Good college teaching is *hard*, but I got enough of it at Brown to feel inspired to want to do it myself– albeit teaching a lot more Great Books than I got in most Brown classes.

That said, I did have a few very good professors, and I did manage to read some Great books, despite the teachers’ best attempts to mangle them (Ulysses comes to mind in a required comp lit literary theory course). Like Jacob, even though it wasn’t for my major, I took a Tolstoy class, where I managed to cross War and Peace off my list, as well as Anna Karenina (which I have reread many times since and still remains a favorite), and his shorter works. But most of the biggies or classics that I have read have been on my own as well, Brown just wasn’t the place to acquire that kind of an education.

I too just cannot remember quotes from books, even from the Kurt Vonnegut I’ve been addicted to for the last 6 months, and which are infinitely quotable. But isn’t this kind of quoting really just party tricks, meant to impress or perhaps intimidate others? In any case, I am generally far less impressed with whether someone can accurately quote someone else, than I am with whether they can come up with an original statement of some relevance and truth. (that’s my excuse!)

I still haven’t been voracious enough that I’d ever claim to be “well-read,” though, and I think one of my weak areas is Continental fiction — you know, all those guys with names like Flaubert and Hodelet and Baubaubuie and so forth.

And though I’ve read some of the major Greek suspects, I sometimes feel like I must’ve missed something, since I am not moved to memorize or quote them as often as T.S. Eliot or William F. Buckley types do. I am struck mute on the topic, like…Erebeusus…weeping over Phelynobone…and an…urn…or something.

From time to time I regret not having taken more college English classes or comp lit classes, because I feel so woefully underread. I took one class on American literature for the sole purpose of being made to read Moby Dick; why didn’t I do more of that kind of thing? (I’m trying to make it a habit to read at least one major classic I hadn’t read before per year– but life’s not long enough to ever catch up.) But then I remember all the tales form my friends who actually took such classes at Brown, and think that I was better served taking poli sci.

I wonder how much course-selection affected Todd’s and my divergent attitudes toward the place?

I do remember the existence of the literary journal. But I’ve been on college campuses for almost 20 years straight now. There’s always a literary journal; and they’re indistinguishable from one another. I think as a self-defense mechanism my brain can’t remember the names of any of them– even the one that’s still piled up in my building today.

Oddly, the daily newspapers are much less interchangeable. And of course so are the humor publications; I’ve never seen anything at all like the Film Bulletin…

1. She may seem cute and harmless now, but I have it on good authority that Lisa Loeb snottily asked fellow Brown student Reid Mihalko, now a sensitive organizer of Cuddle Parties, what he as a football player could really have to add to their shared art class discussions — but we’ve all grown up a lot since then.

2. I should say that while I fled that one day of the philosophy class, Chisholm really was a giant of the field and I’m honored to have learned from him — an acolyte of Bertrand Russell, who was in turn the godson, bizarrely enough, of ur-libertarian John Stuart Mill.

3. If anyone reading this wants to read _another_ intersection of the Retro-Journal with a They Might Be Giants concert, one is recounted in my most recent entry, as I write this, at this URL:

http://toddseavey.com/2008/02/08/retro-journal-tmbg-uk-dc-and-abc-late-1995/

A couple of other things you mentioned that resonated:

1) Your fleeing from the inane philosophy class, yet writing a paper on it. I had the same reaction in some required semiotics classes for my comp lit major. Maybe it makes me a philistine, but I couldn’t stand analyzing poetry or film as a “container”, etc. I did learn the jargon well enough to get through the courses and write numerous papers about the stuff, but quickly forgot it afterwards, as well as any desire to continue in academia.

2) What was up with the mosh pit at the They Might Be Giants concerts??? I got some guy’s boot in my face at one of them, and consequently my glasses smashed, without which I couldn’t see two feet in front of me. I was very disoriented about music and humans for quite awhile after that.

Thanks for the fun entry, I enjoyed it.

