Speaking of baggage... or rather, so I can get off of this hiatus...

Giving credit where credit is due, my ex boyfriend Zac, the chem major from Hope who went on to cheat on me with his ex (hence breakup 1) and ultimately date my almost roommate (thankfully, post breakup 2), was a jerk.  He was the only guy to break up with me (this was, of course, breakup 1.  At least he was honest…?), and while we were dating the first time, he never wanted to listen to my suggestions.  Not even kidding.  Can we play Halo?  No—Zac wanted a nap.  Can we go for a walk?  No—Zac wanted to watch Tron.  Fine, I’ll go for a run with you, but can’t I rest a moment?  I sprinted in high school, and these 3 mile runs are killing me.  No—Zac ran ahead of me while I was inches away from puking on the train tracks.  What a charmer.

The one nice thing I can say about good old Zacferd is the he taught me how to play soccer.  Ok, so he kinda taught me how to kick a soccer ball (because somehow I made it to college without ever playing soccer.  How?  No idea).  He also taught me how to play racquetball, but that ended in failure and many an argument.

Zac: Well, maybe if you were willing to try things once in a while, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Elyse: No, Zac, we’re having an argument, and the issue is how you want to play racquetball—which we both suck at.  And I don’t feel like being bruised by a racquetball inside when I could be outside being bruised by a soccer ball.

Zac: You need to learn how to play racquetball if you want to be successful.

Elyse:  No, that’s golf, which we could be playing outside.  Only douches play racquetball anyway.

Zac: Meaghan (his ex. See breakup 1, and hence why this was a zinger statement) would have played racquetball.  All my friends in Midland play racquetball.  I play racquetball.

Elyse: Sure you do, douche…

At any rate, when it got warm enough and Zac was done being a douche, he’d call his guy friends to kick a ball around outside the student center.  The boys would knock each other down and brag about their high school exploits while I toddled along trying to kick with the inside of my foot.  This usually lasted about 5 minutes til I’d get annoyed and go find a creek, head to Zac’s room to hang out with his roommate, or go to the library to rent Much Ado About Nothing or Beauty and the Beast on VHS.

I haven’t seen Zac since November 2009 (and some readers will be glad to hear that I slapped him across the face), and time does eventually heal all broken hearts and racquetball bruises.  I even bothered to buy myself a soccer ball—a blue and white one that glows in the dark.  I kicked it around today, and I ran instead of toddled.  I even kicked using the inside of my foot.  The best part, though, is that I didn’t imagine Zac’s face when I kicked the ball.  Now that, my friends, is progress.

Summer update-type nonsense

I am on page 27 of 829 in Les Miserables, and now that the dust is starting to settle from last semester, I kind of miss the chaos.  Never satisfied…

My mom put Gettysburg on tv.  I’m all about her choice—especially since I’m here on the couch with only three events on my calendar for the upcoming two weeks.  I have free time for the first time since Christmas break, and I’m filling it with Les Miserables and Gettysburg.  It looks like somebody needs to load up on epic mighty quick.

My hiatus from serious dating (notice how I’ve changed the name from hiatus from boys?  That means I can go on date-like outings.  After all, just because I’m giving myself  a chance to heal after going from Mitch to Zac to Gui to Zac to Gui to Mitch with a week to rest between Mitch and Zac—and those, mind you, are just the three guys I’ve officially dated.  There are about 14 names of guys I’m purposefully leaving out.  See why I need a break?  Oy… My dating life could be explained in a series of histograms and ven diagrams, but who has time for that?  This digression was troublesome enough!) doesn’t mean I should be denying myself the company of nice guys (Dr. Bethany Brooks Lee texted to tell me so…).  And being that this marks my first unattached summer since 2005, I’m planning to enjoy it.

Now comes the depressing part: making a list of summer goals.  This is a pretty big deal because this could potentially be my last summer that counts as a break.  You never know when that’ll be taken away, but I have the feeling that next summer will be it, so I have to make this count.

