Burt Mustin

            On Wednesday morning I ran through the first half of “Mozart avec nous” (Mozart Is With Us) by Boris Vian in English. I'll do the second half on Thursday and then I can upload it to Christian’s Translations. 

            I finished memorizing “Mesdames, mesdemoiselles, mes yeux" (Madames and Madmoiselles, My Eyes) by Serge Gainsbourg. I doubt if anyone has posted the chords for this song so I won't bother looking. Tomorrow I’ll start working them out myself. 

            It was warm enough during song practice to open all my windows but once I was sitting down with my back to the window there was a chill, so I had to close the ones in the living room. 

            Just before 11:30 I took the Brit Lit 2 bi-weekly reading quiz. I think I got all the questions right, and in two minutes. 

            At noon I logged on for the tutorial. 

            Carson announced that Assistant Professor Dancer would be posting a video with our essay instructions today. In response to the few people who wanted to keep the old syllabus with the second short assignment still included, Dancer said for students to just go ahead and start working on the paper and then if they feel they’d still like to have the short assignment they can request it. 

            Carson asked what we thought of how Tennyson’s “Ulysses” was presented in the lecture. I said I don’t buy Dancer’s ironic interpretation of Ulysses. I said Tennyson makes it clear that Ulysses considers his son’s staying home to govern his kingdom as a good and decent thing to do. But Ulysses wants to do what is noble and the noble thing isn’t necessarily good or decent. Some of the most horrible people in history can be seen as noble and even in our syllabus we have the example of Oroonoko who is presented as noble but is a monster. He’s a slave trader and a murderer. There is really no irony here. Carson and everyone else that spoke up seemed to agree with me on this point. 

            Carson added that though we tend to avoid interpreting poems with the biography of the author, Tennyson himself had said that he’d meant for Ulysses to be seen as heroic in the poem. He wrote the poem in response to the death of his friend. I said I’d read that as well and added that the poet and his late friend used to go on long trips together and his death inspired thoughts of those journeys. On top of that Tennyson at the time was stuck in the domestic situation of caring for family and he found it stifling. 

            I said that I’d thought of another interpretation in which Ulysses represents the British Empire or rather the spirit of exploration that created the empire. At this time the empire was as big as it was going to get and so all there was left to do was boringly govern. The poem seems to express the glory of returning to the seeking out of new worlds. Carson said that interpretation of the poem was presented to him when he was in graduate school. That it is a lament over the end of the empire and the end of heroism. Britain is now stuck in governing and is longing for the glory days. 

            Of Robert Browning’s Fra Lippo Lippi I said I was impressed with how Browning enters into the voice of the painter. I said Oscar Wilde praises that as well and says that Browning is the most Shakespearean writer since Shakespeare. 

            The poem contains an internal articulation of a theory of art. A theoretical document on the function of art and the social function of religion. 

            Christina Rossetti lived from 1830 to 1894. She was an ardent Anglo-Catholic, which was a movement within Anglicanism towards a return to something closer to Catholicism within the Church of England. 

            Her brother was Dante Gabriel Rossetti the pre-Raphaelite painter. Carson didn’t mention that her brother was also a poet and I didn’t bring it up because I knew he wanted to get into her poem, "Goblin Market". 

            Carson asked about the setting and I said that it seems to be rural but not in a real world as we know it. Laura and Lizzie are on the border between childhood and adulthood and yet they seem to live alone together in a farm cottage doing the work of adult peasants. 

            I said that the short lines give the poem a breathless pace that feels at times sinister as if the reader is being chased. 

            Carson asked what the appeal was for the girls to the Goblin men’s fruit. I said that it was foreign and exotic but added that I think this ties in with a xenophobic and anti-Semitic message. The descriptions of the Goblin men as having animal features is very similar to early 20th Century caricatures of Jews that one can find samples of online. Another student agreed that she found the poem to be racist. 

            Someone offered a comparison to the Goblin fruit with the forbidden fruit of Genesis. 

            The foreign is presented as sinister. There is something of the global market that rose from colonization. 

            Someone mentioned that opium addiction was a problem in Victorian England and that the fruit is drug-like in its effect. 

            I brought up the sexual substance of the poem. Laura is penetrated by the men's fruit as it enters her body while Lizzie is not because she forces her mouth shut. 

            Laura becomes like the fallen woman of Victorian poetry. 

            I said that when one loses one’s virginity an aspect of oneself dies. One can only lose one’s virginity once. 

            There is an exaggerated acceleration of ageing for Laura after the loss of virginity. She stops performing domestic duties “like modest maidens should.” 

            I pointed out that the girls are divided after Laura’s encounter. They become like night and day, whereas before they were almost the same. 

            I said that tying the eroticism to a metaphor of food allows the anti-promiscuity message to be conveyed more powerfully than it would if the poet had just said the girls had sex. 

            The metaphor creates a comfortable distance. There is an indirect experience of the object of temptation. 

             I said the antidote that cures Laura is the very disease that infected her. The healing dose is the Goblin man essence but it is carried on the body of a woman. 

             It is a mediatory relationship. 

             I had tomatoes and avocados for lunch as usual on this sixth day of my fast. 