Do you remember The Waistcoat of Skin??? For the benefit of your readers I will elaborate. Todd and I both managed, amazingly, to write our way into a small, rather exclusive creative writing seminar fall semester of ‘89 (my first at Brown). This was how I got to know the odd loner junior who lived across the hall from me in my freshman dorm (that would be Todd). As one who became disenchanted rather quickly with all the self-absorbed intellectual and artistic snobbery and bullshit that I encountered at every turn at Brown, I found myself an easy ally in Todd, who shared my bewilderment at the cast of characters and the stories that they produced in that seminar, and I thoroughly enjoyed exchanging impressions with him every week on the latest reading material we had received to critique. Critique! What horror! If you have seen Todd Solondz’s Storytelling (damn, he already made a film about it!), you will have some idea of what a nightmare and joke a creative writing seminar can be, everyone going around in a circle and giving their invaluable opinion of what someone in the class has created, whether it is warranted or not. Pretty much all the stories we read were crap (and I willlingly include my own here), and all the opinions we heard were crap, but there was one story that stood out, well, two, actually, and if you will humor me and read on, you’ll see why.

I think we were eighteen, maybe twenty total in the class, and we sat around one large table in a small classroom. But one guy in the class (unlike Todd, I don’t remember anyone’s names, which is probably best) sat apart from the rest of us, every class, even if there was room at the table, he sat in a seat against a far wall. He never said a word, never offered an opinion on any of the stories, he hardly looked like he was even listening. This was highly unusual behavior at Brown, particularly in a small upper class seminar. So, when the time finally came to read a story by him, Todd and I were naturally very curious. His story was titled “The Waistcoat of Skin,” and it was about a man (or a woman, my memory sucks) who stumbles into some odd shop in some odd town in his travels, and finds some magnetically attractive vest (aka waistcoat…) hanging there, and, at the ominously eager urging of the shopkeeper, decides to try on the incredibly soft, supple, inviting piece of clothing… which then proceeds to devour him, merging him into the presumably many many others that have tried on the fatal waistcoat before him. Of course the shopkeeper then hangs the carnivorous waistcoat back up for the next unsuspecting customer to be ensnared by.

This was the most refreshing, delightful, zany, humorous (though I’m not sure it was meant to be) piece we had read, and, in true form, the author had absolutely nothing to say for himself. Of course no-one else in the class liked it, besides Todd and myself, and if memory serves, I think I avoided sitting across from you Todd so as not to giggle through the entire 2 hours or whatever, though I’m sure I cracked a few times.

But that guy, whoever he is, wherever he is, was not the true hero of the class. Todd was. When it came time for him to hand in a story towards the end of the semester, we had read a good number already, including a piece written by the grad student teacher of the seminar that was published in the literary journal (the name of which I of course cannot recall… Todd? Jacob?), which was some indecipherable nonsense in all italics (these are my hands, these are my feet, these are my shoes, these are my socks… and so on) alternating with some odd conversations in plain text that went nowhere. Confirmed my suspicion that the teacher was no authority on creative writing, at least not the kind that I was interested in. So Todd’s “story” was a mix of highlights of all the semester’s “best” pieces, with obvious references to their style and plot (there was also something about RFK and Marilyn Monroe in there, I think, unless that was in a different story you wrote), and the best was, about the middle of the story, it even broke into italics: these are my hands, these are my feet, this is my shirt, this is my toothbrush (ok, I don’t remember exactly what he wrote, but you get the idea). I already knew from the Film Bulletin that Todd had iron-clad balls, but this was beyond anything I could have hoped for. As you can probably imagine, the class was not very happy, I don’t really remember the responses to the piece, I think I was too busy trying to contain my mirth. But I do remember that the teacher was NOT impressed. I was.

I guess this was more than two pennies worth of contribution to your nostalgic look at that year, Todd, but I just couldn’t resist. I know that sharing that class with you was a highlight for me during that year (hell, during my four years at Brown), and brings a smile to my face to this day.

Of course, the illusion of my “conservatism” is shattered when I visit the Heartland and talk to actual red-blooded Conservatives, but it’s fun to play one at home.

I look forward to reading C4Punks in the not-too-distant future. (Hey, that domain’s available.)