Nightly Update With Dan Rather

My computer has since died on me again, fifth time in seven months. I will get a new one sooner rather than later I hope. I am again on the public library computers having a blast smelling the goth and gang-bangers sitting next to me.

As for that last post, I think I will try that experiment a little later. I made the mistake of picking of Mao II first and it turned me of the whole project. I knew I should have started with Joyce Carol Oats. Any-way I think all try again in a month or two.

Don't Try This At Home Kids

I came up with a plan today. Starting in a day or two I will start and experment on myslef. If you saw Super Size Me it is kind of like that. I will read the whole cannon of Post-Modern Novels. Now I tried some thing like this in high school but I couldn't get through the first six hundered pages of Don DeLillo's Underworld. This might kill me so if I don't make it tell my family to sue DeLillo and Pynchon. Here is my list of books so far; I know I am missing alot so if you have any additions tell me.

Auster: Invention of Solitude
Byatt: Babel Tower, The Virgin in the Garden, Possession
Erdrich: The Antelope Wife
DeLillo: White Noise, Mao II (I refuse to pick up Underworld again)
Ford: The Sportswriter
J.C. Oates: Anything about Merylin Monroe
Kingston: China Men
Momaday: House Made of Dawn
Morisson: Beloved (I don't know if it fits but I should read it any way)
Proulx: The Shipping News
Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow, Crying of Lot 49
Roth: American Pastoral (I know he is not a post-modernist)
Russo: Empire Falls
Wolfe: Bonfire of the vanities (just for contrast)

Dan, Right Again!

I now have allies in my battle against those-who-say-that-I-read-too-much-into-Jane-Austin. My allies are generally the fine editors of The New Criterion and Judy Stove particularly.

First I should explain the background. Once upon a time I had to sit in a class with twenty people who thought they had read Emma (they merely ran their eyes over the pretty black letters and then assumed they understood the letters because the saw a movie with Gweneth Paltrow). During this class we where trying to find the deeper significance of the book and I came up with an interpretation that would infuse the book with significance, meaning etc. However I was harshly hissed at and told that I was off my rocker. What was my sin against the god of English parlor comedy? I suggested that Ms. Austin might me saying that the root cause of Emma's moral curruption was in the revolutionary ideals that abounded at the time of the comedy. Luckily Emma sees that these ideals are wrong because of there consiquences; a kind of reductio if you will. These resonable ideas of mine could not be tolerated, and like a jew living in 16th centry Teledo I was silenced and ridiculed.

I know you think that I was badly treated. I agree, but gentel reader we must not hold a grudge. Besides now I have people to back up my most reasonable of argument. In January's edition of The New Criterion there is an article "Jane Austin, Anti-Jacobin". In it Ms. Stove argues that Austin was a true Tory and much of her humor is at the expense of the followers of Rousseau and Goethe. In fact not only are they absurd but also malicious, see Emma's whole hearted rejection of these ideas as proof, and her acknowledging that one must lead a true Tory life with someone like Mr. Knighlty. Any other reading of the text is both shallow and indolent.

I Need Help

I just applied for a real/good job. This is a job I really want to get, so if you are sitting around a church or something, just put in a good word for me to Mary and St. Joe, and ask them to help me out a bit.

Also I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and a jolly New Year.