Literary musings

Trigger happy warning: this article contains at least one mild expletive, and given the mood I'm in may well contain a few more by the time I've finished.

Terry talks about Ulysses, Jane Austen, lit crit, bad maths, and the inspection of my writing course.

Greetings!

Apologies for my absence over the last couple of weeks. I’ve had the flu, followed by the standard post-viral knackeredness, which meant a frenetic catch-up on some reviews I had to write. And then there was the added pressure of being told that I was going to be inspected, more of which below.

But enough of this persiflage! On with the newsletter.

Terry

I’ve never read Joyce’s Ulysses and I don’t regret it

Yes, I know some well-meaning people will say, “Terry, you don’t know what you’re missing”, but my guiding light here is that great philosopher Muddy Waters, who opined, “You can’t lose what you ain’t never had¹”.

And what led me to talk about this, you may well ask? It was an article by

Eleanor Anstruther

over on

Mr. Troy Ford

’s excellent newsletter. The article in question is Why I *don’t* 💓 James Joyces’s Ulysses. It’s a well-written and highly readable article, marred only slightly by the fact that I disagree everything Eleanor says in it. Anyway, no need to repeat my mansplaining explanation here. If you wish to read my diatribe counter-arguments, here they are: my comments.

On the subject of mansplaining, I was very pleased to be able to give a load of women the benefit of my wisdom and experience on a Jane Austen course a few months ago. Of the twenty or so students, only two of us were men. During one session, a discussion arose as to whether some bloke or other was being genuine, or just trying to impress. After a few minutes I felt duty-bound to intervene. I put my hand up.

Tutor: Yes Terry.

Me: As someone who used to chat up women and girls — I’m no longer allowed to — I can say with some definititude that this bloke² was absolutely trying to impress this vulnerable young woman. He was, to use the modern vernacular, “bigging himself up” with the intention of having his wicked way with her. I hope I have explained the situation to everyone’s satisfaction.

There were nods of agreement and not a few subdued chortles.

Later on in the course, having pulled out most of my hair over the fact that every so-called “Heroine” has no ambition other than to get married, I could contain myself no longer. I put my hand up.

Tutor: Yes, Terry.

Me: These women are a load of grifters. All they’re interested in is men’s status. They seem to see every bloke as a walking cash dispenser, even though they didn’t have cash dispensers back then. They are all the epitome of the worst kind of toxic femininity.

For some reason, this seemed to hit a nerve. Every woman in the class put her hand up to speak. The other bloke in the class was attempting to become invisible.

After twenty minutes during which I was treated as a kind of intellectual punchbag, the tutor turned to me.

Tutor: Do you wish to respond, Terry?

Me: Indeed. That was my first [several women started chortling] and possibly my last contribution to literary criticism.

Even more lit crit

A few weeks ago I published a spoof lit crit article in response to one by

Silvio Castelletti

called A Better Writer. In the interests of showing how erudite and well-read I am, and how easy it is to bullshit the literary establishment (pace Joyce) I inserted a few references to literary works. I now have pleasure in revealing what they were:

First of all, the entire text from “The text explores” to “ambiguities of judging literary quality.” was written by Google’s NotebookLM. You don’t think I would write such rubbish do you?

The paragraph “The author’s name is given only as Jude, so his identity remains obscure. Despite numerous rejections, Jude, being a hardy soul, keeps on trying.” is a reference to Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy:

“The author’s name is given only as Jude, so his identity remains obscure. Despite numerous rejections, Jude, being a hardy soul, keeps on trying.”

The title of this (fictitious) book, The Secret Miracle, is the name of a short story by Borges.

Lönnrot is the name of the detective in Borges’ short story called Death and The Compass.

As for “the text includes 777 lexies and two codes, the proairetic and, of greater importance for the present purpose, the hermeneutic.”, lexies are the words associated with a particular subject area. The codes are from Roland Barthes. The proairetic is to do with action, as far as I understand it, while the hermeneutic code concerns anything that remains unexplained, enigmatic³.

The term “anticipatory plagiarism” was coined by the members of the Oulipo to explain the fact that people in the past came up with certain ideas and techniques before they, the Oulipians, were even born⁴.

The “structuralism vs post-structuralism debate”: I made this up, although given what lit crit is like, it is probably a real thing.

