I Was a Young Bob Dylan

            On Tuesday morning I dreamed I was a young Bob Dylan acting in a play but later I was British comic actor Sidney James in the same play. It all somehow had to do with my Brit Lit 2 essay. 

            I transcribed the lyrics to “Merde à l’amour" (Shit to Love) by Serge Gainsbourg from the Gainsbourg website and translated it. I'll start memorizing it on the first morning after I'm done with my Brit Lit 2 essay. 

            Playing the smaller Oscar Schmidt guitar is a little frustrating because with the bigger Washburn I had just finally gotten to get my fingers in the right place to play an unbarred A chord but now with the smaller guitar my fingers don’t seem to fit. One good thing though is that the Oscar Schmidt doesn’t have a buzz on the A string like the Washburn does and which the guy at Remenyi told me was a perfectly acceptable buzz. 

            I took a siesta from 11:30 to 13:00. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos before lunch. I had peanuts, kettle chips and salsa. 

            As I was getting ready for a bike ride I was surprised that it was covid 19 degrees outside. I brought my microscope along with me. They call it a microscope because it’s so tiny that you need a microscope to look through it. I saw that the virus was wearing shorts and I’m hoping it will catch a cold. 

            I stopped at Freshco to buy bread and margarine because I’ll be eating bread tomorrow. 

            I took another siesta from 16:30 to 17:30. 

            I worked on my essay for a couple of hours and knocked it down to nine and a half pages, which is a little over twice what it should be. It’s due tomorrow at midnight but there’s no late penalty and I think I can have it done before the weekend. 

            I weighed 88.7 kilos before dinner. I had a potato with the rest of the peas, mushrooms, broccoli and onions that I’d sautéed the night before. 

            I tried to watch an episode of Hancock’s Half Hour but only the first few minutes were complete and so I watched the first episode of the fourth season of the Andy Griffith Show. 

            This story begins with Barney making a slingshot for Opie. But while shooting into a tree in his front yard he accidentally kills a mother bird. He feels so guilty about it that he takes it upon himself to raise her three babies. Andy gets him a cage so they can put the nest inside to protect the birds from cats. The birds grow healthy and start to fly in the cage and so Andy reminds Opie that the mother that he’s replacing would let them go. Opie hesitates but realizes his father is right and he lets them each fly away.

March 31, 1991: I sold $1700 worth of flowers on Easter Sunday and made $300

Thirty years ago today

            On Easter Sunday I got to work at the flower place at around 7:30. I let them know I was there and then went across the bridge for a coffee and a bagel. When I got back I tried to maneuver a seat and and ended up spilling my coffee. So I went back to the donut shop to get another and a walnut cruller. This time when I returned I was more careful about where I sat. 

            When they called Nancy's name, since I hadn't seen her yet I shouted back that she wasn't there, but apparently she was. 

            I requested that I be placed where I'd been on Friday. In the van was a young woman from mainland China and I chatted with her on the way out to Burlington. We finished very late because there were so many hassles over money counts. I sold $1700 worth of flowers and made $300 so I didn't haggle.

            I called for Nancy when I got home and she called back but we didn't talk long.

Tony Hancock

            On Monday morning I finished posting my translation of “Rétro song” by Serge Gainsbourg. Next I’ll transcribe the lyrics for his “Merde à l’amour" and translate them. 

            I took a siesta at 10:45, intending on sleeping as usual for only ninety minutes but when I woke up at 12:15 I was still too tired to rise. I stayed down for another half an hour. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos before lunch. I had the rest of my lentil chili and plantain chips for lunch. 

            I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor. 

            When I got back this week’s Brit Lit 2 lecture still hadn’t been posted. 

            I spent about an hour on one paragraph of my essay and then at about 16:45 the lecture video was up. 

            This lecture was on Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. 

            21st Century fiction. The novel brings together many key ideas, themes and questions we've been talking about through the term. It repeats and sometimes adds other things. This lecture is designed to set up arguments for after the novel is read. It points out things to think about while reading, but not clear arguments. Just building blocks for next week’s argument. And also things to talk about in tutorial. 

            On Beauty is a book that thinks about its relationship to literary history, to modernism, post modernism and after. It’s an homage to E. M. Forster's Howard's End. 

            We are almost a hundred years past Woolf’s "The Mark On The Wall" to 2005. This novel thinks about the relationship to what has come before. 

            Modernism was from the 1920s to 1950s and interested in new ways of representation, especially in fiction. Thinking about the news being important. 

            Postmodernism has different dates in different national contexts. Where modernism thought that art could, through artifice arrive at the truth of consciousness. Looking in psychology was innovative and avant garde. Poetry could give access to deep recesses of the human mind. Postmodernism empties out modernism. It emphasizes style and artifice and metafictionality with the idea that art is just art. It is only artifice that doesn’t take us into the mind or meaning or universal truth. It is about itself. This is good and bad. Art is freed from telling the truth or giving lessons. But postmodernism also becomes detached and nihilistic. All art can do is show how we think we know but don’t. It is all sarcasm and cynicism. 

            Somewhere in late 20th and early 21st we get a turn against the emptiness of post modernism. Coming back to idea that art is not a universal force but it does speak to people and does something for them. Art has a relationship to the world even though not powerful and truth telling. It is a weaker relation but still a relation.

            In On Beauty this comes up as a homage to Howard’s End. A proto modernist novel. Smith is rethinking Forster and thinking about what he’s trying to say. 

            Howard’s End (1910). Motto: "Only connect." Clash and interconnections between two families, the Wilcoxes and the Schlegels. The plot is concerned about beauty and culture in an increasingly use driven world. Forster saw profit being overvalued. He was worried about culture and art. For better or for worse the aristocracy took care of and protected art. What is the future in a world no longer ordered by the old structures of hereditary class. He was also concerned with what it meant for the aristocracy to be caretakers of art. The world is changing around class. A rising class represented by Wilcoxes who made new money not from old land like the aristocracy. Money through trade, mercantilism and exploiting empire, industry. They represent a changing world dominated by money. They have money but not generations of living money. They have no relationship with art like the Schlegels. The Schlegels don’t work and have a relation to culture. They clash around a third family. The Wilcoxes are trying to fit and don't know how to get culture so they are learning to fake it. The Wilcoxes are not hierarchical. 

            The assistant professor thinks the Wilcoxes with their money from industry and empire, their patriarchy, their utilitarianism and their trying to fit in correspond to the Kippses and that the Schlegels with their inherited money, siblings, culture focused, impracticality and out of touchness correspond to the Belseys. But that doesn't make sense. I think the old school Kippses represent the Schlegels. 

            The third family the Basts correspond to Carl and Choo. They are working class and aspirational. They are constantly working, live in a tiny basement with no bathroom. Bast wants access to culture. How to give Leonard Bast access. Leonard works seventy hours a week. Zadie Smith is taking these concerns about what happens to culture and beauty in a changing world but she is not rewriting Howard’s End. Knowledge of Howard’s End enriches our understanding of On Beauty but it's not necessary. 

            The homage is not an adaptation. The affiliation is looser. It has a similar opening but with emails rather than letters. Emails about meeting love in a rival family and losing it. What is the difference between letters and emails? Letter to sister and email to father. If written in 2020 it would be what’s app messages. There are parallel music appreciation scenes and bequeathing scenes. Beethoven vs. Mozart. There are lots of differences. On Beauty has a bigger cast. Howard’s End just has a few characters in each family. Bigger families and additional characters make On Beauty more complicated socially. It is set on campus and not just London. It’s less schematic and more hybrid. Class is no longer the ultimate cause of problems. Forster uses the families schematically as illustrations to think about relationships. In Forster a hybrid child of two classes results, representing the future of England, smearing classes. For Forster class is the ultimate cause. Not race, or gender dynamics. Smith is against any one thing being the cause of identity and subjectivity. 

