Dear Grant, thinking back I entered my BA in English literature and music history in the US when I was 37……across three continents, a few credits from various universities which were accepted, the frustration of confronting Gatsby again was depressing. Yet my final semester was a joy and I wished it would never end. I made the fatal mistake of going on to law school afterwards……. A “trial by ordeal”. You were born to teach the written word in your own inimitable manner. Hugs for Matthew …. I treasure my boxed 1st. Ed. Maus….. keeping it safe for my granddaughter Genevieve. Sally forth young man, Miss Jenny
Dear Jenny; What a nice missive to read today. I feel like I've been staring at the screen all day, trying to keep up with my course loads. A few minor hitches so far, but I feel I am motoring along fairly well. There is one class that is difficult. The teacher keeps standing in front of the class saying, "What do you guys think?" But she hasn't given us anything to think about yet. We've read some poetry, we talked about it in small groups, but now we need some kind of a lecture to make it relevant. There are a lot of long painful silences in that class, which is awful for me, being a former teacher. Thanks for the nice comment! It really cheered me up!
Please let us know how those class presentations turn out, old man. Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Bruce Chatwin are all examples of good creative nonfiction. Haven't read Herr, but you make it sound worthwhile tracking down. Congratulations again. You deserve it after all your worries and hard work.
Hello Sal! What am I going to say in that class? Have you read a plot synopsis for House of the Sleeping beauties? I've decided I will do a backwards presentation, start with why I love Japanese lit. then Kawabata, then major themes and then finish with a plot summary, so they don't spend the whole presentation hating me. Dispatches is amazing, but a lot of Vietnam jargon that makes it a bit tricky. But I'm a huge fan of Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket, there is a line in the book, "you really have to sound off like you got a pair" which made me smile very broadly on the bus.
@@grantlovesbooks Sounds like a wise plan of action. Sounds like Herr was a Vietnam Vet wannabe. Humm. That was a traumatic time in my life--even if I didn't serve. Young men were constantly hassled even in the streets--especially if you visited small rural towns--or were often stopped as I was by the police and my draft card checked. A draft card I didn't want. It was a different time.
@@TheSalMaris Sounds like a really hard time in your life, not to mention the state of American society. I'm glad you came through it alright, it must have been a wild time to be alive. The Herr book is a little hard to make understandable sense of. I like it, but I am not too sure what is happening at any particular time. I need to have a 1968 map of Vietnam and a history professor in the room with me to understand where he is coming from a lot of the time. It is still a lot of fun to read though.
Hey Grant. I watch every single video you make, and I watch from Canada. My friend from Montreal also watches your videos. Are we that 0.7%? You are right, that is an outrageous number…
Hello Davood! Hope you are well. You must be that .7%. I was wondering if they are only counting views where people are signed into their accounts. The largest number is America, somewhere in the 30s%, so where does all the rest of the 70% come from? It's alright. I've never been particularly warm in my love for my home country. I think I feel the same way Joyce did about Ireland.
Hello Charlie, it is tough, I spend about 70% of my time thinking about things I would like to say, and then telling myself not to say them. I think I will end up one of those old men who never opens their mouths, except to say, 'I'll have another pint.' I get along with most of the teachers, but I can't make more than two comments per class, or else the rest of the students will just sit there not saying anything for 3 hours. That's what really gets me, their lack of desire to express themselves. When the teacher finally gets tired of the prolonged silences after asking questions, calling one of the students by name "Pontiac, what do you think of this?" The strange thing is that they often have good ideas, but they would rather sit there waiting for someone else to answer. As a former teacher, those long empty silences are painful for me to bear.
@@grantlovesbooks I surmise lack of confidence of the younger students and dare I suggest ( like you're experiencing yourself ) awkwardness of a generation gap. It's really the responsibility of the professor to deal with such reticence. Shame, they don't offer classes for maturer students.
@@charlieuliginosa2494 That's just life Charlie. I know I'm too old to be there, that's why I try to keep a low profile. My time was 30 years ago, the young people in the class with me, now is there time. So I don't want to ruin it by being a morose, dour old man constantly telling them how awful everything is. Ah well, I feel bad for them sometimes, having to have me in the class with them.
Once again, GOOD! The mention of short stories wakens a memory of when I promised myself to read one short story each day, because as third year student I didn't time time for long novels. Wonder why I can't seem to do it now? And my books runneth over, what to do?
I am feeling the weight of my five classes reading list this semester. I think I might be ahead in one class, but falling behind in the others. Hope you are doing well John!
