in conclusion: this semester is going to kick my ass.

in summation: i've done this to myself willingly.

oh well, i've decided it's time to buckle down and get some work done. and lots of thoughts on that process. for example: the work i did before coming here was stronger than the work i'm doing now; and, the work i did this summer is likewise stronger than the work i'm doing now. perhaps it has nothing to do with ineptitude, and everything to do with the fact that i'm not isolated. this worries me. can i create strong work with community and friendships surrounding me like everything i ever wanted? does the only thing i ever coveted and nurtured beyond family--friendship--stand in the way of a necessary lonliness that forces the desire to communicate via writing? sometimes i feel a choice looking at me and hinting in the direction of purposeful hermititude. but nobody should have to choose between one form of connection and its other, so maybe it comes down to finding a system that incorporates both of the worlds i need.

anyhow. this semester is going to kick my ass. i think i'm looking at reading at least a couple hundred pages a week plus student papers, very little of which will be "light." actually most of it looks theory-heavy and/or time-exacting. and now i have two note-taking jobs too, which i need for the mula, and enjoy for the fact that i get to sit in on art history lectures (which i love love love), but i don't know. i'm going to have to schedule and be responsible unlike last semester which was weighted to the opposite extreme.

i'm excited though. it's going to get me thinking again. my brain is ready; look, it's a yawning chasm.

here are some terms from the latest reading: verb-style, noun-style, anaphora, parataxis, hypotaxis, asyndeton, polysyndeton, chiasma, periodic style, running style, pointed style, "plain" style, balance, suspension, parallelism, isocolon, epanaphora. did you ever expect that so many terms about syntax/voice could be read about in the course of one week? not me. i like it though.

my favorite for the week is running style, which is a style that started in reaction to the periodic style and is noted for the way it "imitates the mind in real-time interaction," and develops sense as it goes rather than through cause-effect prereasoned relationships (any connection to the bildungsroman?). by the way, it is often polysyndetic, imbalanced, lays traps, is hesitant and repetitious, and overabundant with the parenthetical asides. i.e. much of my writing finds its way through this vein, but interestingly, it appears to be the predominant style of our times... never thought that one through.

here is Nabokov on Gogol (two of my favorites, although after this reading, Gogol must make up for much):

I think it more reasonable to forget that Gogol's exaggerated concern with noses was based on the fact of his own being abnormally long and to treat Gogol's olfactivism--and even his own nose--as a literary trick allied to the broad humor of carnivals in general and to Russian nose-humor in particular. We are nose-gay and nose-sad. The display of nasal allusions in the famous scene of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac is nothing in comparison to the hundreds of Russian proverbs and sayings that revolve around the nose. We hang it in dejection, we lift it up in glory; slack memory is advised to make a notch in it and it is wiped for you by your victor...

now, if i'm getting this right, and that's quite a big if, Nabokov is famous as a stylist because he swaps back and forth nearly seamlessly between different modes:

in one sentence he uses noun-style (the style academics and bureaucrats are known for, officious and weighty, laden with prepositions and roundabout phrases/clauses) and in the next he is practically prancing in verbstyle (he has a propensity for the gerund, for non-direct forms of verb). he very obviously uses hypotaxis (creates ranks and relationships, hierarchies of information, cause-effect relationship), and is thus also within the realm of polysyndeton (lots of transition words like when, and, because, if, and so forth). he also tends towards some aspects of periodic style (he ponders, sets you up for a particular direction; he's thought about this beforehand, indeed so have his characters and perhaps even the letters that make up the characters) but then he waggles around inside these borders to play with the running style (from moment to moment) and indeed other means of organizing blips. our russian friend writing in english, well, he plays with language in the form of anaphora and all those other big words, sets a rhythmn, and at least in the novel of his i have completed (Pale Fire), it's very purposeful the choices he makes--if his language is being technicalia-extremus and round-aboutsy, it's because his characters are as well.

anyhow, i think this might be fun.

but yes, what a bunch of work looms before me this weekend, and what a harkening back to letterpress-toil it tells me i must commit myself to. and to commit, one must trust the choice is right on all ends, and to that end i hope.

to focus [on this] or not to focus [on that]. ug