            Forster ends with the image of a child that is the product of working and upper class hybridity. A compound class. Smith says yes there are hybrids but that doesn't solve our problems. On Beauty is concerned with issues of 2005. The issues are family, love, music, education, race, gender and class. These are intertwined, relative, connected and hybridized. Everyone is hybridized but that compound is more than class. There are more issues now. What defines us? 

            What does the novel show us about these families? He pauses for us to answer. 

            I say the Belseys have new ideas and they are more uncertain. They are less unified than the Kippses from a philosophical point of view. The Kippses have no danger of falling apart. They have old school conventions and religion and yet the world is changing and they are fighting it together. The Belseys are constantly in danger of breaking up and yet they have a kind of ghost unity in spirit through art and culture and radical politics. 

            The families are diverse. Composed of many different kinds. Kippses are black, Catholic, conservative; The Belseys black and white, politically liberal. Families don't fit in one category. They are not easily categorized. There are multiple affiliations. The novel is filled with cartoonish characters not deeply dense but they represent identities and class positions. They break with their stereotypes. Monty and Howard and Zoora are cartoons. Zoora is an academic. Howard is an art professor. Monty is a conservative. But they break out of those roles. No one can be pinned down. They are nonreduceable to background. But race and gender are still important but these causes are tied up with other causes.

            When Carl comes to the Belsey house. White Howard confronts black Carl. Carl is too pleased with himself and Howard turns him away. Not that Howard is not racist but race isn’t the only issue. Black is only on a list. There are a combination of issues. Carl says for "poet poets”. There needs to be a match between what he looks like and claims to be for him to be admitted. A poet is not just someone who writes poetry but must have a look. Carl represents black youth and is not supposed to be at the party. But he shows himself to be witty. He’s more than his stereotype. 

            Carlene says to Monty that life must come over the Book but Monty says life must conform to the Book. Monty is shown to have density of character and he still hangs out with a guy he likes who is gay. Monty is a jerk but makes exceptions. 

            Levi in mega store tries to raise a coup. Bailey is from the streets but Levi is middle class and wants to be street. He wants black identity that he can‘t authentically claim it. He joins the Haitians. He's distanced although of the same race as if from a different planet. Certain parts of identity can trump other parts. They are separated by class. 

            These hybrid identities create complex problems. There is a foolish idea that hybridization will act as a bridge between warring cultures. But Smith says hybridization makes life more difficult. Racism, sexism and classicism become more difficult to root out because they are entangled. If race was the only factor we could address it. But there are so many dimensions relating to gender, class, economy, geography, urban vs. rural. Hybridization makes belonging more difficult. Having things in common does not make for a connection. If we want to be antiracist we have got to see everything it relates to. 

            Ultra contemporary representations of family with old fashioned interests in beauty. Art, painting, music, combined with ultra realistic representation of family. How are the questions of aesthetics, beauty and style tied to concerns of ethics, politics and the common good? Relevance of style to ethics. Carl's style, his aesthetics that get him turned away. Howard does not listen. he reads his style. There is a relationship between aesthetics and politics and ethics on other hand. 

            The novel is very ekphrastic, with moments of ekphrasis even in the sense of it being an homage to another novel. But here Smith takes difference from Keats and against the Grecian Urn: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty and that is all ye need to know." Beauty connects us to the universal. She is against the idea that beauty connects us to a universal truth. She insists that the truths art gives access to are particular. They are subjective truths. This does not mean that Smith does not value beauty. She may value it more insofar as she recognizes its fragility and its need of support. If beauty is a not universal feature that transcends time and generations it has substance that continues. She says it's created in an interactive experience and therefore it’s fragile and needs maintenance. She moves away from masterpieces and canonical art. She says art can connect us to transcend the self but not universally. Art needs to be made public through an ekphrastic relationship. 

            When the family goes to Mozart’s Requiem it mimics scene from Howard's End and Beethoven. What kind of ekphrasis is Smith developing? How Kiki describes the music, who is “you"? Why?

            Obviously “you" is Kiki because she refers to being the only black woman at Wellington. Mozart represents a culture that she has married into even though it is not her husband’s culture. She has married white history and wants her children to appreciate art even though it also represents the death of her black culture. 

            The “you” is both plural and singular at the same time. You is simultaneously herself and the reader. The music is shared. Art speaks to us specifically but can connect us beyond ourselves. Many things get in the way of sharing. Kiki’s description is public and private. Specificity. Her personal experience but also public and shared. Asking for universal assent. Music is described as ethereal. This is a good description of the requiem. He identifies with what she is saying and walking towards a pit and judgement over the soul. 

            Kant says that judgements of beauty claim universal validity and demand agreement. When we say something is beautiful we are doing something different than saying I like something best. That's opinion. When we give a description of a work of art as beautiful we are saying you should see it as beautiful too. If you played Mozart a lot maybe you can’t see what Kiki is saying. Smith is interested in how we talk of art. Carl wants to talk about Mozart's requiem. Think about how Carl talks of Mozart. What is Zora’s problem? What is the disconnection with Zora? 

            How do we describe how he talks about Mozart? Carl is unacademic but conceals academic ideas. Carl’s “unacademic” way of talking about Mozart conceals a very Zoraesque and academic analysis of the work and its history. Zora doesn’t listen because the style or aesthetics is off. Thus Zora is the contemporary demonstration of Carl's point that fits with the idea of who can and can’t make music like this. He's using style that doesn't look academic. 

            More examples. Howard says prettiness and beauty is the mask power wears to recast aesthetics as exclusion. Clair says people think they know art is truth. Art is not truth exactly. Zora only reads footnotes. 

            What is the relationship between how people relate to art and their relation to others? Is there a connection? How does the novel think about the relation between art and ethics? What do the clash of vocabularies and styles reveal to us? What do you make of the last scene? Characters struggling with different styles of talking about the same thing? Is the last scene optimistic or negative? 

            

            I finished editing my notes just before dinner. 

            I had a potato with sautéed onion, mushrooms, broccoli and canned peas while watching an episode of Hancock’s Half Hour. 

            In every episode of this show Tony Hancock has a different occupation whether professional or not. In this story he is a lawyer and he begins with a court argument against an old man who is charged with eight counts of bigamy. His attack is so powerful that the jury finds the man guilty and the judge sentences him to four years in prison. The problem however is that Hancock was supposed to be defending the accused. His boss at the law firm says he only hired him because his grandfather had been a great barrister. Hancock has never read a law book because they are written by foreigners. His knowledge of the law comes from television and Agatha Christy novels. He begs for one more chance and so his boss agrees. He is sent out to defend Sidney James who was seen robbing a jewellery store by 240 witnesses. Before he can see James in his cell Hancock is arrested for illegally parking in front of the police station, driving with an expired license and then moving the car when the police sergeant told him to. On his court date the arresting officer says he saw James commit the crime but Hancock tells him to put his helmet on and it covers his eyes. The other 240 witnesses were recently admitted to the hospital with broken noses. Hancock gives and impassioned defence and James says that he didn’t break the jewellery store window but was pushed against it by a rough man. He is asked to describe the man just before the scene changes to a few days later when Hancock is breaking rocks in prison.

            Hancock had both a radio and television version of his show at the same time and it lasted for seven years. Hancock was worried that Sidney James was stealing half his limelight and so after a few years he split from him. He then fired his scrip writers and the shows became less funny. Hancock finally got rid of himself by committing suicide. Thirty three years after his death British radio listeners voted Hancock their favourite comedian.

March 30, 1991: They dropped me where where it was impossible to sell, so I moved into the mall and made $80

Thirty years ago today

            I got up at 6:45 on Saturday and headed down to the flower place. I let them know I was in and then caught the streetcar across the bridge to get a coffee and a bagel with cream cheese. I came back, ate the bagel and then went outside where I saw Nancy and her parents arrive. I sat down with Nancy. She was depressed because she hadn't made any money this weekend selling flowers. I tried to comfort her and avoided bringing up our current relationship problem. 

