As I promised myself, I am hard at work on the dissertation-finishing business. I just had to start this post that way [As I promised myself, I am...], because so rarely is that actually true. I spend so much time bribing, threatening, flattering, and ridiculing myself just to get myself to do a self’s basic jobs; it is ridiculous. Anyway, not today. Today (and the next couple of weeks, generally), I have succeeded in terrifying myself enough to get working, and I have hammered out four pages before lunch. Apparently, my self responds to fear.
I have a tendency, when drafting things out, to leave little notes in the middle of the paper — little reminders of points I wanted to make, connections I don’t want to forget, places to go back and smooth out a transition or resolve an unanswered question. With that in mind, here are some Actual Quotations From My Dissertation (none of which will, I hope, make it to the final version):
CHAPTER TWO: BLAH BLAH BLAH
Is now a good time to talk about this?
FIX
Try not to sound like a sarcastic jerk here, if that is even possible. Dude.
ALTER ALTER ALTER…
Suggest that more lies under the surface and we should not disregard things based on the ?corrections? made by our senile relatives over a bowl of slowly spoiling potato salad.
TRANSITION what the hell I hate this dude.
Compare picnic to imaginary picnic.
Should mention the thing about him being an idiot.
DISCUSS AT LENGTH. THIS SHIT IS IMPORTANT.
MORE.
What is a Proustian flavor?
FIX, ugh.
As you can see, things are going just swimmingly. And now, I shall consider lunch and an eventual return to work. Lunch-wise, I am hoping more for a (mysterious though it may be) “Proustian flavor” than “slowly spoiling potato salad.” Although, perhaps bad mayonnaise from an imaginary picnic wouldn’t make a person sick; who can say.
If “Proustian flavor” (which is not my flavour, ha!) tastes anything like Belgian beer, then I am all for it!
My ignorance of all things literary is clearly showing here, but I’m going to ask anyways… Coming from an area where, say, 50-75 pages of math makes a thesis, how many pages “makes” a literary dissertation? I have no real concept of what this would be like.
Another question: at your defense how would you defend a challenge to one of your ideas? To use your example, say you claimed Mr. Literary So-and-so was an “idiot”. How do you objectively defend that? In mathematics I would use empirical results, mathematical assumptions etc… to argue my point. What’s the parallel in the literary world? Do you draw on previous writings/opinions? The consensus view? In that case, what if you disagree with the consensus view? How does this work? Heh, maybe you load up on Jameson and threaten to “cut people”? I mean, I don’t know - I’ve never been to a humanities defense. I’m one of these mathematicians that is also a closet literary enthusiast, so help a curious guy out!
“Proustian flavour” can be defined as a complex taste that clever people pretend to like but no one really does.
Hola faretaste
mekodinosad