No kidding. The kids these days, they love their "trigger warnings." The strange thing is they give a trigger warning to the class, but then continue, as though telling people there is talk of suicide or vomiting, or domestic abuse suddenly makes it tolerable. It's very strange, like they want to be the absolute softest generation that ever existed. Now they don't even want to consider ideas that might hurt their tender sensibilities.
Bravo, very enjoyable, even with a mixed metaphor, swamps with branches. My advice for writing workshop critiques is say something positive first, start with the saving grace even if it cannot save it. It's weird because the line between projection and honest constructive criticism is thin. Maus is so fantastic, I actually saw Speigelman lecture once and I kind of asked him why the memoir aspect of it worked so well, the relationship twixt father and son, in a graphic novel and he said the graphic novel works like the mind works, words and image together. is the title of the graphic novel class history of the graphic or something else, I'm wondering what the concept is for the reading list. Love Kawabata and House of the Sleeping Beauties is strange, fear of aging and male sexuality. It's highly regarded but not my favorite. Reading Absalom alongside Watching God sounds really interesting. The Victorian Lit class sounds also like fun, the London Review of Books had this Past, Present & Future podcast and over the summer they featured great political novels and did a great episode on Doc Jek & Mr Hyde, went into all this homoerotic stuff utterly fascinating. Made me think about a book in a new way, much like your vids. Ease up on them Canadian youth. Smart phones, social media etc., is taking a toll on attention spans for everyone. I read to be a better writer, and also to say I'm well-read. I'm an intellectual, I love ideas. But it's a love that never loves you back. Dispatches really does transcend the Vietnam literature genre, have to pull that one off the shelf and do another tour!
Hello Timothy, Thanks for the great comment, as always. In the graphic novel class the prof showed us how Speigelman constructed the Maus pages. It was pretty amazing. It's so easy to see a page of comics, but then to see how much work goes into the construction of it was great. For Jekyll and Hyde the teacher is focusing on the idea that all these men are gay, and Hyde upsets them because this is Jekyll's 'loud and proud' character, which they are trying to keep hidden form themselves and society. It's good, but I tend to find that most professors for most literature go to the "but what if he's gay!" as a default for everything. Yes, we can read it that way, but perhaps we could also read it that all these men telling the story, giving contradictory descriptions of Hyde, are actually aware of Jekyll being a murderer, and are trying to cover for him (my theory). So far all the classes are great, not the creative writing, I really wish those classes were online, there is little point all of us meeting together once a week. And I am Really enjoying From Hell, it might even be better than Maus. Although the writing is tiny and it's killing my eyes. Dispatches is wild. I wish I could slow down to check a lot of the vocabulary, but it's too much fun to read to slow down.
Thank-you! And lucky you! I was always so happy when I visited Germany. Have you ever had Killepitch in Dussledorf? God-damn, we stumbled around like lobotomy patients.
@@grantlovesbooks I actually live in Düsseldorf - what a coincidence! Killepitsch is notorious here and - I think - cleverly avoided by the natives ;) btw: There are some good Canadians that I love, e.g. Margaret Atwood or Leonard Cohen or Robertson Davies - so do not be too harsh on them :)
@@NaliniKluth You are quite right, Robertson Davies makes up for quite a lot of the stuff I dislike about this country. I hope you will give Margaret Laurence a try, The Stone Angel is my favourite, or Ernest Buckler's The Mountain and the Valley, my two favourite Canadian novels.
I really hope the pronoun people haven’t arrived in Japan. Luckily at least that is incompatible with the German language. That was absolutely hilarious:). Hope you continue doing videos when you get to Japan.
What's funny about the pronoun situation is that we go around the class giving our names and 'he/hims' but most of the time I can't even remember the students names, let alone their pronouns. I can't remember if her name is Callifina or Majesty, but god-damn it I better get her pronoun right! I think in Japan people are still smart enough to know when an idea is stupid and dismiss it entirely. In Canada we abandoned common sense quite a long time ago, and now no one knows if something is a good idea any more. That's why Canadians are fixated on "the rules," this way we have rules rather than common sense, so no one needs to make grown-up decisions any more.
@@grantlovesbooks it sounds like a bunch of young teenagers have taken over. It’s even arrived in Germany to an extent, at least in law. The pronouns don’t apply here but all forms to fill in are for MALE/FEMALE/DIVERSE. There’s also a lot of fighting about whether plural should include a plural female form to include women. One state, I think Bavaria, has banned it. For example, instead of just writing Polizisten (police), you would also have to write Polizistinnen. The Western world has sunk into a parallel universe where the post modernists don’t know their arse from their elbow, a la Picasso.