            We got called in and I went back to Burlington. They dropped me on a corner where it seemed impossible to sell and so I moved right into the mall and sold only to pedestrians. I sold 439 and made $80. 

            I talked with Nancy later.

Biddy Baxter

            On Sunday morning I finished working out the chords for “Rétro song” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through it in French. 

            I did a full song practice with my Oscar Schmidt guitar, which goes out of tune on the B string as much as the Washburn but doesn’t go out as far. It’s weird though getting used to playing the much smaller guitar again. 

            I took a siesta from 10:45 until 12:15. When I got up it was raining hard. It was too wet for a bike ride so I did some exercises while listening to the August 31, 1954 broadcast of the Goon Show:

            The Starlings Timothy: 

            1954. A world overshadowed with doubts, fears, uncertainty. Of Indo-China, the Suez, Cyprus, East and West German strife, the H-Bomb explosion, and yet to come the unbelievable power of the cobalt bomb. But our own governors are not unaware of these dangers. At this moment, the House of Commons are debating serious matters. 

            Fairfax: There are far too many starlings in Trafalgar Square... 

            Milligan (old politician): We must... We must get rid of these disgusting creatures! 

            Timothy: The inventive genius of the country was called upon, and for three years the starlings were attacked with a series of frightening devices. 

            Sellers: Stuffed owls! 

            Secombe: Wriggling rubber snakes! 

            Milligan: High frequency sound beams! 

            Sellers (female voice): Little round things that went "knick, knick, knick". 

            Bloodnok: Rice puddings fired from catapults! 

            Timothy: A recording of a female starling in trouble! 

            Sellers: A recording of a female starling not in trouble! 

            Milligan (grand voice): Large things dropped from a great height, and vice-versa! 

            Timothy: For some inexplicable reason all these devices failed. The starlings remained. The Ministry of Grit, Filth and Exportable Heads, the Secretary, Mr Ned Bladok was handed a vital bird statistic. 

            Seagoon: There are 30 million starlings roosting in Trafalgar Square? Call a meeting of all the people we keep especially for meetings! 

            Bloodnok: I remember during the first world war for lasting peace after a heavy artillery barrage there were no signs of birds for months after. 

            Seagoon: Look, it all boils down to making a noise. 

            Bloodnok: I'll ask Field Marshall Clinical Foot to let us have three brigades of guards at Trafalgar Square at dawn on Monday! 

            The whole of the square mile of Trafalgar Square has been cordoned off. 

            Timothy: Is it now a curfew area? 

            Bloodnok: Yes. Only curfews our allowed in. All these squads marching in here are to kick up a din and in so doing, you see, they drive the starlings away.

            Steinbacker: Iron bath tub with beater, football rattles, whistles, tin cans, dustbin lids, gas stoves filled with iron bolts, bagpipes, dinner gongs, kettle drums, thunder sheets, and other various noise making gear. 

            Timothy: Diary of Operation Cacophony. 

            Secombe: March the seventh, third week of operation. Starlings undisturbed. But two thirds of guard brigade stone deaf. 

            Sellers: December the first, very cold. Noise makers were augmented by the bagpipes of the Highland Brigade. Starlings still unperturbed. The population of London dropped 10,000 overnight.

            Timothy: February the thirty-second. All troops withdrawn. Operation Cacophony abandoned.

            Seagoon: Mr. Prime Minister, members, I admit that Operation Cacophony cost £160,000, and was a complete and utter failure, but these little mistakes will happen! 

            Bluebottle: I have been waiting to speak to you, Mr. Clum-Thrut-Knid-Sproo-Theckran-Bludge-Sprathatan. 

            Seagoon: Mr. Bladok's the name. 

            Bluebottle: Yes, that's it! I knew it was something like Clum-Thrut-Knid-Sproo... 

            Seagoon: Right, now to business. What is your invention? 

            Bluebottle: It is an artificial explodable bird-lime. I have managed to compound a mixture that looks exactly like bird-lime. Now then, this bird-lime can be put down anywhere where there are starlings. Then, simply by pressing a remote control button, all those little blobs of bird-lime can be exploded! 

            Seagoon: It is to be given artificial colouring and forced into tubes ready for squirting on to the buildings. The exploding of the artificial bird-lime necessitates the pressing of a button. And it is common law that all cutting of tapes and pressing of buttons must be carried out with due ceremony...

            Ginstone: Tell me, how long have you been putting the mixture round the ledges of this building? 

            Bert: About ten days, on and off. 

            Ginstone: What do you mean, "On and Off"? 

            Bert: Well, some of us keep falling off. 

            Dimbleby: And those cheers are for the leader of the Household Troop as he dips the Union Jack, the national flag of the union of Jack. They appear to be having trouble with the great microphone of state, the same great microphone used ever since 1672, hand beaten and foot slapped, gold and silver surmounted by two Burmese cherubs, and fashioned by the great sculptor Ben Venuto Selinae and his brother Fred. Oh and now I see the great engineer of state with the great state screwdriver adjusting the mace screws on the great microphone. 

            Duchess: Ladies and Gentlemen. It is my privilege and pruvilege to name this experiment Operation Explodable Bird Mixture, and may all who stand on it perish. 

            Dimbleby: She steps forward to press the great button. She presses it. 

            Grams: [Mild explosions continue throughout speech] 

            Ginstone: And all around the cornices of St. Martin's the bird mixture is exploding and the starlings are being driven away. 

            Grams: [Giant explosion, crowd screams] 

            Seagoon: Mr. Prime Minister, Honourable Members. I fear that the explodable bird-lime was a mite too powerful, but fear not, St. Martin's will be rebuilt! 

            Timothy: But the starlings will only roost in it again. 

            Seagoon: If they do, well, we'll blow it up again! Naturally we would rebuild again, but if the starlings still persist in roosting there, we'll have no compunction but to blow it up yet again! We'll see who gets tired first! 

            Minnie Bannister: But think of the expense! 

            Seagoon: No fears there! I have it on good authority that our financial position is far in excess of the starlings! 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos before lunch. I had a tomato, dill and peanut salad with fig balsamic dressing. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos at 17:45. 

            I worked on my essay for a couple of hours and knocked two thirds of a page off of it. The official deadline for handing it in is this coming Wednesday at midnight but I don’t think I'll be able to make it. There's no penalty for being late but it can’t be more than eleven days late. I don’t think I’ll be more than a day or two tardy. 

            Supposedly I was down to 88.0 kilos before dinner. I had half a bowl of lentil chili with plantain chips while watching Blue Peter Confidential. It was one of the British TV shows that I started downloading a year ago. Most of it had downloaded but sometime last year the landlord shut off my power while doing some work elsewhere in the building. He shut it off more than once and so one time while my torrents were loading he shut it off again and it caused my entire torrent list to be erased. I restarted most of the downloads but forgot about Blue Peter. I doubt if it would have completed anyway but it’s possible. Anyway, with the incomplete download, every few minutes the show would restart and so I'd have to move the video past the restart point and so I missed a few bits. 

            The documentary was about the childrens news show Blue Peter that started on the BBC in 1958. There were clips from their most classic episodes. The hosts travelled the world for summer shows, engaged in dangerous stunts, did silly skits, and made arts and crafts. There was something called the Blue Peter badge that was sent out to any kids who sent in suggestions that were used on the show and most of the show came from fan suggestions. One of the hosts became the first civilian woman to skydive from 10 kilometres above the Earth. The interviews were with former hosts and former directors of the show. It's now the longest running kids show in history. One of the original presenters was Leila Williams, who won the Miss Great Britain competition in 1957. 

            She was followed by Anita West, who was married to Goon Show band leader ray Ellington. She didn’t stay long at the show because she was going through a divorce from Ellington. The editor who established the format that continues today was Biddy Baxter. She brought in the badges and the interactive relationship between the kid viewers and the show. I seem to recall that in the early 70s there was a brand of LSD called Blue Peter.

