The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)

I don't know how any sensible person my age could possibly not relate to a sentence like this one from George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier: "It hardly needs pointing out that at this moment we are in a very serious mess, so serious that even the dullest-witted people find it difficult to remain unaware of it... Presently there may be coming God knows what horrors--horrors of which, in this sheltered island, we have not even a traditional knowledge." How could this not make any one in this day and age drop their jaws, thump their chests, run their hands through their hair in nervous, twitchy recognition? Maybe I'm just feeling apocalyptic from watching the trailer of Will Smith roaming through an overgrown, decrepit Manahattan hunting deer. Maybe I've been feeling a little too much like the guy from "Into the Wild" in general, lately. I even read some parts of this book aloud, perhaps picturing myself--doing what? Giving impassioned semi-Socialist speeches to huddled groups of Catholic high schoolers sitting on the floor of the Salesian center, picking the dried concrete off their shoes... I guess.

What I found most interesting about this book is Orwell's personal franknes, not not so much towards what he is revealing about his subjects, but what that act of revelation is revealing about himself, and his own class status, and all that messy stuff that comes with it that we don't really want to talk about with our college mates. Class is one of those messy things that gets in the way like race (not so much for religion and politics, I feel), but Orwell deals with it in a way I almost want to call self-confessional. In my non-fiction creative writing class, we discussed how one of the main things you could do to make your piece more interesting would be to think of the dirty, shameful things you would be embarassed of sharing, and then go ahead and admit them in the most exposed way possible: writing it down with the intention and knowledge that other people will read it! Orwell admits a lot of things that the middle-class person today would have trouble with even mumbling at their feet. For instance, his main argument as to what lies behind the class distinctions of the West goes as such: the lower classes smell. This is obviously a (deliberate) oversimplification on Orwell's part, but he gets his point across. This is something we don't want to admit aloud. In Ecuador, I turned my head away from the little kids huggging me because of the alternatively rank dank burnt stale sweet salty scent of their scalps. The Catholic teenagers in Tijuana were advised in low voices by their adult leaders not to pat the little kids on the head, for fear of lice. Yes, poor people are dirty, and we are all a little bit afraid of that. It does good to admit that, to say it (write it) out loud. Such a sentiment can lead to dangerous territory, though... Don't drink the water in Mexico, because the water will make you sick (because the people are dirty. Because brown people are dirty).

Orwell spares no words when describing himself either: he calls his fifteen-year-old self "an odious little snob" and never fails to remind his reader of the middle-class position from which he is writing from. I felt good reading these blunt admissions, as I'm sure it must have felt good for Orwell to write them. Overall, I highly admire Orwell's no-nonsense approach to his subject and his own writing style. I even find myself now wanting to write this review in an Orwellian style: dry, self-reflexive, easy to understand and follow, simply stated--all writing qualities of Orwell's that I greatly appreciated. I love his vocabulary and the humor that comes out of a well-chosen word. There are true gems in his book, such as his observation of newspaper canvassers: "Their job seemed to me so hopeless, so appalling that I wondered how anyone could put up with such a thing when prison was an alternative."

The book stumbles a little bit in the second section when he goes into a long discussion of futuristic, mechanicized societies and the different results that this would have on the individual. It was interesting, but a bit long, and I wanted him to get back to Socialism, already. That being said, Orwell claims he's playing the Devil's Advocate for socialism in the first few chapters in order to properly defend it later, but he never quite gets around to doing that (maybe he does in another book? Maybe deep down inside he doesn't believe his own defenses? Here's where some biographical knowledge of the author would have come in handy for me). He suffers from what my Hum 411 class dubbed the hot-potato ending: he drops out without actually proposing anything concrete we (or the early 20th century British socialists, I should say) can actually DO. To be fair, he does list the necessity for the formation of a revolutionary Socialist party with simpler ideas that more people can relate to. It's fair to concur that the actual "hows" and "whys" of doing so are a book in themselves.

On a scale of Marx to Weber, I give this a Lenin.

a wee bit of a frenzy

Well… I didn’t have time to read any books for pleasure this month. What did I do instead? I “wrote” a “first chapter” for my “thesis” (yes, the apostrophe marks are necessary). I had my oral boards. Today, I have been trying to think about what I want to do post-May 2008. Basically, all the plans I had set up for myself no longer exist. I am not the kind of person who finds this feeling giddy or exhilarating. Rather, it makes me bite my nails down to a state of raw, ravaged crescents.

It can be pretty stressful trying to plan for the future.

Honestly, I know there's no point to writing about or worrying about these kinds of things, since they seem to change so sporadically, and obviously life is impossible to plan for in general, but still--that doesn't seem to stop me. Most of the best decisions of my life have been made impulsively, at the last minute, and sporadically. Nevertheless, that doesn’t prevent me from trying to anxiously plan for—not everything, I suppose, but the next year of life.

I always thought that I was going to apply for Peace Corps after graduating. Not only have I always wanted to do it, having grown up with hearing my parents’ stories about it (the story of how my mum and dad met via a rabid dog in Nepal is one of the many key tales in family lore), but it would also conveniently take care of the iffy question of what exactly I was going to do with the next two years of my life. It would be Done For! Decided! Taken Care Of! However, something came up that I didn’t expect, and which has prevented me from submitting my application: I met someone, and I don’t particularly want to spend two years away from him at this point in our lives. He is going to Ecuador next fall to some research work with fungi, and unless something completely unforeseen and unpredicted comes up, it looks like I am going to go with him.