Dear Grant, thinking back I entered my BA in English literature and music history in the US when I was 37……across three continents, a few credits from various universities which were accepted, the frustration of confronting Gatsby again was depressing. Yet my final semester was a joy and I wished it would never end. I made the fatal mistake of going on to law school afterwards……. A “trial by ordeal”. You were born to teach the written word in your own inimitable manner. Hugs for Matthew …. I treasure my boxed 1st. Ed. Maus….. keeping it safe for my granddaughter Genevieve. Sally forth young man, Miss Jenny
Dear Jenny; What a nice missive to read today. I feel like I've been staring at the screen all day, trying to keep up with my course loads. A few minor hitches so far, but I feel I am motoring along fairly well. There is one class that is difficult. The teacher keeps standing in front of the class saying, "What do you guys think?" But she hasn't given us anything to think about yet. We've read some poetry, we talked about it in small groups, but now we need some kind of a lecture to make it relevant. There are a lot of long painful silences in that class, which is awful for me, being a former teacher.
Thanks for the nice comment! It really cheered me up!
Please let us know how those class presentations turn out, old man. Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Bruce Chatwin are all examples of good creative nonfiction. Haven't read Herr, but you make it sound worthwhile tracking down. Congratulations again. You deserve it after all your worries and hard work.
Hello Sal! What am I going to say in that class? Have you read a plot synopsis for House of the Sleeping beauties? I've decided I will do a backwards presentation, start with why I love Japanese lit. then Kawabata, then major themes and then finish with a plot summary, so they don't spend the whole presentation hating me.
Dispatches is amazing, but a lot of Vietnam jargon that makes it a bit tricky. But I'm a huge fan of Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket, there is a line in the book, "you really have to sound off like you got a pair" which made me smile very broadly on the bus.
@@grantlovesbooks Sounds like a wise plan of action. Sounds like Herr was a Vietnam Vet wannabe. Humm. That was a traumatic time in my life--even if I didn't serve. Young men were constantly hassled even in the streets--especially if you visited small rural towns--or were often stopped as I was by the police and my draft card checked. A draft card I didn't want. It was a different time.
@@TheSalMaris Sounds like a really hard time in your life, not to mention the state of American society. I'm glad you came through it alright, it must have been a wild time to be alive.
The Herr book is a little hard to make understandable sense of. I like it, but I am not too sure what is happening at any particular time. I need to have a 1968 map of Vietnam and a history professor in the room with me to understand where he is coming from a lot of the time. It is still a lot of fun to read though.
Hey Grant. I watch every single video you make, and I watch from Canada. My friend from Montreal also watches your videos. Are we that 0.7%? You are right, that is an outrageous number…
Hello Davood! Hope you are well. You must be that .7%.
I was wondering if they are only counting views where people are signed into their accounts. The largest number is America, somewhere in the 30s%, so where does all the rest of the 70% come from?
It's alright. I've never been particularly warm in my love for my home country. I think I feel the same way Joyce did about Ireland.
Must be frustrating attending these classes as a mature well-read student.
Hello Charlie, it is tough, I spend about 70% of my time thinking about things I would like to say, and then telling myself not to say them. I think I will end up one of those old men who never opens their mouths, except to say, 'I'll have another pint.'
I get along with most of the teachers, but I can't make more than two comments per class, or else the rest of the students will just sit there not saying anything for 3 hours.
That's what really gets me, their lack of desire to express themselves. When the teacher finally gets tired of the prolonged silences after asking questions, calling one of the students by name "Pontiac, what do you think of this?" The strange thing is that they often have good ideas, but they would rather sit there waiting for someone else to answer. As a former teacher, those long empty silences are painful for me to bear.
@@grantlovesbooks I surmise lack of confidence of the younger students and dare I suggest ( like you're experiencing yourself ) awkwardness of a generation gap. It's really the responsibility of the professor to deal with such reticence. Shame, they don't offer classes for maturer students.
@@charlieuliginosa2494 That's just life Charlie. I know I'm too old to be there, that's why I try to keep a low profile. My time was 30 years ago, the young people in the class with me, now is there time. So I don't want to ruin it by being a morose, dour old man constantly telling them how awful everything is. Ah well, I feel bad for them sometimes, having to have me in the class with them.
Thanks and hope you enjoy your last semester. Blessings.
Thanks a lot Deb, it is going quite well so far, but A LOT of reading. It's almost all good, but long books take time.
Hope you are well Deb!
Once again, GOOD! The mention of short stories wakens a memory of when I promised myself to read one short story each day, because as third year student I didn't time time for long novels. Wonder why I can't seem to do it now? And my books runneth over, what to do?
I am feeling the weight of my five classes reading list this semester. I think I might be ahead in one class, but falling behind in the others.
Hope you are doing well John!