March 29, 1991: Nancy and I sat in silence in the car. My silence was cold and hers was pensive

Thirty years ago today

            I got up at 6:45 on Good Friday, got ready and headed for the flower place. Nancy's parents were there and after I registered her mother told me Nancy was out in the car. I went out and joined her but we sat in silence in the back seat. My silence was cold and hers was pensive. When I finally spoke I told her that all she had to do to bring us back together would be to agree to live with me. We argued a bit and then we both went inside. 

            She was sent out to Kennedy and Steeles in Brampton. Her mother got me a coffee before I got in the van and was taken to Burlington. 

            I made $100 that day, which was better than anyone else on my route. 

            I got home at around 22:00, worked on some projects and then went to bed.

Zizi Jeanmaire

            On Saturday morning during song practice the machine head for my B string became so stiff that I couldn't turn it in the direction of sharpening it into tune. I took a screw driver and tried loosening it but then it popped off and wouldn’t screw back on. I had to finish my rehearsal with the Oscar Schmidt, which goes out of tune even more easily. I haven’t got time to take the Washburn to Remenyi until after the middle of April. Is it too much to ask to have a guitar that stays in tune like I used to have? It’s weird that both guitars go off on the B string. 

            I finished memorizing “Rétro song" by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked briefly for the chords to this song sung by Zizi Jeanmaire and discovered that she died last summer at the age of 96. It’s strange that it never showed up in the news feeds that I read. 

 

            

            In the late morning I went out to No Frills. The still had very cheap red grapes so I got eight bags. I bought a sack of potatoes, cinnamon-raisin bread, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, a can of coffee, a box of Earl Grey tea, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, kettle chips, hot salsa and a jug of lemonade.

           There was a guy sitting on the sidewalk and panhandling near where I was unlocking my bike. I gave him one of my bags off grapes and he seemed to appreciate it. He thanked me twice. 

           I weighed 88.8 kilos before lunch. I had a tomato, dill and roasted peanut salad. 

           I weighed 89.1 kilos at 18:05. 

           I spent a couple of hours on my essay, getting rid of irrelevant quotes and rephrasing an condensing ones that help my argument. I knocked it down from 18 to 11 pages, which is still about two and a half times more than I need. 

           I weighed 89.4 kilos before dinner. I added coconut milk to my lentil chili and had half a bowl with plantain chips while watching the third season finale of The Andy Griffith Show. 

           In this story Andy and Barney learn that two bandits from a four man gang have been captured and will be brought to the Mayberry jail until state police can pick them up. Barney insists that they need a second deputy and so he deputizes Gomer. he stations Gomer on the roof of the jailhouse but Gomer keeps dropping his rifle off the roof and breaking it. When the prisoners arrive Barney imposes strict discipline such as making them march out of their cell to the other one for their meals. But the crooks are just playing along until Barney lets his guard down. Barney overhears them saying that in a real prison there would be a shakedown and they’d be forced to leave their cell while the guards check for weapons. Suddenly Barney calls for a shakedown but while he’s checking their cell they walk out the door. Fortunately Andy is outside and he marches them back in at gunpoint. After locking their cell Barney absent mindedly puts the keys on the hook on the wall between the two cells. When Barney leaves the room they let themselves out and leave. Once again Andy brings them back in. Later two plain clothes state detectives tell Andy that they think the other two crooks will try to break their pals out and so they hide in the alley. Andy sends Barney up on the roof with Gomer to keep him out of trouble. But from above Barney sees the detectives and thinks they are the rest of the gang. He captures them and puts them in the other cell. Just then the other bandits arrive and put Barney in a cell with the detectives and then free their buddies. But as they are leaving Andy comes up from behind. But then Gomer drops his rifle from the roof onto Andy’s rifle and knocks it out of his hand. The crooks are about to run when Gomer also accidentally drops the contents of a bunch of Christmas lights he’d been told to pick up from the roof. When the bulbs hit the pavement they pop in such quick succession that the crooks think Andy has a machine gun and they surrender. Andy brings the four men into the jail and tells Barney that his plan of capturing the men worked. 

            One of the detectives was played by George Kennedy, who served in WWII and spent 16 years in the army. He won the best supporting actor Oscar in 1967 for his role in Cool Hand Luke. He co-starred in all three Naked Gun movies. He was a regular on Dallas and The Young And The Restless.

March 28, 1991: I was almost an hour late for work but everyone else was later

Thirty years ago today

            I got up at 3:00 on Thursday, shaved and showered, had breakfast and read the papers. 

            I did the dishes and started working on my S & M story. I left it at "To be continued" and started typing. I got in touch with Bev at Foreplay Magazine and told her I'd deliver it before noon. But as time went on I realized that I couldn't type that fast. I typed the article and my old poem "Phallus In Wonderland" but then I realized that I was late for work. 

            When I looked at the address that Wayne had given me I found that I'd mixed up the time by half an hour and so I was even later than I'd thought and wouldn't be able to deliver the story after all. I was almost an hour late to the job site but still no one else was there.

Howard Morris

            On Friday morning it was raining hard with a strong wind. So even though the heat was on and the apartment was too warm I couldn’t open the windows all the way for fear of the rain blowing in during yoga. 

            I started translating “The Calypso Blues” by Boris Vian. 

            I finished translating “Rétro Song" by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse. 

            During song practice the rain was still coming down but the wind died down so I could open the windows. 

            I took a siesta from 12:08 to 13:38. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos before lunch. I had tomatoes and avocados with fig balsamic dressing. 

            I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor in the afternoon. 

            I tried to take another siesta from a little after 17:00 but only laid down for about half an hour. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos at 17:45. 

            I worked on my essay for a couple of hours, mostly trying to create arguments between George Eliot and Oscar Wilde on class and on their solutions to social problems:

            Eliot’s theory is that it is impossible for the poor to be virtuous, moral, refined in sentiment, altruistic and charitable as long as they suffer from harsh social conditions. Wilde argues that improved circumstances only produce health, but do not diminish prejudice. To override bigotry all of the classes must have a relationship with beauty. For this to occur, “art is required” to shape the form that creates the critical temperament and the aesthetic instinct that pushes the conditions of our societal environment towards beauty. A common sense of beauty would raise us above hateful discrimination. 

            I had half a bowl of lentil chili and plantain chips for dinner while watching Andy Griffith. 

            This story begins with Brisco Darling asking Andy for help. Apparently since the Darling’s first appearance Andy married Charlotte Darling and Dudley Wash. But an eccentric neighbour named Ernest T Bass refuses to recognize the marriage and keeps harassing the family and trying to court Charlotte. Andy and Barney travel up into the mountains to try to straighten things out. Andy shows Ernest the marriage certificate but Bass says if there wasn’t a preacher they aren’t married. So they arrange for the next Sunday for the local preacher to perform the ceremony but Ernest promises that it’s not going to happen. Anticipating that Ernest will try to kidnap the bride, he has Barney dress up in the wedding gown and veil. They start the wedding and sure enough Ernest grabs and pulls away what he thinks is the bride. As soon as Ernest and Barney are gone Charlotte comes out from behind a tree and the real ceremony is finished. Ernest has to accept the marriage but now he’s interested in courting Barney, whom he thinks is a lady sheriff. 

            Dudley was played by Hoke Howell.  

            The preacher was played by Dub Taylor. 

            Ernest T Bass was played by Howard Morris and the character was so popular with fans that he reprised it a handful of times over three seasons. He started out acting in the army with Carl Reiner and later became a cast member of Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. He did the voices for hundreds of cartoon characters such as Atom Ant and Jughead. He directed episodes of The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show and the pilot of Get Smart; and films such as “With Six You Get Eggroll”. He directed several McDonaldland commercials and did the voice of the Hamburgler. I put coconut milk in my coffee and it was way too heavy. I went to bed with a burdened stomach.

