Maybe I am dead after all. I certainly haven't been blogging at all: too busy teaching (every day) and preparing classes in multiple formats. I'm only typing this because I'm in the office resolutely not marking. Not that I resent the teaching schedule too much - the students are a joy at the moment: present, engaged and enthusiastic. Even the online classes which were a chore for all concerned last year are going well. No doubt the atmosphere will change next week when the first essays are returned - there's always a notable froideur in the room when my misanthropic bile manifests itself in stark percentages (as an aside, I hate percentage marking: there's no meaningful way to differentiate between a 63% understanding of a sonnet and a 64% - it's misleading pseudoscience). Until then though, cheeriness abounds, with only the awareness of research undone nagging at the edge of my consciousness.
Other than that, I've been to Exeter with colleagues to do a Being Human festival gig as part of our Novel Perceptions project: please please please please take our survey and make the data significant. We're interested in a refreshed canon, peoples' memories and emotional responses to texts, their ideas of what constitutes literary quality and the qualities of books people rate highly (which our colleagues at the University of Amsterdam are analysing computationally. One of the interesting aspects is identifying regional preferences: Exonians rate Stella Gibbons' gleeful parody of pastoralism Cold Comfort Farm, Pride and Prejudice and Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander more highly than readers in other areas. Some of this is regional loyalty of course, but I think there are probably other reasons: appreciation of the harshness of rural life in Gibbons' satire, and also echoes of the long-gone period when cities like Exeter were centres of real political and cultural power. Before mass communications and mass transport the south coast was where Austen's characters went for a bit of sun, sea and sin (Torquay and Lyme Regis as the Magaluf of their day) and abroad started just outside the harbour when naval, slaving, trading and emigration ships departed from ports all round the country rather than everyone heading off to Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted (though Caergybi/Holyhead has always been my only port of departure). One of the high points of the day was sharing a panel with two fascinating artists: established novelist Virginia Baily and emerging poet Zakiya McKenzie, whose work on place, culture and environment in the English south-west and Jamaica really bowled me over.
I'm back fencing after breaking a rib or two in late summer - perfectly timed to be regularly humiliated by visiting international fencers at the club, though I was delighted to get a few points off an Italian women's foil squad member - it's the equivalent of San Marino at least forcing a save during a match against France or Germany. Reading has mostly been course texts (Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen, Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home this week), but I've also got through Simon Ings' interesting The Smoke, some of Josephine Tey's golden age detective novels and Martin Pugh's Hurrah for the Blackshirts recently. The latter is a comprehensive history of British fascism from the Edwardian period into WW2. The Daily Mail's enthusiastic support for anyone with an extermination plan and a uniform isn't exactly news to me, but the sheer volume – and familiar arguments – are shocking. It really hasn't changed at all.
Musically, I'm enjoying Metallica's Metallica (great for marking to), the new album by Low, Hey What, the latest one by The War On Drugs - the only bit of 80s revivalism I can bear. I'm teaching American Psycho next week, and realise that because the students are all fully into the rehabilitation of one of civilisation's worst decades, they just won't get why sociopathic murdered Patrick Bateman is so obsessed with Phil Collins. Trust me kids: Uncle Phil is the child-catcher of yacht-rock. Just say no. Other than that I've been listening to some contemporary choral releases fairly obsessively. I bought Pembroke College choir's collection of work by women composers All Things Are Quite Silent and Ars Nova Copenhagen's collection …And at the same time. Both of them include composer and Kanye West collaborator Caroline Shaw's '…and the swallow', which I love, plus the latter includes badass post-minimalist Julia Wolfe's 'Guard My Tongue'. Much as I love authentic ancient polyphony, I'm really enjoying these composers' use of familiar sounds and modern techniques to unsettle expectations. Here are the two Shaw recordings I have, and a different one of the Wolfe.