So here goes my list:

-        Read Les Miserables

-        Build a raft and head somewhere

-        Learn how to play the harmonica

-        Live outside

-        Master skimboarding

-        Get 5 rough pages of my capstone

-        Join a jug band

Really?  That’s the best I can do?  Seven measly goals?  If I can’t get that done, I fail.  Fail, I tell you!  See, this is the depressing part because in the beginning of the summer, I try to make a list of things to do, and it ends up being lame, and then, at the end of the summer, I look over it again and think of how little I’ve done.  It’s like my obnoxious Christmas lists with things like:

-        Mexican neighbor named Julio

-        Play-doh

-        Socks

-        Flame thrower

-        One Hundred Years of Solitude in English

-        Red hunting cap

on ‘em, and then I only get socks… I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I love socks—if you ever want to get on my good side, get me socks, and I’ll love you forever.  It’s like giving Gideon strawberry creamcheese—FAVORITE!  But you know what I mean.  Sad day, there’s only so much to be done in a summer, and since this is probably the end of clear distinctions between everyday life and summer…

Well, now that I’m all depressed, I’m going to see if I can get my sister to go outside and  kick a soccer ball around with me.

My academic writing has gone down the drain... This paper sounds like a blog post!

Did Mark Twain Really Hate Jane Austen? Who Cares?

            Emily Auerbach aims to explain that Mark Twain may have secretly enjoyed Jane Austens novels in the article entitled “A Barkeeper Entering the Kingdom of Heaven: Did Mark Twain Really Hate Jane Austen?”  Auerbach analyzes Twain’s unpublished, unfinished, and relatively unedited essay on Austen’s novels, and in spite of Twain’s outspoken detestation of Austen and her characters, Auerbach tries to explain that Twain truly admired Austen’s novels and social commentary.

            Auerbach begins her argument by cataloguing William Dean Howells’s responses and interpretations of the various quips that Twain made at Austen’s expense.  Howells wrote, “[Twain’s] prime abhorrence was my dear and honored prime favorite, Jane Austen.  He once said to me…, ‘You seem to think that woman could write,’ and he forbore withering me with his scorn, apparently because we had been friends so long and he more pitied than hated me for my bad taste” (Howells 15- 16).  In spite of their very different personalities and writing styles, Howells and Twain were very good friends.  Because Jane Austen was a personal favorite of Howells, and since Howells and Twain were the kind of friends who exchanged ideas freely, it is highly likely that the two discussed Austen a great deal.  This means that Mark Twain could have gleaned the majority of his information about Jane Austen’s novels from Howells, and Twain, therefore, could have made it through the course of his life and his criticism of Austen’s novels without actually reading any of them. 

The idea that Twain could have obtained much of his research on Jane Austen from a friend who actually enjoyed her writing is a possibility that Auerbach completely disregards.  She tries to explain the incompleteness of Twain’s essay. 

“Did he leave the essay unfinished because… he had been defeated in his attempt to appreciate Jane Austen?  Or was it… that he could no longer reconcile his virile desire to disparage Austen with the fact that he actually ‘got’ her?  I suspect that he was afraid that admitting honestly to reaching the final parts of Sense and Sensibility would be unmasculine” (116).   

It is safe to assume that Mark Twain would not have considered it a matter of defeat to discover that he legitimately had no appreciation for Jane Austen’s writing.  Furthermore, while it is a manly prerogative to dislike Jane Austen, there is not too much to “get” in her novels.  Her novels do contain social satire, but the novel’s irony is embedded in a girl-meets-boy story that is often summarized quite easily on the back cover.  This being the case, why would Twain want to bother venting about Austen in an essay when he could simply tweak Howells?  It is also safe to assume that Twain would have had no trouble admitting to reading the end of Sense and Sensibility had he actually completed it.  Twain respected and admired Howells in spite of the fact that he read and loved Jane Austen novels, so there would be absolutely no reason to think that he would not want to admit to reading Austen because he was afraid it would mar his masculinity.  Auerbach also tries to argue that Twain appreciated Austen’s writing because he disapproved of the villainous characters in Sense and Sensibility.  This argument could have worked were it not for the fact that all readers are willing accept that Willoughby is a ne’er do well.  Also, Twain stated quite plainly that “[Jane Austen] makes [him] detest all her people, without reserve” (1). 

When Mark Twain says that he hates Jane Austen, why should it even be questioned?  It is simply a profound professional dislike for another author’s work.  Twain and Austen both wrote social commentary, and the goal of social commentary is to come to a greater truth through writing and analyzing the culture.  As a social commentator, when Twain claims that “Just [the] omission [of Austen’s novels] alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it,” (1) he means that society as a whole could arrive at a greater sense of truth in a world where Austen’s novels did not exist.  Therefore, it is not worth anyone’s time to try to argue that Twain secretly admired Austen’s writing.