After getting up at 5:00 and washing and dressing I went upstairs to help David take his suitcases downstairs to the taxi. He'd called for one that could hold his luggage but it didn't arrive. We waited a few minutes before he saw one and flagged it down. I helped stuff everything into the trunk and the back seat. David gave me $100, I guess for looking after his place for the next five weeks. I tried to turn the money down but he insisted.
I ran through singing and playing "J'ai pas d'regret" (I've No Regrets) by Boris Vian in French. Tomorrow I'll run through the song in English and adjust my translation as I go.
I blog-published "Okay for No More Always", my translation of "OK pour plus jamais" by Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first verse of his song "D'un taxiphone" (From a Payphone). This one shouldn't take long to learn because it's short and uncomplicated.
I weighed 83.7 kilos before breakfast.
I left for the Bildungsroman seminar at around 11:05. I didn't ride to class by way of King's College Circle this time because I thought that the rain on top of the construction would make the road too muddy. Instead I rode up St George to turn east on Harbord and then south on the lane behind the clock tower to lock my bike in front of Hart House where I did last time after a more roundabout route. This worked out better and I think I'll use that way from now on.
Only about half of the class finished reading Jane Eyre.
Two presenters talked about Jane Eyre. One mentioned Jane being falsely accused of deceit, but during the question period I suggested that she is actually deceitful, at least to herself and perhaps to the reader. She fooled herself repeatedly throughout the novel. Someone argued that it's construction rather than deceit. I said construction depends on deceiving oneself. Someone said she's a reliable narrator. I don't see that, especially since she misrepresents her child's voice by projecting adult vocabulary onto it.
There are two Janes. One is the narrator and another is quoted by Jane the narrator telling earlier stories in the narration.
More import than facts is what story is told. Credible versus true.
Purpose of the narratives. Telling something.
Undermining the values of aristocracy and Victorian values of truth. Don't lie. Genuineness. Jane says of Blanche, she's not genuine like I am. How she speaks makes us think she is genuine.
I say we've all been mistreated by adults as children. Reading "I" makes the reader part of the story because to read "I" is to be "I". We can't help but identify with her if she has experiences similar to some that we have had. That makes her genuine to "I" the reader because "I" the reader am genuine. Once we identify then we are biased.
The nobody. The insignificant personality.
Jane Eyre is possibly the most powerful novel in the western tradition. It is also considered to be a feminist novel.
The novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is about Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic from Jane Eyre.
What Jane says about others is crucial.
Colonialism and imperialism.
The professor re-addressed my question. "Is an autobiography a bildungsroman?" from last week because she'd thought her answer had been glib. She said an autobiography has to be a bildungsroman. We learned how to do autobiography from the bildungsroman. I guess she means that the bildungsroman changed how autobiographies are written.
Development is universal.
History is written by the winners.
Autobiography as self defence.
The power of the emotions of a nobody.
Jane generalizes her own situation about being oppressed.
This novel makes the ordinary person a representative of all.
The people that Jane doesn't like have darker skin.
I stopped at Freshco on the way home and bought five bags of cherries.
I weighed 82.7 kilos before a late lunch at 15:15. That's definitely a record low since I've had this digital scale.
I took a late siesta at 15:45 and intended to get up at 17:15 but I slept until 18:00.
I weighed 83.5 kilos at 18:00.
I got a notice that I'll be receiving the Noah Meltz grant to pay for my course. I was worried because in 2021 I had mistakenly only applied for a grant for my fall courses and was surprised when I didn't get the grant for the spring course. I had to apply for separate grant later in the year just to cover the fee.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:22.
I read the first thirty pages of David Copperfield. He was born with a caul, which is part of the embryonic membrane, often covering the head of the baby and sometimes the whole body. It occurs in one newborn out of every 85.000 and to some superstitious people it is considered a good luck charm and so it is kept. David's mother, who became a widow just before giving birth, held onto David's caul for ten years and then auctioned it off. David was sad to lose a piece of himself like that.
I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs with chili sauce and honey while watching season 4, episode 4 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Jethro is back on his 00 spy kick. Jed finds him again having turned the old truck into his spymobile. He has the big metal washtub that swings down over the driver as a bullet proof shield, now on top of him as he hammers it from the inside in the dark. He tells Jed it's giving him a headache. Jed asks why he doesn't hammer it while it's lifted up and that way he can see what he's doing. Jethro thinks that's pretty smart thinking.
Jethro says he needs to drive to the West Indies, which is way past Kansas City, in order to sign up to be an 00 spy. Jed suggests that he set up his own 00 spy office in Beverly Hills and if he does a good job he'll get the attention of the 00 people. Jed rents Jethro an office in Drysdale's bank and Drysdale accommodates him because Jed is his biggest depositor. Jane protests because a Mr. Baker has been promised that rental space. Elly is hired as Jethro's secretary and Jethro teaches her to be glamorous like a detective's secretary in the movies.
Jethro has a lot of ridiculous disguises and he wears a trench coat full of heavy clanking spy tools. He has a switchblade shoe but he installs the blade backwards and cuts himself when he activates it.
Mr. Baker arrives demanding his office and then Jane explains to him about the situation. Baker and his accomplice Kay have no problem humouring Jethro because they plan on robbing the bank from that office and they see Jethro as being so dumb that he'll help rather than hinder their efforts. They present themselves as being from 00 headquarters. Jethro first tries to spy on them with his two way mirror but he installed the mirror backwards as well. He demonstrates his tear gas sprayer but he installed that backwards too. He has a camera in the wall but he plastered over the lens. Baker and Kay tell him he will pass the test once he has built the escape hatch under his desk.
But Jethro decides he can't build it under his desk because there is a vault directly beneath it and so he digs it from Elly's office. When Jethro falls through to Drysdale's office and explains about Baker, the police are called and Jethro points Baker out from a mug shot. Baker is arrested but Jethro doesn't understand that Baker isn't his 00 boss after all.
Kay was played by Eileen O'Neill, whose first film appearance was in "A Majority of One" in 1960. She co-starred in "Teenage Millionaire". She played Sergeant Ames on Burke's Law, and made appearances on various other TV series until 1970. She was considered as a possible Morticia on "The Addams Family" before Carolyn Jones got the part.
I finished reading the second chapter of David Copperfield. David's beautiful affectionate mother has sent David on a holiday with her housekeeper so she can secretly get married.
I searched for bedbugs and my toothpick streaked red in a small crack to the left of the old exit door at the head of my bed. Not far from there I knocked a black one off the wall and found it on the floor along with another black one. Both were black inside so maybe infected by the spores that were sprayed last Friday.
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