March 27, 1991: I called a transvestite and masturbated

Thirty years ago today 

            I got to work at 8:00 on Wednesday and went out on a job with Jim and Donny. We moved an Italian woman and her two sons who were in their twenties. The boys helped us and so the job went quickly. We got back to the shop at 15:30 and Roy gave me a ride to the subway at 16:00. 

            I deposited my cheque at King and Yonge and caught the streetcar to Dufferin where I got a shake and some fries at Burger King before taking another streetcar home. 

            I worked on my S & M porno story and my figure skater collage. 

            Carlo came over and stayed way too long. 

            Nancy called but I didn't have much to say. I was waiting for her to make a decision about us living together but she was waiting for "god" to make it for her. 

            I called that transvestite. 

            I masturbated with oil.

Roy Barcroft

            Early Thursday morning after going to bed I couldn’t sleep because of the caffeine in my system. I got up and posted my translation of "Mozart avec nous” (Mozart Is With Us) by Boris Vian and a video of a performance of the song. The wifi went down just after that and I edited some photos until 1:30. 

            I went back to bed but I don’t think I got much more than an hour and a half of sleep. 

            Later in the morning I found the lyrics for “Calypso Blues” by Boris Vian. 

            I made one more attempt to figure out the lyrics for “Retro song” by Serge Gainsbourg, then gave up and started searching for the words to his “Merde a l’amour”. I found them on the gainsbourg.net website but then got the idea to search there for “Retro song”. I erased “merde-a-l’amour” from the end of the URL and typed in “retro-song” and found the lyrics. I transcribed them and then translated the first verse. 

            Around midday I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor and on the way home I stopped at Freshco. The shopping baskets are usually stacked just to the left as one walks in the door but that space was empty. I asked the nice lady who seems to be the foreman of the cashiers and has worked there forever where I could find the baskets. She informed me that they don’t have baskets any more. Health and Safety determined that they were a health risk. No Frills has an employee whose job is to do nothing but sterilize the shopping baskets but maybe Freshco was too cheap to hire someone just for that. She said the shopping carts outside are free or I could use a box. I didn’t like either of those options so I just used a bag from my backpack. 

            I bought five bags of red grapes, two cans of peaches and a carton of soy milk. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos before lunch. 

            I had a cucumber, tomato and avocado salad with fig balsamic dressing. 

            I weighed 88.6 at 17:57. 

            I worked for over two hours on my essay. I finished incorporating quotes from George Eliot into the body of my text and then pulled the most relevant quotes from Oscar Wilde nearby. Then I started inserting some of those into the text as arguments with Eliot. 

            Before dinner I weighed myself twice and the first time it was 87.5 while the second 88.9 kilos. I assume the latter is more accurate. 

            I had half a bowl of the lentil chili I’d made the night before and ate it with plantain chips while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story a state inspector is scheduled to come to the courthouse in response to Andy and Barney’s request for more funds. But meanwhile Opie brings in a stray dog that ends up leading ten more to the sheriff’s office. Barney is worried that all of these dogs will make a bad impression for the inspector. He takes them all outside of town and leaves them in an open field. First of all that would be a stupid thing to do because leaving any pack of unsupervised dogs in the country is a sure fire way of inviting them to raid farms and kill cattle. But in this case the main concern results from a thunder storm and Opie being afraid of the dogs being struck by lightning. They bring the dogs back. Mr Somerset, the inspector calls and says he’s on his way over and so Andy tells Opie to take the dogs out back. The inspector doesn’t seem to think the office needs any extra funds but then suddenly all the dogs burst in and knock him down. It turns out that he’s a lover of dogs and has three of his own. He approves them funding for anything they want. Later Andy and Barney go through the labourious process of finding homes for all the dogs. After they get back a farmer named Clint Biggers shows up and says that all eleven of the dogs are his and so they have to go and get all the dogs back. 

            Somerset was played by Robert Cornthwaite, who started out in theatre and then branched into film and television. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame for his role in “The Thing From Another World”. He said that the real creative people in film are the directors, the writers and the cameramen. He preferred theatre because the actor has more creative control. He also translated French plays into English.

            Clint Biggers was played by Roy Barcroft, who started out in theatre but later became very busy as a go to villain in western. In other genres he was the purple Martian in “The Purple Monster Strikes,” the reincarnated pirate Captain Mephisto in “Manhunt of Mystery Island” and the Moon menace in “Radar Men from the Moon.” He lied his age at fifteen and joined the army during WWI. He was wounded in France at sixteen and sent home.

March 26, 1991: The customer complained about the holes in my muscle shirt so I complained to him about complaining

Thirty years ago today

            Just after midnight on Tuesday we went for lunch at Toby's. I was the only one of the twelve of us who had a beer. What a rebel! Ralph told me that the customer had complained about the holes in my muscle shirt. We went back to work and I complained to the customer about complaining. We finished the job at 6:00. I took the streetcar home where Nancy was just leaving for work. I hadn't even known she'd spent the night at my place. I slept until 14:00. 

            I got a letter from that male escort agency telling me I'd have to pay $30 to work for them. I guessed I'd send it after I got my income tax return.

Janet Waldo

            On Wednesday morning I finished posting my translation of "Quand ça balance" (When Off Balance) by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the lyrics for his "Retro Song" but no one had posted them. There's a video of Zizi Jeanmaire singing the song and so I listened to it and tried to transcribe the words but my French is not good enough to capture lyrics from people singing them. One of the problems is the song title because one ends up with hits about retro songs by Gainsbourg or Jeanmaire or else the song “Where Do You Go To My Lovely" which mentions Zizi Jeanmaire. I’ll try again on Thursday and if I don’t get the lyrics I’ll move on to the next song. 

            It was a seasonably cool early spring morning. I had one window open during song practice and though the heat was on it wasn’t all that warm. People on the street were dressed sensibly for this time of year except for one woman covered in tattoos who was running in a tank top and shorts. She checked herself out in the window of Popeyes as she crossed the street. I guess if I’d spent as much on body art as she probably did and I was her age I’d brave the cold to flaunt it too.

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I had my first coffee in three and a half weeks and so I was buzzing from breakfast on. 

            At noon I logged on for my Brit Lit 2 tutorial and while doing so I realized that I’d forgotten to take the bi-weekly reading quiz. I asked Carson to confirm that we are allowed to throw away the worst of the tests. He said he thinks so but he’s not directly involved with the quizzes. 

            Carson asked if any of us had read Virginia Woolf before. I said I’d read To The Lighthouse and “A Room of One's Own". 

            Carson told us there is a union demo today and that he still doesn’t know if there will be a strike. They want changes to hiring practices, they want note takers to be paid, and mental health support for undergraduates. 

            Of the essay he said that if feedback is important to us we should submit the paper before April 10. 

            Virginia Woolf lived from 1882 to 1941. She was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, which was a social circle of influential liberal intellectuals. Many of the members were literary characters such as Virginia’s sister Vanessa Stephens, Virginia’s husband Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Maynard Keynes. A group of relatively avant garde intellectuals. 

            Carson said he was blown away by Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway in his second year and then read everything she wrote. Other novels include The Waves, Jacob’s Room and Orlando. In his opinion the short pieces we are looking at in this course pale by comparison to her novels. 

            What does Woolf mean by materialism? I said that it’s superficiality or the material surface of things. 

            She illustrates the opposition between the corporeal and the spiritual. He asked why she is against the details that identify the era. 

            I said current events should not be the focus of any art. It’s a sure way to make the work forgettable. 

            Someone said there is a specific form of engagement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with plenty of continuity and Easter eggs but the characters are flat. 

            Our experience is much more fluid. 

            In philosophy materialism is a proposition that the universe is all substance. 

            Woolf was an atheist. She talks being caught by surprise by dematerializing shocks. She thought that behind daily life is the pattern of a work of art to which we are collectively connected. We are the music but she did not consider this to be about the supernatural. 

            I said that her effort to turn inward is really psychoanalysis. In this era religion has been deemed undependable by many people. Freud came along and transformed everything with presenting humanity with the depths of their own minds which could serve as a more graspable type of spirituality. 

