Stratofanatic's Emporium

So, conceptually, Derridean deconstruction has been useful for quite a few different scholars using quite a few different theoretical methodologies. In terms of producing actual literary criticism , though, deconstruction is a train wreck . . . as I've recently (re-)discovered when browsing through Donald Burleson's Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe (1991). Didn't take me long to see how completely useless the book was. No argumentative thesis, nothing but academic stream-of-consciousness and erudition. And so, blah. But!! Having merely written a bad book isn't enough to merit attention on this blog, however. Out of curiosity, I looked up a review of the volume. Well, turns out that none other than my old undergraduate thesis director, Donald M. Hassler, had produced just such a review, and he considered the Burleson book "such a travesty of criticism that I find it useless—except for fun" (339). Which I guess means that I picked the right thesis direc...

About three years ago, I wrote an essay on Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit , which was accepted for an essay collection on that theme to be published by McFarland. Well, the collection has been languishing all this time, although the editor assures me it's making glacial forward progress.  Given the time lag, though, I recently asked the editor if she'd mind me tightening up the language a bit and re-submitting-- after all, coming to one's old work with fresh eyes is one of the benefits of a long layoff, right? Anyway, the editor said sure, so I read the essay for the first time in ages. And winced. The argument still strikes me as a strong, ambitious one. . . . but the sentence-level writing is crazy . Strangely enough, I know exactly what I was thinking at the time, but now I can't imagine why I ever thought such thinking was good . Arguably, my only justification was that this submission was also doubling as a dissertation chapter, and -- well, no,...

So, I've never been to the MLA conference, my field's biggest and largest conference. Part of the reason is disciplinary. All my major conference activity has focused on science and fantasy, so I've been to ICFA a few times and tagged a few major medieval conferences (cuz Tolkien) under my belt.  Still . . . MLA, right? Well, the real reason I've never presented at MLA is because of their insanely narrow window for submitting abstracts. The window runs something like mid-February through mid-March, give or take, and basically I've always forgotten. I'm defending my dissertation, or it's the middle of the semester, or I'm swamped with other projects; something has always made the MLA conference completely slip my mind until too late. Anyway, there's a half decent chance that's happened again this year. I'm been vowing to myself to finally try MLA, so I just had a look-see through their calls for papers . . . and realized that, somehow, I...

So, this is cool. Signum University is hosting a special panel to celebrate Verlyn Flieger at Mythmoot VI this year, and their events coordinator just invited me to participate. Apparently they saw my essay in Dr. Flieger's festschrift , A Wilderness of Dragons, edited by John D. Rateliff.  I'm sure they sent out many other invitations to volume contributers, but any invitation is an awesome invitation, imho. Alas, Mythmoot's registration fee is prohibitively expensive, and I'll be in Europe anyway*** during the conference, so I can't attend. Still tickled pink, though. ------------- *** Seven weeks in Europe, and attending a medievalist conference in Leeds (I'm presenting on Tolkien, of course), and a Ursula K. Le Guin conference in Paris. Now that's going to be a good time.