             In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor. On Brock I passed a couple struggling to get a washer up their steps. I stopped to help but their adolescent son came out and helped. The father thanked me and waved me away. 

             I forgot to mention that yesterday on my bike ride I found a box of books. They were mostly romance novels and spiritual books but I took Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Alice Munro’s Open Secrets. 

             When I got home I weighed myself and I was at 88.3 kilos. I was 88.4 kilos naked the day before. 

             I typed my tutorial notes and was done at 19:30. 

             I went online to get the info about the literary analysis essay from the video that Dancer posted.

             It should be a conversation between two texts but not one of compare and contrast. Looking for similarities and differences is a pitfall. Use one text to think about the other. Use the texts of two authors. If you really want to use two texts of one author contact us with your idea and we’ll see if works. But it is better if it is across authors and even better if the authors are from two periods because there is a clearer difference. 

             Thinking about the commonalities of different texts helps. How one text challenges, transforms, critiques or extends an idea presented in another. Use one text to read another text. One text should normally be more featured than the other but not always. It could be even if it works. 

             There are two examples in the instruction sheet. Where does the thesis have problems? A good observation of differences is not enough and needs to say what it wants to argue or it will be vague. Of course the texts are different because they are written by different writers. 

             Argument words. Identifying the theme is the bare first step but then say more about what you are doing and why it matters. Saying that both poems have images is not good because it doesn’t say what the images do. Usually avoid words like “have” and “themes” . “While” is a good word but then explain. The word “important” is a sign you don’t know what you are talking about. It is a good first step but we need to know why it is important. What matters about the theme for different authors? Be specific. Discuss how the theme works. “I argue” is clear. “Smith critiques” shows what she is doing. “I use Smith’s critique”. Say how you are using one text. “Use” is a good word. “Reconsider”, “rethink”, “renew”, and “judge differently” are good words. What is it reconsidering? 

            The other author offers another frame of scale of expansion. “Looking at x next to y allows me to ….” are words that suggest argumentation and specificity and that link claims to details to show that you are doing analysis. 

            Words like “critiques”, “demonstrates”, “shows”, “develops”, “explores”, “argues”, “claims”, “makes a case”, “reveals”, “conceals”, “works by” and “expands.” When you say that a poet argues something you are making an argument because is not obvious. Making clear claims. Other words are useful. 

            The thesis, main claim, idea: “I argue that Smith critiques the assumption that art conquers mortality by showing how geological time outstrips even the permanence of art.” The paragraph is a thesis. One can’t extract a single sentence. You need other sentences about what lines you are going to look at what is being discussed by the author. You need those for it to work as a thesis sentence. “I argue” makes a claim that is not obvious. If it can be proven before you offer proof it is an observation and not a thesis. A claim offers a “tell me more” moment. What is your claim? 

            The key point to a good thesis statement is having “how”. “I argue that X should be followed by …” “By” what? “By showing” for instance. Follow with an explanation of where you are going to point to make your claim “by showing”. Describe how you are going to make your claim but not necessarily where. What will my process be? 

            I had tomatoes and avocados for dinner while watching Andy Griffith. 

            This story begins with Mayberry’s local old men sitting on a bench in the street. One of them throws a gum wrapper and Barney gets on his case about how it starts with a gumwrapper and then turns to a slum and then a crime den. He makes the old man pick up the wrapper. A few minutes later a big limousine pulls up. The old men go to look at it and they learn it’s the governor’s car. The men decide to play a trick on Barney. They call him over to point out the car is in a “no parking” zone, but they don’t tell him it’s the governor’s car. He starts writing a ticket and then the chauffeur informs him it’s the governor’s car. Barnet hesitates but then writes the ticket anyway. He thinks he’ll be in trouble with Andy but Andy agrees that the governor should also obey the law. The mayor learns of this and demands that Andy call the governor to apologize and say he’ll tear up the ticket but Andy refuses. The mayor calls the governor and passes the phone to Andy but the governor actually thinks it was great that the deputy did his duty and ticketed his car. He says he is coming to Mayberry to shake Barney Fife’s hand. Andy decides not to tell Barney the governor is coming because he wants it to be a pleasant surprise. Later Otis comes in for a long weekend in jail. He has brought a bottle with him, which he pours into the water cooler next to his cell. The mayor calls and tells Barney to call him when the governor gets there. Unaware of the proper context Barney thinks the governor is coming to fire Barney. He nervously has several drinks of what he thinks is water from the cooler and ends up hammered. Andy has to take him home for several showers and cups of coffee. Meanwhile the mayor comes by the jail to wait for the governor and ends up drinking a few cups from the cooler. Barney gets sobered up and shakes hands with the governor and then the governor leaves. The mayor is found drunk in the back room. 

            One of the old men is a character who appeared several times before and after on the show is Jud. Jud was played by Burt Mustin, who was born in 1884 and was a salesman for most of his life. He became the host of a radio variety show in 1921. In the 30s and 40s he was a member of the Pittsburgh Savoyards, the oldest Gilbert and Sullivan troupe in the US. His first film was Detective Story in 1951 when he was sixty seven. In the 60s and 70s he belonged to a comedy barber shop quartet called The Cavity Four that would all remove their false teeth when they sang. He played Gus the Fireman on Leave It To Beaver. He appeared in over 150 film and TV productions.