Apr
7
All Lit Up Again
Filed Under Geekery, The Compleat Thumbscrew, Uncategorized
For the past month, I’ve been studying my pale flat ass off. The subject of my efforts is as broad and shallow as my recently-detached fundament itself… the GRE “Literature in English” exam. Oddly enough, I have little interest in English literature. Nor am I planning to enter graduate school. I’m far too flitty and irreverent for academia. Asked to present my dissertation, I’d be liable to raise an eyebrow and purr, “I am gonna dissertate you SO HARD, baby!” This would be followed by fifteen minutes of pelvic thrusts, as well as my immediate expulsion from the institution in question.
Nay, I’m applying nose to grindstone for more practical purposes. About a year ago, I discovered that my college awards thirty undergraduate credits for each successfully-conquered subject-matter GRE. Thirty! Three-zero. The GRE’s test fee is $130. Thus, each credit winds up costing a little more than a McFish and a little less than an Extra Value Meal. Discovering this tidbit in the back of a course catalogue was like stumbling over the philosopher’s stone. Better, even - any old Tom, Dick or Olympiodorus can transmutate lead into gold. Magicking a stack of ScanTron sheets into a degree is something rare and mystical indeed.
My first GRE-ttempt was Psychology. My studying could’ve been more diligent; I remember sitting in the parking lot the morning of the test, chugging an energy drink and pawing through an intro-level psych textbook. “The anterior amygdala influences sexual behavior,” I muttered to myself, sprinting into the classroom, “Ergo: do the anterior amygdala from behind!” Despite my stupid mnemonics and stupider study habits, I netted a respectable 22 credits. Alas, it was immediately apparent that the English Lit test would be more than just sweetness and lobotomy. It had a reputation for being difficult… and that was among English majors. My loophole-laden approach to higher education meant that I hadn’t majored in… well… anything. Reading my first English Lit sample test, I got a much-needed bitch slap to my smug little head.
“Lo! In miasma of Byzantine gloam
Th’dread vorpal-wraith’s urine
Is topp’d by fresh foam!”
This passage refers to the following:
A. Yeats’ death.
B. Queen Victoria’s crinoline.
C. The Austro-Prussian War.
D. Post-Derrida critical rhetoric.
E. Nothing, we just thought it sounded cool. Vorpal-wraith!
“Wha…? I… I… huuuuuh?” I stammered. It was clear that the road to GRE-xcellence was long, hard and paved with intransitive verbs. So I did the unthinkable. I actually… studied. Stunning, I know. My forays into academia had never been terribly rigorous. They never had to be. A keen memory and keener ability to bullshit can function as the collegiate equivalent of Taster’s Choice… substitute them for actual work and nine out of ten professors won’t know the difference. The GRE-Lit was different, though. It dealt in facts… cold, hard, immutable and (often) inscrutable. I screwed up my courage, swallowed my pride and cracked open my Norton Anthology of Literary Thorazine. The time had come to Learn the Material.
Did I? Well… sorta. My knowledge of E-Lit isn’t strong enough to get me into grad school. However, I’ve rounded out one small corner of The Collected Learnings of Jul. I’m better-read and better-informed. I have some inkling as to why the “greats” were so great (except Wallace Stevens, whom I can only assume had pictures of Pulitzer committee members wearing tutus made of human skin). And with any luck, I’ve learned enough to propel my #2 pencil to victory this Saturday. Presenting…
Jul’s Guide to GRE-atness (Or, If My Score Winds Up Blowing Harder Than Wallace Stevens, GRE-diocrity)
The one and only piece of practical advice contained herein, and the only one you’ll require: get your hands on each and every practice test available. Compile a list of each and every answer choice. Read - well, skim - the Wikipedia pages for each and every one of them.
Wow, that’s a lot of choices, Jul.
It sure is.
I mean… a LOT!
Dude, chill. At least 75% of them are Aristophanes. Or Marlowe. Or “hexambic tetrameter’s uniquely jarring effect, like a Tabasco-fueled gas bubble ripping through the colon of convention.” What I mean to say is… there’s repetition.
But that’s a looooooooot -
Oh, shut up. Remember all those hours you spent beating your high score at “Arkanoid” rather than reading “Ethan Frome”? Consider this your penance.
