Stratofanatic's Emporium

Currently reading Fantasy, Politics, Postmodernity: Pratchett, Pullman, Mieville and Stories of the Eye by Andrew Rayment. Smart book, but he's much too heavily enamored -- as might be expected of the title -- of poststructuralist theory. He loves needlessly arcane terminology, even inventing it where none already exists (hence his distinction between Pragmatikos and Allos ), and his style has all the weaknessess, obscurities, wordiness, and puns we've come to expect that that style of academic writing.*** And he's absolutely in love with Slavoj Zizek, whom Rayment is clearly imitating. As I'm reading this, I can't help thinking, "You poor fool -- you never had a chance." Zizek should be considered a poor of abuse for undergraduate and graduate students. ***Examples of the style: “Crucial to this notion of opening up is the way in which representation of both the ‘real’-world elements and the domain at one step removed in an in-existent space un-...

One probably ought not review a book for which you didn't read past page 45 (and even then only skimmed), but for things like this was the internet made. Still, sometimes the character of a particular book makes itself very clear, very quickly. Judging by the title, Deke Parsons's J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard and the Birth of Modern Fantasy (2015)   looks like a fascinating text. The problem starts once you begin reading. The introductory chapter -- a scant 2 pages -- is not an introduction. There's no hint of a thesis. Instead, Parsons gives us . . . well, I don't know. A 2-paragraph biographical statement on Tolkien, Howard, and the creator of Superman, Jerry Siegel, followed by a final "concluding" paragraph. Seven paragraphs total. Outside of all his writers living in the 1930s (and he doesn't even mention the Great Depression until the 7th paragraph), Parsons does not even present transitions or segways when switching from Tolkien, Howard, and Si...

I was recently nominated for a departmental award, and part of the application process is a short (<500 word) essay. Given the inanity of the two essay topics, I thought the committee is basically using this as a writing sample. Anyway, since I actually had to put some thought into this, I decided to re-post my response here. It involves sabermetrics and baseball. Additional, since my hometown team, the Cleveland Indians, just made the World Series, I thought this extra appropriate. PROMPT: Or, what is the one thing outside of the academic world that you are currently learning ? Why? How do you think your experience as an English major has contributed and will contribute to that desire and pursuit ?   Academic life allows little time for hobbies, but perhaps my most important non-academic obsession is baseball. This obsession goes well beyond community league softball or keeping tabs on the playoffs (go Cleveland!). Instead, my passion for the game has led me into the...

My review of Jamie Williamson's exemplary literary history of fantasy, recent winner of a Mythopoeic Society award, has just been posted on-line by the journal Fafnir: A Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research . Anyone interested can check it out here .

Well, apparently writing literature is no longer a requirement for receiving a Nobel Prize for Literature. Call me an old-fashioned curmudgeon if you will, but this news about Bob Dylan genuinely surprises. Sure, he's a pop culture / protest icon. Sure, give him a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys. Give him two! But the most prestigious prize for literature ?  I've had arguments about this before, but singing/songwriting just doesn't qualify as "literature" (however arbitrarily you define that term) -- it's not even on the same boat. Song lyrics, bereft of their music, just aren't as good line-for-line as lyric poetry . . .  and lyric poetry is itself an inferior art to epic poetry or prose forms of literature. (Yes, William Wordsworth, I'm telling you that you can just go to hell.) No one can really  say much of anything important in a few stanzas. And having lyrics bolstered by music makes writing them so much easier. You can get away with ...

Well, there it is -- 22 applications done and submitted. As might be expected, I built up steam as I went along, especially once I got all the basic materials written. Also, I picked up the knack of tailoring the cover letters to the institution without re-writing the whole darn thing. But, all told, I've spent the last two weeks gathering my relevant documents, writing my materials, and filling out the often tedious applications. (Thank god for auto-fill.) I'm so mentally exhausted that I'm actually looking forward to picking up Mr. Dissertation again; actually, going two weeks without working on its makes me quite uneasy and uncomfortable. Now I just have to wait until I start hearing back (or not) from the institutions . . . and feel guilty about all the time-consuming work my poor letter writers have to go through. Alas and alack, round two of these job applications is just around the corner as well. I've heard that December/January is the big season. So I'l...

So . . . yeah, my brother. I saw him briefly last December at my wedding but, prior to that, I haven't seen him in a few years. We get along great, though -- we're just awful at keeping in touch. So I got a surprise phone call this afternoon from Nick of all people. He asks me, "How big is your apartment?" After duly telling him that it's larger than a breadbox, I inquired for the specific reason of his query. "Well, yeah, you heard about about Hurricane Matthew?" "Yes, but that's in Florida!" "Yeah, but go google a weather map. Savannah [Georgia] is going to get hit hard too. My work just closed down, and we got the order to evacuate. So we're looking for somewhere to go." Hot diggity damn, I told him. To make a long story short, my brother, his fiance, and their two dogs are coming for a visit. See, national disasters are great!

Got the page proofs for my essay in Tolkien Studies a few days ago. It took me a bit to figure out how to mark up a pdf (apparently you use Adobe -- I feel like a grown-up!) but, as I got going, I got the lurking suspicion that I'm going to irritate someone at the publishers. Only minor revisions are advisable at the page proofs stage; really, you're supposed to look only for typos. I did find two legitimate typos, and I also cleaned up a few passages where the proofreader disapproved of my original syntax but had made the corrected version much clumsier. I also fixed a number of references -- my original manuscript used the Houghton Mifflin paperback edition of The Silmarillion (second edition), having not realized that the pagination differs from the hardcover edition. The TS editors (bless 'em!) made most of those corrections, but a few of the more obscure references had been missed. So I borrowed a hardcover edition from the library and fixed that. But that's only...

And my "bloodbath" I mean the academic job market, of course. Just went through the MLA Job Information List , creating a spreadsheet for all "possibilities." I have 15 on there, although realistically only about 3-5 of those really seem like a possibility. (I.e., my academic interests are tangential, or the job is located in India , which I suspect the wife might not be too keen on.) All in all -- not too good, but I knew that going in. I do have the consolation of thinking my c.v. is pretty good for an all-but-dissertation doctoral student. Still, we'll see how things go.