I've had a great week in terms of teaching: two Margaret Atwood novels either side of last weekend (The Handmaid's Tale and The Edible Woman), Northern Lights (every time I schedule a text, the gods of TV programming air an adaptation), and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit today, a classic novel for discussing the intersection of alternative sexualities and alternatives to phallocentric narrative style. I'm not sure my mostly overseas students got the Lancashire humour elements, but I hope they enjoyed this class and the other texts as much as I did. It's so enjoyable to re-read old favourites, especially when they stand up so well. I bought my copies of the Atwood novels in 1994 on the proceeds of the Sir Henry Jones Philosophy Prize (alongside some Calvin and Hobbes, not Calvin and Hobbes), and the Pullman in 2000, immediately buying everything else he'd written and thus considerably delaying the process of my PhD.
I do have a tendency towards completism in books and music – once I decide I like an author or a band I'll read everything they've written or recorded whether they're any good or not. I've learned nothing from owning the complete works of every band and solo act associated with New Order, from Freebass (very much not the sum of its parts) to The Other Two (wonderful), nor from the endless ranks of Trollope, Hardy and Keith Roberts (tip: Pavane is essential, the rest less so).
There hasn't been much time for non-course reading, other than the massive list of REF outputs I have to attach a subjective number to, but I did get through Kate Charlesworth's A Girl's Guide to Sensible Footwear, which I can't recommend highly enough. I've always liked her cartoons, and this graphic novel combining post-war lesbian history and her autobiography is beautifully drawn (especially her affectionate pastiches of her favourite childhood comics) and just so enormously moving. Teaching Winterson's novel today meant I've been thinking about narrative and how to wrench traditional patriarchal/hegemonic forms to make room for non-heterosexual lives, and Charlesworth does it with apparent ease. It's funny, it's sad (especially her relationship with her mother, and the swathe Aids cut through her social circle), it's hugely knowledgeable and subtle. If it has a fault it's its self-deprecation: she's an important artist. Not sure what's next: perhaps Dan Simmons's Hyperion, through I really should refresh my memory of John Barth's short stories, Noughts and Crosses and Riders for next week's classes.
Apart from work, the high point of the week was a performance of Còsi Fan Tutte - not a full staging, just non-costumed singers doing a bit of acting, and an orchestra using period instruments. I'm not a huge fan of the baroque instrument thing - it can get a bit precious - but the singers were astonishing. Even though I prefer the rougher music of the medieval and contemporary periods, I was in awe of what the human voice can do. I could have done without the surtitles though: it turns out that this thing of beauty was essentially three hours of Italian Lads' Banter (plot: older man demonstrates to naive young men that like all women, their betrothed are slags, and that happiness lies in loving them anyway). The trickster maid, Despina, was the best part.
The Prime Minister was here on Monday. Assured of a slavish welcome from the local rag, he turned the remembrance day ceremony nearby into a stop on the campaign trail, doing his serious face for as long as he could manage before moving 20 metres into the nearest pub to do his man of the people act. If I were the organisers of the parade I'd feel used, but clearly others feel differently. At least I resisted the temptation to pop along and read out choice quotations from his comic novel about suicide bombers, some of which is set in this area, and not in a nice way. His father Stanley also wrote appalling thrillers - no doubt public-school confidence explains their slapdash, lazy style.
The one thing about being extra-busy at the moment is that I'm not glued to coverage of the cheapest, nastiest election campaign in living memory. I'll encourage my students to vote, turn up on polling day and pull the duvet back over my head. I'm thoroughly depressed by the diminishing space available for serious and informed debate - instead it's fake meet-and-greets for the cameras and lies in the studio and on the front page. There was once a political party in the US called the Know-Nothings. When did this become a collective national aspiration? I may have failed to get a job in Ireland this year, but my citizenship means there'll be a seat for me on the airlift when you lot turn to cannibalism in about 2021.
Anyway, that's enough doom and gloom - I intend to be out on my bike this weekend, blowing away the cobwebs. See you next week,
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