Episode 1439: Bought The Believer Bundle!

Managed to get another good chunk of words in today, so I think completion by the time the Library closes on Sunday won't be a problem and I won't have to relocate to the Learning Grid to finish up and get it printed. Thought I was going to manage to finish covering my first poem pairing by tonight, but have to leave soon because the Library's closing. Might just carry on writing when I get back to my room, I guess? On the bright side, I persuaded my mum to let me buy that bundle of The Believer, which worked out to just over $700. (Cards Against Humanity is also back in stock, and now there's even a second expansion, but I thought buying more stuff on my credit card would have been pushing my luck.) Also got a 10% voucher from The Book Depository that's valid for just over another two weeks, so I'll be getting those Penned in the Margins books once I'm back in Singapore! Tried to start off the process of getting my stuff shipped back via Seven Seas, but the website was having none of that. Tried a couple of times and failed to get the form to accept my input. Will have to try again on my laptop, but I'm a little worried that it won't work there either, and I'll have to scramble to find another company...

Episode 1438: Still Buying Books...

On impulse, I've broken my sort-of rule about not buying hardcover books and ordered a copy of David Moody's Trust. I've been slowly collecting Moody's novels as the paperbacks come out from Gollancz, and there is actually a paperback version of Trust available on his website. The limited edition hardcover comes with an essay on the book's history and his influences though, which I'm really interested to read. Today's been an okay day work-wise. Collected my dissertation from the Bookshop and did the e-submission, and I'm going to bring the bound hard copy in with my elegy essay on Monday. Supervisor got back to me about my second chapter and said it looked great, so I figure that since the last chapter and the conclusion felt of similar standard to me, and were written in pretty much the same style, I should be fine. (Bet it'll all come back and bite me in the form of an unexpectedly low mark now, won't it?) The elegy essay, on the other hand, is up to around 1200 words, but it feels like really slow going. I've been quoting a lot so far, and I know that was an issue in my last essay for Emma Mason, quotes not being well-integrated into the body of the essay, so I'm really trying to make a conscious effort to only quote things that advance my line of argument this time. Hopefully, I'm succeeding, and like with the dissertation, once I hit the close reading portion, the amount of secondary reading being quoted will fall dramatically anyway.

Episode 1437: £125 On Chapbooks!

Reading's all done for the essay and I've got my first paragraph down on the page. Possibly a bit quote-heavy, partly because I'm trying to recapitulate where the phrase 'the consolations of form' comes from and how it fits into my own thesis about Gunn and Monette, but I think it should be fine. Probably another two or three paragraphs, and then I'll move on to the close readings. I think I'm probably going to do three sets of comparisons, since I've managed to find three pairs of poems that broadly speaking, have the same themes or settings, and I think it'd be interesting to approach that from my angle about the formal aspects of Gunn's poetry versus the 'openness' of Monette's elegies for Rog. Also, I finally went ahead and spent £120 on chapbooks from Knives Forks and Spoons Press and The Red Ceilings Press. Speaking of buying stuff, I really wish I'd known earlier than a week or so ago that McSweeney's was going to have a garage sale. I'd have saved up some money then, so that I could shell out now for a chance to get 84 issues of The Believer at one go! Still considering persuading my parents to let me charge it to my credit card...

Episode 1436: Still Reading...

Could've had my dissertation sent off for binding by now, except I've forgotten to scan the cover of the anthology for the appendix, so it's going to have to wait till tomorrow now. Am wondering how much further reading for my elegy essay I should be doing, especially given that I'm trying to keep my line of argument quite straightforward. I've already amassed a quotation word count that's approaching a third of the total length of the essay, and this is just from reading general stuff on elegy, not even the articles that specifically discuss Gunn or Monette, which you'd think would be more important. I'm inclined to say that quite a fair amount of what I got from the general articles/books needs to be trimmed, but it requires me figuring out the overall direction of the essay, right till the conclusion. I've already got some thoughts on the introduction, which would involve briefly talking about Iris Murdoch's comments on the consolations of form. (Yeah, turns out Frank Kermode quoted her, and the article that was reviewing his book conveniently didn't mention this, probably because it was too busy disagreeing with him.)

Episode 1435: Dissertation's In The Bag!

So the dissertation's finally in the bag. I finished it at just after 5 am, having listened to the new Owl City album. Twice. (I was never really into 'Fireflies', but I really like 'Good Time', his collaboration with Carly Rae Jepsen, and the rest of The Midsummer Station pretty much sounds like that, i.e. unabashedly cheesy, summery pop, and we all know how much I love that kind of music.) Now just the elegy essay to go! Probably not going to start writing that till Wednesday, since I still have some reading that I want to do for it, and I'm honestly not going to get much done today. Still way too sleepy! Not even going to try and read an article or book chapter. Figure it's better to just go to bed at a 'normal' hour for a change. Also had a piece of good news in the afternoon. Found out a story I submitted to The Misfit Quarterly has been accepted for the inaugural issue, which is out in a couple of months. I'm really pleased by this, as I think what Misfit, Inc. does in general is pretty cool, so it's an honour to be part of their new journal.