Identification and Differentiation #1: the difference between James Joyce and Henry James? Paragraphs!Actually, that’s not quite right.Does the piece feature foppish Europeans fopping all over the goddamned place? Probably Henry. Is it sexual, scatalogical and incomprehensible… the literary equivalent of a homeless person wiggling his gear at you while claiming to be Otto von Bismarck? Joyce, baby.
Identification and Differentiation #2: the Battle of the Guys With Too Many “W”s in their Names. The difference between William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman? Only one of them made out with Oscar Wilde.
90% of western literature seems to be inspired by pussy. This is more of an observation than a study tip; I’m not recommending you swap Beckett for boobs… unless there’s a smut rag called Pole-Polishing Postmodernists, in which case IT’S ABOUT TIME. “Endgame” made me want to grow a phallus just to slap ol’ Samuel across the face with it. Ahem. So yes, historically, few topics have burned more paper than poon. There are “To His Coy Mistress” and “The Passionate Shephard”, of course, both tame enough to be English class staples. And then there’s the Cavalier poet Thomas Carew, who lived fast, contracted syphillis and treated the world to verses such as this:
“O’er all the garden, taste the ripen’d cherry,
The warm firm apple, tipp’d with coral berry :
Then will I visit with a wand’ring kiss
The vale of lilies and the bower of bliss;
And where the beauteous region both divide
Into two milky ways, my lips shall slide”
Whoa! With proper antibiotics (and perhaps a flea dip), there’s not a petticoat in the world that guy couldn’t crack. Even John Donne got in on the action, urging his mistress thusly:
“Off with that wiry Coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow”
Yes, the John Donne. It’s just not fair. How can one man produce both the Holy Sonnets and hilarious vaginal euphemisms? It’s enough to quash one’s poetic aspirations in the bud (att’n, Thomas Carew: not that type of bud… cut it out, thou).
Identification and Differentiation #3: One Man’s “Unique Voice” is Another Man’s Nails on a Chalkboard.
“Quirky” and chicken-fried? Faulkner.
… with a side of botulism-tainted homemade pickles? Flannery O’Connor.
“Quirky” and repetetive, repetetively quirky quirky and and and repeat it -ively, repeat quirk…?: Gertrude Stein.
“Quirky” like the despair felt by Eeyore after pawning his tail for benzos?: John Berryman.
These are but a few of the interesting and enlightening tidbits gleaned from my study. There was the discovery of Donne and Auden, brilliant both. There was the pivotal moment when I finally grasped poetic meter (I can’t even clap along to “Hey Mickey”; thus, this took about ten years). There was the 13th-century French fable called - I merde you not - “The Knight Who Made Cunts and Assholes Talk” (insert Karl Rove joke here).
And there will be - knock wood, then write a pastoral elegy about it - thirty credits, building up my transcript, bulking up my brain, inching me slowly towards the big kids’ table. Wish me luck.
Comments
8 Responses to “All Lit Up Again”
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you know what’s really sad? i learned more from your post than i remember from school.
come to think of it, it might be due to your awesomeness rather than my education’s awfulness.
and i never understood meter either. or most poetry. can you explain it to me?
You’ve got me curious — what’s the name of your college, if you don’t mind spilling the beans?
And I thought this was a fabulous, brainy, funny, irreverent post; I’m looking forward to reading more. :o)
Dude, you are such a queinte.
Jo totally wrote that. And you should look up some chaucer want to find out what her self important intellectally superior college educated jiggly fucking ass meant.
fuuuuck you kate
and: it is an awesome ass.
(it sure is. i know, as i’ve pinched it tonight. many times.)
well, thank you. credit where credit is due.
you’ll never see my ass jiggle like that, though.
your loss. bitch.
i am tight as steel.
(now we are comparing asses- kate)
hey, fuck you!
seriously. fuck to the you.
LOVE, JO
(and kateri)
Anytime I read you, especially when it’s something like this, I cannot help but think you are probably a super major genius. Have you put any thought into this theory? I think you ought to.
This was, as usual, hilarious.
I am just about to get a college degree after slogging away at it for nine looooong years. I wish my school had something like this!
This was super fantastic. Also: I miss my Lit. homework and studying my proverbial ass off. Seriously.
I’m a English Lit nerd, major, & having serious bouts of insanity (ask my hubby) over this fracking exam. I LOVE Chaucer, can recite Beowulf by heart, know the difference between Donne & Herrick– but do I give a damn about Steine, Berryman, or that nutter Stevens. NO.
I was doubting my sanity til I read this post & you are a Goddess. Thank you for making me laugh!
~Jessie