Which raises the big question for me: what exactly am I going to do with myself, once I’m there? Teach English? Work as a Kiva.org fellow? (If they hire me despite no financial or business experience, and complete computer ignorance, and no money to fund myself) Should I apply to grants in order to fund my trip and do things to make my resume look better--take a computer class, take an econ class at Reed, read the recommended books on microfinance and ending poverty, get an internship—why is my resume blank of internships? Why, oh why? What, oh what did I do with my time as an undergrad, besides fretting about my extremely poisonous relationship with my extremely evil ex-boyfriend? These are the questions I try not to ask myself, if I don’t want to drive myself into an absolute existential frenzy. Chances are, my resume is more than okay, even if I never volunteered with Amnesty International or interned at Mercy Corps.

There was a time when I thought I was going to go to graduate school. That changed pretty much in one day, after the orals for my thesis. Hearing my thesis advisor and my first reader engage in a highly theoretical discussion about the difference between the term “knowledge” vs. “understanding,” I had what is called an epiphany: This is not for me. Existing in a world of such abstract language is not for me. I cannot sit in an office and talk that talk for the rest of my life. I will not enjoy it, it will make me go crazy, and therefore I do not enjoy researching. I enjoy writing, and talking about books. But researching and publishing papers (or even writing papers), I have never really enjoyed.

All of this seems to be pointing to the deeper, more fundamental question. The biggest can of beans, if you will—what exactly is it that I am good at? Well—I’ve done some volunteering abroad. I sure did enjoy my job last summer, working in Tijuana with high schoolers. I enjoy being in an international environment. I enjoyed facilitating an international service-learning social justice-oriented project. I enjoy working with people.

I guess I will meet with the Career Services office about applying for some grants, and about job opportunities period in Ecuador. Search the World Learning site a little more. Maybe get in touch with Reed alumni who lived in Ecuador. Take deep breaths. Things will be okay. I still got time.

first post

I’ve worked three different jobs in the library: shelving magazines, newspapers and journals; checking out and shelving books, and the lowliest of the low, just plain shelving books. I’d always intended to write down the names of the books I come across that seemed interesting to me, but I never did because it soon became clear to me how overwhelming that would be: so many books, all the time, every day. The world is just flooded with books! When was this one checked out? Am I the first person to have touched this book since the seventies, honestly? My dad would like this one about the Californian Indians; I write down the call number on a little slip of paper that I promptly succeed in losing. The only reason why Belle was overwhelmed by the Beast’s library was not the sheer quantity of the books themselves, but by seeing them all in one place. This world is drowning and covered in books! How do we even have room to take a step?

That being said, even though this may sound funny coming from a literature major—I don’t feel like I read enough anymore. I certainly do read; I whipped through 250 pages of Fernando Ortiz’s Contrapunteo Cubano in the five hours or so I had free before class. And god knows I never feel as though I’m staying on top of my thesis reading, or that for any other class. However, I remember the days of coming home from high school and sitting on the couch, tucking my feet underneath a scratchy cushion and reading for pleasure. I also remember having enough free time in my life to seriously considering the goal of reading 182 books in a year, or one every other day, as well as all the books on the 100 Top Novels With Reviews (http://www.dougshaw.com/top100.html). I especially appreciate the rating system of that last website: “I liked it; I did not like it; I thought it was one of the Best Novels of All Time.” What more is there to say, truly?

Quite a bit, really... I had a conversation with my thesis advisor after class today that was definitely one of the most intense, interesting conversations I’ve had with a professor as an undergrad. It was somewhat rambling and ranting in nature (on both sides). He started out by asking me whether I thought the other students were bothered when he tried to introduce very politically slanted interpretations of texts in class. He talked about how when he was in university in Argentina, all anyone was talking about was U.S. imperialism and capitalism and how the university as an institution was to fight against them. He used that word, “fight”, not “deal with,” or “interpret,” or “discuss.” It really got me thinking: are universities more like businesses now, rather than centers of intellectual endeavor and development? Like, breeding centers for people who are really and truly going to get the fuck out there and change the world?… It bothers me that I feel so silly and idealistic for even typing those words—“change the world”!… get a grip, right? In every college catalog that I read, nobody ever bluntly stated “We are a leftist institution” or whatever… but what would be wrong with that? Why does a university such as mine, which is often cited in articles and polls as one of the most “liberal” in the nation, so blatantly shy away from taking a strong political position in its practices and instead blandly dub itself a “neutral” institution?

All this has amounted to more than a teensy-weensy digression, but anyway. I plan on keeping this blog to review books. My sister writes review of fiction published in the last two years or so. I like this idea as well. I don’t have a lot of free time anymore, but I do want to have a place to keep track of what books I read out of class.

I want to read more history… books that explain and discuss economic or political situations… I want to read fiction, too, recent fiction, that makes me think about recent events and why things are the way they are.

I want to have a stronger commitment to emphatic, inquisitive, mutual collaboration and intellectual inquiry in my life that will hopefully lead me in the direction of positive action in my day-to-day life. That doesn’t mean that I’ll actually get there. But at least it’ll be a step in the right direction. Maybe I’m getting more and more idealistic in my old age, but then again (oh, well!), I try. After all, the ideal one uses to orient one’s practices affects the failure that one ends up with.