I want a camera in class when you talk about Kawabata. 🙂
No kidding. The kids these days, they love their "trigger warnings." The strange thing is they give a trigger warning to the class, but then continue, as though telling people there is talk of suicide or vomiting, or domestic abuse suddenly makes it tolerable.
It's very strange, like they want to be the absolute softest generation that ever existed. Now they don't even want to consider ideas that might hurt their tender sensibilities.
Bravo, very enjoyable, even with a mixed metaphor, swamps with branches. My advice for writing workshop critiques is say something positive first, start with the saving grace even if it cannot save it. It's weird because the line between projection and honest constructive criticism is thin. Maus is so fantastic, I actually saw Speigelman lecture once and I kind of asked him why the memoir aspect of it worked so well, the relationship twixt father and son, in a graphic novel and he said the graphic novel works like the mind works, words and image together. is the title of the graphic novel class history of the graphic or something else, I'm wondering what the concept is for the reading list. Love Kawabata and House of the Sleeping Beauties is strange, fear of aging and male sexuality. It's highly regarded but not my favorite. Reading Absalom alongside Watching God sounds really interesting. The Victorian Lit class sounds also like fun, the London Review of Books had this Past, Present & Future podcast and over the summer they featured great political novels and did a great episode on Doc Jek & Mr Hyde, went into all this homoerotic stuff utterly fascinating. Made me think about a book in a new way, much like your vids. Ease up on them Canadian youth. Smart phones, social media etc., is taking a toll on attention spans for everyone. I read to be a better writer, and also to say I'm well-read. I'm an intellectual, I love ideas. But it's a love that never loves you back. Dispatches really does transcend the Vietnam literature genre, have to pull that one off the shelf and do another tour!
Hello Timothy, Thanks for the great comment, as always. In the graphic novel class the prof showed us how Speigelman constructed the Maus pages. It was pretty amazing. It's so easy to see a page of comics, but then to see how much work goes into the construction of it was great.
For Jekyll and Hyde the teacher is focusing on the idea that all these men are gay, and Hyde upsets them because this is Jekyll's 'loud and proud' character, which they are trying to keep hidden form themselves and society. It's good, but I tend to find that most professors for most literature go to the "but what if he's gay!" as a default for everything. Yes, we can read it that way, but perhaps we could also read it that all these men telling the story, giving contradictory descriptions of Hyde, are actually aware of Jekyll being a murderer, and are trying to cover for him (my theory).
So far all the classes are great, not the creative writing, I really wish those classes were online, there is little point all of us meeting together once a week. And I am Really enjoying From Hell, it might even be better than Maus. Although the writing is tiny and it's killing my eyes.
Dispatches is wild. I wish I could slow down to check a lot of the vocabulary, but it's too much fun to read to slow down.
Greetings from Germany :)
Thank-you! And lucky you! I was always so happy when I visited Germany. Have you ever had Killepitch in Dussledorf? God-damn, we stumbled around like lobotomy patients.
@@grantlovesbooks I actually live in Düsseldorf - what a coincidence! Killepitsch is notorious here and - I think - cleverly avoided by the natives ;) btw: There are some good Canadians that I love, e.g. Margaret Atwood or Leonard Cohen or Robertson Davies - so do not be too harsh on them :)
@@NaliniKluth You are quite right, Robertson Davies makes up for quite a lot of the stuff I dislike about this country. I hope you will give Margaret Laurence a try, The Stone Angel is my favourite, or Ernest Buckler's The Mountain and the Valley, my two favourite Canadian novels.
I really hope the pronoun people haven’t arrived in Japan. Luckily at least that is incompatible with the German language. That was absolutely hilarious:). Hope you continue doing videos when you get to Japan.
What's funny about the pronoun situation is that we go around the class giving our names and 'he/hims' but most of the time I can't even remember the students names, let alone their pronouns. I can't remember if her name is Callifina or Majesty, but god-damn it I better get her pronoun right!
I think in Japan people are still smart enough to know when an idea is stupid and dismiss it entirely.
In Canada we abandoned common sense quite a long time ago, and now no one knows if something is a good idea any more. That's why Canadians are fixated on "the rules," this way we have rules rather than common sense, so no one needs to make grown-up decisions any more.
@@grantlovesbooks it sounds like a bunch of young teenagers have taken over. It’s even arrived in Germany to an extent, at least in law. The pronouns don’t apply here but all forms to fill in are for MALE/FEMALE/DIVERSE. There’s also a lot of fighting about whether plural should include a plural female form to include women. One state, I think Bavaria, has banned it. For example, instead of just writing Polizisten (police), you would also have to write Polizistinnen. The Western world has sunk into a parallel universe where the post modernists don’t know their arse from their elbow, a la Picasso.