Scholar Squalor

Alas, the work continues, and like the famous Frost poem, "I've miles to go before I sleep." Fortunately, one of the things that is helping me get a handle on the work is my discovery of the laptop loan program operated by the University's library. As a result of easier computing, Zhaf and his Cellar has a little more portability. Now, I can write and read from the comfort of my best study spot -- my own couch.

My main project continues to be the seminar paper that wil will be due in a couple scant weeks. I've not started writing it, but it is becoming clearer as a result of the research that I've been doing. Essentially, I'm trying to combine Mikhail Bakhtin's perspective of narrative discourse on a Tim O'Brien short story in his work "The Things They Carried." At this point, a reference to the Simpson's might be instructive.

Groundskeeper Willy: Hie ye hence from me heath!

Bart: Huh?

Groundskeeper Willy: What a'matter! Can't you understand English?

Like Bart, I'm still struggling to understand some of the jargon and terminology that is often used in academic writing. Even though it appears to be English, I begin to have my doubts. When Derrida writes about the "Heidegerrean destruction of meta-physics, of onto-theology, of the determination of Being as presence," I feel as if my head will explode. When De Man, trying to employ and Archie Bunker analogy (really, no kidding) writes, "it is a de-bunker rather than a 'Bunker,' and a de-bunker of the arche (or orgin), an archie Debunker such as Nietzche or Jaques Derrida for instance, who asks the question 'What is the Difference'," I feel as if I have completely slipped off the edge of the Earth and am spinning through a cold and inky space towards the twisting red eye of Jupiter.