good half a century longer than he did. So it goes.
I truly hope that the levee comittee is planning on having bonfires again this Christmas. They have been suffering a political onslaught by the Governor, yet this tradition is not like allocating millions of dollars to a superfluous fountain. A very quaint tradition of lighting tens of hundreds of small bonfires in a string across the levee made that cold night fairly enjoyable last year. Since I believe I will be spending the winter holidays in the South, I do wish that the tradition continues. Farewell good friends. Tomorrow brings the beginning of that exciting stretch that lasts from Thanksgiving till Christmas. I will be a surgeon and slice through it with efficiency. Is there a saint I could pray to who represents efficiency? I'm sure I could google it, but the world of google deserves a break from the trivialities she is forced to endure. If I genedered Google, it would be a woman in my mind. Kinda like the way Kevin Smith feels about God.
