Episode 67: A Disgruntled Library User

I'm starting to concur with Adam's opinion of the university's library. I could only find one potentially useful book on Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, which is just appalling. The Library really needs to look into stocking more copies of books that are obviously going to be in high demand! Now I'm starting to worry about how I'm going to research my EN122 assessed essay. As it is, I can't even decide on a question, as I don't particularly care for any of them. I'm currently vacillating between the one on Shklovsky's 'defamiliarisation' and the one on Ginsberg's 'Howl', but examining the social aspect this time. The former is interesting, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to analyse MacInnes's Absolute Beginners sufficiently well, since it's the most obvious choice of text for comparison with 'Howl'. The latter would be a no-brainer, except I'm not sure if I'll be able to do much research in Singapore. Trying to research Ginsberg is hard enough over here! I guess the problem is that I tend shy away from questions that involve what I don't see as particularly literary inquiries, at least not in the conventional sense of critical analysis. After hearing the lecture on Raymond Williams, you would think that I'd have changed my mind and become all fired up about juggling literary, historical and social interpretations at the same time, but no, I think that's just too much work. In a nutshell, I hate reading theoretical texts, which unfortunately, constitute the bulk of the reading list for EN122. Sigh...