My students thought
the story difficult to understand
because the writer
used pronouns rather than names
in too many places,
as if the writer’s job
were to placate readers’ expectations
rather than to create
a compelling
experience
an experience that might
include confusion.

My students found
the end of the story to be
unsatisfying
because we don’t know
what will happen
to the mother, to the baby,
except for one girl
who claimed the opposite—
that stories which resolve too neatly
fail to satisfy.

Of all the things one sacrifices when marrying, I miss this most of all: the freedom to get involved in another person, in their story, their idiosyncrasies and, simultaneously, to reveal oneself enough to appear interesting to yourself again.  The discovery of another and yourself through their eyes.  One thing that made university so heady was the long late-night conversations in the common areas with the other students, each of us trying to understand the world and ourselves by talking about it.  I no longer have those sorts of encounters and the world seems particularly bland and unpalatable as a consequence.

Today, I read Jill Lepore discussing the history of the Presidential Inaugural in the New Yorker (from a few weeks ago).  She points out that much of what we associate with the inaugural is new, developing only since the birth of mass communication methods.  Some believe, she explains, that presidential addresses have become increasingly anti-intellectual and inane, formulated by committees to be as popular as possible.  Pauses for applause are the measure for success.  I remembered noticing how long Obama would speak in-between people breaking into applause and how short the applause usually lasted; I worried about how the listeners were reacting to his words.  Checking back at the transcript, he was interrupted for applause only 10 times.

I realized that the speechwriters were concerned and disappointed because he didn’t give people many reasons or opportunities to applause his words, and so judged it a failure as a speech.  But I think that Obama had a different audience and a different purpose in mind.  He was writing both for posterity and for the moment.  He wanted people to understand that this was a time for shared sacrifice and bold action.  He was trying to gird the people for the trying times ahead, knowing that the worst was yet to come, by drawing upon the strength and pride of their collective past.  He wanted to inspire people, not to feel good but to feel determined, so that the changes we all know must be are not only possible but within our reach.

His speech then was not a speechwriter’s speech.  Instead, it was a statesman’s.

On election day, I finally had the opportunity to read David Lipsky’s profile of David Foster Wallace in Rolling Stone.  The depth of his depression, the severity of the despair that he knew that final year was simultaneously devastating and heartening.  Devasting because the portrait was vivid enough to allow one to experience one’s own despair and sadness, one’s own insecurities and recriminations along with Foster Wallace’s own.  But this same vividness provides some solace for those of us who were, mysteriously, moved by David Foster Wallace’s suicide.  He did what he thought was best to end his suffering.  It wasn’t an irrational, impetuous act.  Rather, it was the rational decision of someone who, having tried everything, could see no other end to the pain.  I came away from reading this feeling emptied and ennervated.

The next morning, as the returns began to be counted, I learned that Obama had won the election.  For the first time in my life, the person I wanted for President won.  I have only lived within the confines of the Republican ascendancy, by which I mean the period when they have dominated the public sphere, setting the terms of debate and deciding whose ideas and which ideas are legitimate, which ridiculed.  In every election cycle, the progressive candidate, always my preference, has been rejected.  Obama is the first candidate, and the first President, that I can honestly say shares my values.  Elation should have been my reaction, but I couldn’t quite allow myself into that emotion.  It was a glorious victory, though.

This will remain, for the time being, a quiet place, while I get things settled.  I have migrated to a new server, a new architecture, and a new blogging platform, so it will take some getting used to.  We’ll see what happens.

If any of my old readers are still out there, or if any new ones stop by for whatever reason, welcome back or simply welcome.