            Carson pointed out that Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press actually published the first English translations of Sigmund Freud’s works. The modernists had an urge to understand the psyche. They found instinct to be at odds with social duties. 

            Woolf has a lot of praise for James Joyce’s explorations of the mind. Carson asked if any of us had read Joyce. 

            I said I read Ulysses out loud to my ex-girlfriend when we were driving and that I’ve read the description of hell in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to poetry crowds on Halloween. 

            Woolf wants to find how fiction can come to terms with the full complexity of human life. 

            Of “The Mark on the Wall” I said the mark serves as a focal point from which to explore the inner mind while the consciousness is distracted. 

            I said that Woolf plays with time in this story. She starts out in the past and ends in the past but the present is in the middle. The first thing she thinks the mark is, a nail, rhymes with what it is, a snail. The idea of the nail also returns in the middle as she imagines that it had been buried beneath the surface of the wall for perhaps a century and now emerges to watch the watcher. 

            Carson thinks that Woolf’s revealing what the mark was is cheesy. 

            But the true meaning is not about the mark. It’s an occasion for thought to reflect on its surroundings. Carson asked if any of us just sat and stared at an object when we were kids. I said that I’m a starer into space from way back. 

            I said the last paragraph is much more chaotic just before it comes to the reality of what the mark is. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before lunch. I had guacamole made from avocados and cilantro and ate it with plantain chips. 

            I tried to take a siesta at 14:00 but the coffee I’d drank kept me awake and so I only stayed in bed for half an hour. 

            I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I tried to take another siesta at 17:00 but the caffeine wouldn’t let me. I could only stay in bed for fifteen minutes. 

            I weighed 88.7 at 17:55. 

            I worked on my essay for about an hour, finding places for quotes and the rephrasing of quotes.

            I made one more attempt at 19:00 to take a siesta and after lying in bed restfully for twenty minutes I finally did sleep for another twenty. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos before dinner. I made lentil chili with sautéed onions, garlic, mushrooms and jalapeno, with tomato paste, and hot sauce. I had half a bowl of the stew with plantain chips while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story Barney becomes obsessed with finding a wife for Andy. One night while Andy is reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to Opie the doorbell rings and a woman is there saying she got a call to meet Thelma Lou at Andy’s place. Over the next couple of minutes the doorbell keeps ringing and a steady stream of women come in to meet Thelma Lou. Then Barney comes in the back door and tells Andy that he arranged the whole thing so he’d be able to take the pick of the crop of potential wives. Andy orders Barney to tell the ladies to leave. Then Barney decides that the perfect girl for Andy would be the new school teacher, Helen Crump. He has Thelma Lou invite them both over for dinner without telling each that the other would be there. Before dinner Barney interviews Helen about her potential as a wife and finds that she can’t cook. She says if she was married that she would probably make frozen dinners but Barney thinks that’s wrong. Andy says he likes frozen dinners. Barney also thinks it’s inappropriate that she wouldn’t give up her career to be a housewife. Andy reminds Barney that they are living in the 20th Century. Barney decides right then and there that Helen is not the girl for Andy, but Andy thinks otherwise and invites her on a date for the next night. Barney tries to sabotage the date by having all the women come over again but it turns out that Andy is going to pick up Helen at her place and so Barney is stuck dealing with the women. Andy decides that he is going to court Helen. 

            One of the women that came to the door was played by Janet Waldo, who was discovered by Bing Crosby from a talent contest. Most of her early work was in western films but then Bing introduced her to radio and she fell in love with the medium. She specialized in playing teenagers until she was seventy years old. Even in her thirties she was able to convincingly play a teenager on live television as she did when she played a girl with a crush on Ricky. She became the woman of a thousand voices on several animated series. She was Judy Jetson, Morticia Addams, Josie of Josie and the Pussycats, Penelope Pitstop of The Wacky Races and Superman’s friend Lana Lang. 

            Another woman was played by Rachel Ames, who is the longest working cast member of the soap opera General Hospital.

March 25, 1991: I wished Nancy could see what a beautiful life we could have if we lived together. I couldn't be a proper father if I couldn't be there with my child.

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I got up at 9:00. I had two lamb sausages and poached eggs for breakfast. I worked on some projects, I read the papers, did the dishes and started writing a porno story for Foreplay Magazine. 

            I left for work at 14:30. Roy and Donnie showed up while I was reading the paper in the waiting room. I worked steady until midnight with hardly any breaks and did a lot of walking. I drank a lot of pop. Mia's cousin Greg was a cleaner in the building of the job site. We went for lunch at midnight. 

            I wished Nancy could see what a beautiful relationship we could have if we lived together. I couldn't be a proper father if I couldn't be there with my child.

Schadenfreude

            On Tuesday morning I finished working out the chords for "Quand ça balance" (When Off Balance) by Serge Gainsbourg. I sang and played it in French and English to make sure and then I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations to begin editing the online text to match my document. I should have the blog version published on Wednesday. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I did my laundry. On the way to put my washing in the dryer I stopped at the Lucky Supermarket to buy avocados and plantain chips. 

            I weighed 88.7 kilos before lunch. I made guacamole with cilantro and ate it with half a bowl of plantain chips. 

            I did third readings of Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark On The Wall” and “Modern Fiction”.

            I weighed 88.8 kilos at around 17:30. 

            I felt sleepy at around 17:45 even though I’d already taken a siesta from 14:00 to 15:30. I decided to try to sleep for an hour but I couldn’t, so I only stayed in bed for fifteen minutes.

            I spent a couple of hours on my essay. Mostly on the fifth paragraph: 

            Consistent throughout Eliot’s descriptions of peasants, ugliness and the lack of grace are conspicuously present. Although she admits that a few members of the upper classes are also unlovely, she does not allow that only some labourers are ugly but implies that they all are. Her inability to perceive beauty in the lower classes but instead only a charming homeliness with which she feels “delicious sympathy” reveals a bias that cannot help but skew her socially reformist intensions. In saying that her sympathy with someone's “monotonous homely existence" is "delicious" she is showing not compassion but rather a degree of schadenfreude. The aesthetic message she conveys is that the upper classes with their occasionally unattractive members should have sympathy for the always grotesque “heavy clowns” of the lower class with their camel like “rounded backs” and “stupid weather beaten faces” that hold “no sense of beauty” and no twinkle of humour. Her way to combat what she considers to be the unrealistically attractive rendering of the happy shepherd is to emphasize unsightliness and to declare it to be the rustic reality. Her insistence on describing the vulgar as both revolting and charming at the same time suggests a kind of perverse fascination. She wants to compel her readers to pity the boor because of his loathsome appearance but never states the truth that members of the lower class are just as beautiful as those of the upper class. In promoting the lie of the ugly bumpkin she is unconsciously creating art. 

            I weighed 87.5 kilos before dinner but it’s hard to believe I lost a kilo in three hours. I always position the scale on the floor where it shows the proper weight of my 4.5 kilo dumb bell. But a slight shift on my uneven kitchen floor changes the weight it registers. It could be that just stepping onto the scale might shift it slightly. 

            I had steamed asparagus, cucumber, mushrooms, tomato, dill and jalapeno with fig balsamic dressing while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story Opie has his first crush and it’s on a girl the same age as him named Karen. The problem is that she is stand-offish and doesn’t appear to want to have anything to do with him. When Thelma Lou sees Opie’s lovesick moping she decides to try to make him feel better by hanging out with him. She spends so much time with Opie that Barnie gets jealous. Meanwhile we see that Karen really does like Opie but she’s been playing hard to get. Now that she sees Opie with Thelma Lou she is sad. Opie tells Andy that he’s over Karen because now Thelma Lou is his girl. Andy asks him what he’s going to do with her and he lists the kinds of things that kids like to do, but Andy tells him grown women don’t really like bike riding, climbing trees or watching cowboy movies. They like to take you shopping so you can carry their boxes while they go from place to place trying on clothes. Andy tells him to have a good time. When Opie leaves his father Karen is waiting outside the courthouse and asks him to come with her to a cowboy movie and afterward to ride their bikes. So they go off together hand in hand. They sure made love look easy.