Episode 1434: I Don't Care How Late I Have To Stay Up Until...

Or technically, I suppose it's how early I have to stay up until, since I'll be working into the early hours of the morning to finish. Yes, you read that right, to finish. Felt ill all morning and the early afternoon (guess two Tesco curries in two days wasn't such a great idea after all), so after church and lunch in Varsity, I came home and took a nap that just went on and on. It may have involved a slightly surreal dream in which I was in the kitchen of my HDB flat, with the cast of Covert Affairs, except I think they were there as their real-life selves and not the characters, since I vaguely remember telling Christopher Gorham that yes, I was aware that he plays the awesome Auggie. (True story.) I also remember at one point, Piper Perabo looked out the kitchen window, and started shouting to some construction guys across the street. So, uh, I guess she suddenly became her character Annie at that point? (This is also how I know it was my flat, as I could see the church that's across the street from my block.) It's like my dreams have turned into this trippy meta-liminal space. Or basically, I need this dissertation out of my life as soon as possible.

Episode 1433: Just Missing The Conclusion Now...

I am now genuinely just over two-thirds of the way till all my academic work is done. Have finished up the last chapter, which I've managed to keep shorter than it was looking like it would be, but only by pushing one poem that I was going to spend a paragraph on into the conclusion instead. Think it probably fits better there anyway, so I'll write it all up tomorrow after service. (Yes, after weeks of oversleeping due to my atrocious sleeping patterns that I have just decided to live with for now, I'm finally going to make a serious effort to make it to church tomorrow.) I've also managed to find something that tells us about how the dissertation should be presented, e.g. what the cover page should look like. It's a PDF hosted on the Warwick website, but I arrived at it via the History department, since the English department's page on the dissertation for postgraduates doesn't actually tell us anything about formatting. I suppose in the greater scheme of things, they aren't going to be terribly picky about it, if their attitude to formatting in the past has been anything to go by, i.e. they say there's a way to do it, but really, they'll accept pretty much anything that isn't ridiculous. Still, this is one of those things that really brings out my inner obsessive-compulsive.

Episode 1432: 66% To The Finishing Line...

Well, sort of. Am a couple of hundred words short, but at least another poem's analysis is in the bag. Would have done more work, but after getting back from the pub quiz and Tesco last night, I stood chatting with Takoiya till around 2 am, and then came back to my room and watched all the TV that I haven't kept up with the past couple of days. Played a bit of Granado Espada too, so I only went to bed at close to 6 am. Was supposed to go to Kasbah tonight with some of the MA people, but we collectively agreed that it was a bad idea so close to our deadlines, so that's why I even managed to add anything to my final chapter. Am going to be all caught up on TV shows soon though, and there'll only be one or two shows to catch over the weekend, so I should still be able to finish my dissertation by Sunday night. Monday night, at the very latest. Then I can start working on my elegy essay! I'm sure it's going to be awesome, given how long the ideas for it have been percolating in the back of my mind. Am thinking that I probably have more than enough 'theory', given the reading that I did months ago, to structure a compelling line of argument, but I'll still read the articles I've amassed, since there aren't too many of them.

Episode 1431: Sometimes, I Surprise Even Myself

Another thousand words or so added to my dissertation and the chapter is now half-done. I'm actually really surprised at how I've been managing to add substantial chunks, every time I've sat down to do some work. I mean, there's always been the usual procrastination, e.g. constantly refreshing Facebook, so really, if I got rid of that, just think of what I could accomplish! (Yeah, I think it's pretty funny too.) I think if I keep the analysis in the rest of this chapter tightly focused on the line of argument that feeds into the conclusion, my final word count will be over 16000, but still within the 17600 that the +10% leeway affords me. Would be quite hard to cut anything out at this point, due to the way my paragraphs have been chained together in sequence. Also, it turns out that the poet whom I thought was a bit naïve because he was young actually isn't that young at all. I made the mistake of assuming he must be new to the literary scene, just because I hadn't heard of him before reading the anthology. Rookie mistake!

Episode 1430: Auspicious Start To The Final Chapter!

Was beginning to worry that I would never get started on my final chapter, but instead of succumbing to lethargy, I've had a good start, adding just under 700 words to my total word count. I think I'm definitely going to end up making use of the +10% allowance for word counts, as I've just decided to include another poem for close reading, as it seems to make my case about liminality pretty well, in spite of some parts of the text that I find problematic, which I, without intending to condescend at all, ascribe to the poet's youth. I'm starting to think that it is actually quite difficult to imagine any of the poems written by the CAP participants as being in the same league as the Merlion poems by the more experienced writers. Edwin Thumboo replied in his e-mail to me that he was looking to see what the younger poets thought and not so much thinking about whether they could stand alongside the earlier poems. That would be a question for the literary critics. Well, as a literary critic, I'm going to stick my neck out there and say that by and large, they don't.