A film and a meal

Elaine, Lois⁵, and I went to see a film. Then we went out for a meal. Lois has an arts degree from the University of Oxford, which means that she can tell you everything you need to know about the influence of post-modernism on Latin-American literature in the final quarter of the twentieth century, but she can’t add up.

Lois: Here’s my share of the meal. [She passed over two £20 notes.]

Elaine: [passing them back] No, this is our treat.

Lois: No. You overpaid by £10. [Passing the money back]

Elaine: No we didn’t, because you gave me the correct change. [Passing the money back. For me, it was like watching a tennis match.]

Lois: No, you need the money for the vet. [Passing it back.]

Me: [deftly intercepting the money and flicking it back with my best table tennis wrist movement⁶.] No, Elaine has already been wormed.

The two ladies were in hysterics. By this time my forehead was on the table.

Me: Call the waiter and ask him if he’s got one of those big knives, the ones people use for harakiri.

Afterwards, I emailed Lois a link to a helpful maths video:

Course inspection

My 60 Minute Writer course was inspected last Tuesday. I have long been of the opinion that inspectors should just drop in, unannounced. As it was, I didn’t prepare a special inspector lesson⁷, but I did spend several days experimenting with the lighting in order to achieve a chiaroscuro⁸ effect, which I thought would make me me look more dynamic over Zoom.

In the end I gave up, determined to rely on my meticulous planning, my sparkling personality and my students’ support. I really do plan meticulously. There are 11 sessions, and the slides and handouts were prepared for all of them, and scheduled, before the course even started. I have been sending out additional materials in response to what has happened in lessons and my growing understanding of the students’ interests, and anything interesting I happen to have come across.

I say all this because on that night, of all nights, it all went wrong. The first thing was that the mouse on my Mac computer needed charging. There was no warning of this. Moreover, the charging socket is on the underside of the mouse, meaning that you can’t use it while it’s plugged in. Quite clearly it was designed by one of those graduates whom Nicholas Nassim Taleb called I-Y-I — intellectual yet idiot.

So, a quick rush downstairs to get my laptop instead. I tried to log in to Zoom, and ended up having this conversation with the program⁹:

Program: And you are?

Me: Terry, City Lit. I log in every week.

Program: Sorry, squire, never heard of you.

Me: Look, you fool, City Lit, Terry, course starts in two minutes.

Program: Talk to the mouse.

All the while, the Mac was pinging as more and more people queued up to be let into the room. Well, I managed to start on time, just about. But the final straw was the breakout rooms: the last one didn’t show up on my screen, so I didn’t go into that one at all¹⁰.

The biggest let-down was the students. I had told them the previous week that an inspector person was coming in to observe me, and asked if they could say something like “Terry is such a wonderful teacher” whenever the inspector person appeared in a breakout room. I advised them to spend time during the week practising in a mirror, so that it would all seem completely natural.

And did they say anything like that when the inspector lady was present?

Don’t make me laugh¹¹.

If you enjoyed this, please like this post, and maybe even subscribe. If you really liked it, please think about taking out a paid subscription. As I have said before¹², I have a wife and seven kids to support. They’re not mine, but we’re very close.

1. In one version of the song, the line is “You can’t lose some little girl that you ain’t never had.”

2. It may have been Darcy, I can’t remember.

3. The way I see it, this applies to Barthes’ codes, but what do I know?

4. On the subject of the Oulipo, we now take a short commercial break. I am running a course about using Oulipo techniques in your writing. It’s called Writing with constraints, and takes place in London one Saturday in the summer. Check it out. We now return to the main article.

5. Not her real name.

6. I feel honour-bouind to tell you that the last time I played table tennis was when I was thirteen. I played for five minutes, which was four minutes longer than I needed to learn that I was no bloody good at it.

7. I don’t believe in that sort of thing, as I will no doubt explain in a future post.

8. This is the high contrast black and white photiography seen in film noir.

9. The following account may not be a verbatim one.

10. I like to pop into all the breakout rooms, giving the occasional snort of derision and asking if they’d ever considered taking a different sort of course.

11. On a serious note, the students were brilliant. The atmosphere was vibrant, they were clearly enjoying the session and taliking about what they feel they have learnt so far. I think so much depends on the calibre and brilliance of the teacher in these kind of circs, don’t you?

12. But if you’re new here, you won’t have seen it.