March 24, 1991: As Nancy was leaving I smashed a glass and began to cry. She comforted me

Thirty years ago today

            I went to bed on Sunday morning and got up at 9:15 because I knew it would only take me fifteen minutes to get ready. Nancy should have gotten up a little sooner but of course she didn't. 

            We were only five minutes late for prenatal class. We talked about birth pain and complications.

            Afterwards Nancy had a craving for Chinese pastries and so we walked up to Dundas where she got some bean cake. 

            On the way home we got into another argument about us moving in together. When we got to my place she said she didn't want to live with me and I told her to go fuck herself. She was about to leave after getting her stuff when I flew into a rage over her never wanting to talk things out. I smashed a glass and started crying. She tried to comfort me.

Virginia Woolf

            On Monday morning I worked out almost all the chords for "Quand ça balance" (When Off Balance) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it finished and ready to upload to Christian’s Translations on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I took a siesta from 11:30 to 13:00. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before lunch. I had lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado, scallion and dill with raspberry vinaigrette. 

             Around 14:00 I saw that this week’s Brit Lit 2 lecture had been posted early for a change. But I still wanted to take a bike ride and so I rode to Bloor and Ossington. It was warm enough this time that I didn’t need a scarf or gloves. When I got home it was about 15:15 and still more than two hours ahead of when last week’s lecture was posted. 

            The lecture was on Virginia Woolf; her story “The Mark On the Wall”; Modernism; writing; and the transition from the 19th to the 20th Century. It was also twenty minutes shorter than last week's video. 

            There is an interesting continuity from the realism of George Eliot (who was loved by Woolf), through Wilde into modernism and questions of modern fiction. 

            Of the transition. Surprisingly, culturally and socially 1900 Britain was much like and highly contiguous with the Britain of 1850. But by 1950 and even the 1920s and 1930s, there was a rapid transformation because of the world wars; the great depression; technological transformations due to the telephone, radio and automobiles which increased industrialization and speed of life and technology; privatization of religion and decreased public importance of the church. Belief becomes a private rather than a public exercise; social class structure is weakened practically beyond notice. Some upper class modernist writers struggled to deal with this; the final emancipation of women arrived that had been fought for since over a century. 

            The key difference between the Victorian and modern era is the perception that changes have broken apart the things that gave consistency and continuity to the world. The perception that the changes were more radical was distinctive to the modernists of the first half of the 20th Century. The modernists in art and culture looked back on the changes of the Victorian period and saw them as part of a gradual progressive reform in which past and present are continuous. The modernists saw themselves irretrievably broken from the Victorian world. We can see the changes as gradual but they saw themselves radically cut off from the world before. We can see this in ourselves. We also are broken from our own world of a few years ago. They thought they were in a different world than their parents. 

            The idea of things falling apart comes from a famous Yeats poem called “The Second Coming”. He lived from mid 19th to mid 20th. This poem probably has given more titles to works of music, works of art and other things than any other poem. It has been pillaged for its lines. It gets to the sense of things falling apart, of difficult loss of continuity and consistency with the world. 

            He is suggesting that the changes that have rocked his world are coming to fruition. There is the sense in this poem, so crisply captured, of transformation approaching the world. He is not optimistic. What is slouching towards Bethlehem to be born is a beast. Not necessarily the devil but not necessarily something good like the coming of paradise or the return of the privileged past. He sees a new world that is broken from the previous world. The poem captures how the modernists felt. 

            Modernism is certainly the most ambiguous of terms for all the periods we’ve studied in this course. It’s a difficult term to grasp. To put it in as clear terms as one can, within the historical context, it is a mirror of fragmentation and change, a somewhat perceptual sense of fragmentation. Coming out of aestheticism’s rebellion against a particular version of realism, the early 20th Century saw the emergence of interconnected sets of intellectual and aesthetic developments in Britain and the rest of the world. This came to be called Modernism, emphasizing newness and moving on from the past. This movement considered itself to be against what it saw as the conventions of literature, poetry, fiction, painting, music and philosophy. It shunned materialism, the linear, the decorative and the sentimental. It tended to present reality as fractured, fragmented and it tended to reject depictions of unified wholes, single points of view and unbroken narratives. In fiction it favoured a realism of the mind using stream of consciousness to capture in writing the process of thinking. They thought this was central to what writers should be doing. Modernism is a constellation of aesthetic and intellectual values that pushed back against what it saw as conventional depictions of connectedness. It asked how to make meaning of a disconnected world. 

             Virginia Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” and “The Mark of the Wall”. She was a tremendous essayist and wrote many classic essays about art, literature, life, life between the wars, relationships between men and women, and between the classes. She sets up what she thinks realism should do. This is in continuity with other arguments we’ve seen about realism. The second half of this class has consisted of artists telling us what realism is. What is at stake is that realism comes down to emphasis. 

            Woolf sets up her argument against a particular way of writing that she rejects in favour of a new way of writing. She rejects the materialism of Wells, Bennett, and Galsworthy. What is this materialism? The question of emphasis is that they write of unimportant things. They spend their time on the trivial and transitory rather than the true and endearing. This is matter of emphasis. A difference between what they and her find endearing. She is saying that Bennett depicts an overly unified world, too whole, and too external, too concerned with windows, houses, buttons, and shirts, rather than the internal lives of people. What people live for is the most important, not what they wear, where they live and what they drive, and who they know. What do they live for? What is their interiority? What is their psychology? She says Bennett fails because he perfectly renders an external world that is empty. 

            This idea is reflected in “The Mark On The Wall”. She takes issue with the dullness of historical fiction and wants to get away from the airless, shallow shells of the world. She wants to emphasize that art is an indirect encounter with truth. The indirect encounter with the world is valued. When she mentions looking she is referring to Eliot and Adam Bede and the idea that art is a looking glass for reality. When we look only to the outside we only see a shallow world full of hollow things and people. We don’t see the internal but the material. She is saying here and in “Modern Fiction” that what we want is depth. We don’t know the people we see. That is what a novelist should explore. Descriptions of reality are to her materiality. What seems real according to Eliot is getting the right kind of tablecloth and that everyone had to show the realism of the time. Woolf says very precise realism is not real. These are not real tablecloths. She is saying that the real must be encountered indirectly. Not what exists in the world or what the authorities say exists but the hidden reality in our experience. 

            In Modern Fiction realism turns around the question of how to represent life. For Bennett life is about external verisimilitude; the right clothes and the right kinds of homes, etc. Woolf thinks that is wrong. She’s rebelling against custom. Life is not external things but the phenomenological feeling of living and thinking. Novels should represent what it’s like to be a living person rather than realistic depictions of externals. Realism for Woolf should represent phenomenological experience of the world as we experience it. She asks us to look within life to see what the world is like. That is the true representation of the world and not how it looks from outside. This is far from Eliot who believed the goal of art was reflecting reality. But Eliot is sort of aware of what Woolf and Wilde are talking about. She admits that we only encounter the world of our experience through a somewhat warped mirror. What Woolf wants is not a rejection of Eliot but a re-emphasization. Eliot thinks the mirror still works though warped. Woolf wants to emphasize the idiosyncratic nature of experience. But they have the same goal of connection with people. Eliot would agree that if the depiction of the peasants is just external and doesn’t look inside past the stereotypes it is missing reality. So the two are united and on about the same thing. Eliot wants first hand experience rather than stereotypes. The clergyman has wholeness and that is the same thing Woolf is looking for. Woolf wants to emphasize experience over character and that’s the difference. 

            We get this emphasis in a famous passage in which she explains how we should describe our encounters with the world. Realism should reflect phenomenal experience. She asks us to look into life to see what the world is like. She is trying to express that life is not a set of contained experiences that are meaningful and understandable. But a semitransparent halo that we wander through the world with. We see the world through this mesh of experience. It is the novelist’s job to convey the world through this messiness of consciousness rather than cut it out and take it away. She gives us one of the most typical expressions of modernism. She claims that the artist is constrained by tradition. The spirit of modernism is a straining desire for aesthetic freedom. She is stepping more generally from what she said before. She says the artist needs freedom to represent the world and not be chained to tradition. If Bennett, Wells and Galsworthy are writing about materialism then the public will reject her approach. She says she can have a different and equally valid way of representing the world. She says the problem is artistic freedom. For the moderns the problem is in psychology. This comes through in “The Mark On The Wall” because it is about interiority. Although it is about a mark on the wall that is unimportant in itself. It is only important as a focus point for reflection. 

            The story illustrates Woolf’s claims for fiction that come to their fullest fruition in her novels To The Lighthouse and Mrs. Galloway. We can see her playing with these ideas in this story. One of the assistant professor’s regrets of the limits of space is not having To The Lighthouse in this course. It is the one thing he wishes he could bring in. It is an extended version of what we are seeing in “The Mark On the Wall”. It is a beautiful, powerful, interesting novel. Think about it in terms of what it is like to be a thinking person and how our minds bounce off of things. We think about something and something else comes in, then we meet someone and they say something, or we hear something that changes our thought. 

            The story and the mark itself is a device for reflection. It is a way of internalizing the focus of the story. One of the first things we recognize in the story is the way the mark on the wall, the ostensible subject of the story, remains indefinite, allusive, ephemeral and trivial. One of the surest ways to misread the story is to make the mark a symbol of something else. It gestures towards some other concepts and ideas but the point is not that the mark is the war, the depression, or her depression. It could be all those things but the point is that it is an external stimulus for the narrator’s internal reflections. The story is meant to reflect the process of the thinking mind. It is a catalyst. That does more than it means in itself. Even the revelation at the end that it is a snail is not the answer to the question. It doesn’t do anything for us. It has meaning as a living thing, it is natural, but it is not a mystery to be solved. The fact that it is a snail doesn’t change the meaning of her reflections. 

            The mark is a catalyst for reflection. She wants to think. We see here a lot of things she talked about in “Modern Fiction” to try to depict what a thinking mind is like. The way that ideas pass through our heads. They are not meaningful, they just pop in. Shakespeare comes with no purpose but she gets from him the thought that a shower of ideas fell through his mind just as they are now falling through hers. There is symmetry with Shakespeare and the story. The mark is an excuse for thinking. It is about the value of slowing down, thinking and pausing. The narrator is confronted by the pain, injustice and artificial hierarchies of social and political life. This is indirectly articulated. This is what she is talking about with “Whitaker’s Table of Precedency”. References to masculine definitions of reality. Confronted by these external forms that are trying to define what matters. Instead of thinking of those things such as injustice, think of the mark. What does that mean? Whitaker’s table of prescedency is unfairness. It is a list of men that can rule Britain, of hierarchical importance containing no women or people of colour. In the face of this unfairness she says think of the mark on the wall. 

            He asks us to pause and think of that. During the pause we hear the assistant professor guzzling his drinking canister. 

            I think that reflecting on the mark is a meditation that returns one to oneself. The external world full of injustice is not real but the mark allows one to reflect on the real. There are no hierarchies in reflection. 

            A lot of the stuff that seems real is ultimately unimportant and unreal. She says the mark is something to hold onto that is more substantial than politics and the rest of the world. The mark allows her to reflect on her own consciousness and hold onto it. The word “think” is key. It is repeated throughout the story and at the end. She says thinking is why we have contempt for men of action who do not think. The world operates by convention, rule and habit, and does so without thinking. Taking a moment to look at the mark on the wall gives one a chance to think and disrupt all those operations that happen habitually around us. To contemplate them. Thinking allows us to pause, to take comfort, to recognize a larger world that will continue around us. There is more to life than external bits. It is reminiscent of what Wilde is saying about doing nothing. Contemplation, as Wilde said, is the most difficult thing. She agrees. Thinking is stopping. She is not saying look at the mark instead because that is avoidance. It is not cowardice, or a refusal to act, but an effort to see the value of the things that disappear in times of crisis. The story end with a reminder that everything is fleeting. Things are disappearing but contemplation recalls them to be valued. 

            This is all he has to say right now on Woolf and Modernism. He gave a low amount of reading because he wants us to look through her work carefully. She is difficult and not simple to read. We are following a thinking mind in action. Often in a novel we get a passage where a character relays things they’ve thought about and we see this in On Beauty. But those thoughts are clearly articulated. But in Woolf we don’t have thoughts, opinions or ideas. We have actual thinking. We have inaction. The story displays for us what it is like to be thinking. If we follow our train of thought by sitting down as she does and try to follow thought we see it constantly changes directions as new thoughts come in. We get distracted and return to the original thought. But the mind just goes there and jumps to something else and then multiplies examples of something and then associates this with a bunch of other things. She is saying the novel and fiction should represent that process with all of its backtracks, changes, associations and jumps as we experience them as thinking people. Without metanarrative framework that tells us now I’m thinking about this, now I’m going back to that thought, now I’m associating this idea with that. All of the framing that would tell us about the train of thought we are following are removed. We have to follow her mind along and see the associations she is making. And if you can do that it is rewarding and aesthetically beautiful. 

           

            It took me almost three and a half hours to make notes on the lecture but that was because I paused the video a lot to make sure there were less typos. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos at 19:00. 

            It took me only about forty minutes to correct my notes this time. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos before dinner. I had lettuce, cucumber, tomato, avocado, onion, dill, mushrooms and chopped jalapeno with the last of my raspberry vinaigrette while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story Barney takes all his savings out of the bank and decides to buy a car. He answers one of the first ads he sees and a sweet old lady brings the ten year old auto around. She says it belonged to her late husband and it’s precious to her. Andy advises him to take it for a test drive to a mechanic and have him look it over, but Barney thinks that would be an insult and he is so moved by the elderly woman’s story that he gives her $300 cash. She leaves and is later picked up by someone who she says is her nephew who she informs that they unloaded another one to the sucker of the world. I saw that coming. Barney takes Andy, Bee, Opie, Thelma Lou and Gomer for a drive in the country and the car proceeds to fall apart as they go. They have to push it back to town. Later Gomer relays the message from Wally at the filling station that the car needs about ten major parts to function properly. He also found sawdust in the deferential and transmission. Andy says that’s the oldest trick in the book. Gomer says it makes worn out gears run smooth as silk for a few days. Andy and Barney decide to drive to Mount Pilot with the car to get Barney’s money back but the car breaks down on the way. Andy walks to a store to use a phone to call Gomer and while waiting for him they both fall asleep in the back seat. A tow truck arrives and starts pulling the car and that’s when Andy and Barney wake up. They notice it’s not Gomer’s truck and Andy says they should keep out of sight and find out where they are end up. The car is pulled into a garage where they see the old lady with her gang and arrest them. Later Barney says he’s going to be very careful and when another old lady named Rose Temple arrives to sell her car he is overly suspicious. When she talks about only having driven it on Sundays to the church her nephew preaches at. Barney shouts, “Who you kidding sister!” Then he tells her to get out just as her nephew the clergyman comes to check on her. That seems to indicate she’s legitimate but couldn’t anyone wear a minister’s collar? 

            The old lady crook, Myrt Hubcaps Lesh was played by Ellen Corby, who went to Hollywood to become an actor but ended up working for twelve years as an unpaid script assistant before getting a single part. She was nominated for an Oscar best supporting actress for her performance in I Remember Mama. She won three Emmys for her role as Grandma Walton on The Waltons. 

            Rose Temple was played by Hallene Hill, who played the mother of Birdie Hicks in Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair.