If the title isn't warning enough, most of this post is about Angel S3. After all, I'm writing from an airport, and today's travel experiences have already required the purchase of not one but two trashy novels*, so some sort of distraction is in order before I get bored enough to start browsing the remarkably well-stocked sex-manual section of this airport's main bookstore. (Who on earth buys sex manuals while waiting for a connecting flight, anyway? I mean, if there were ever a contest for the least conducive atmosphere in which to reconnect with one's inner sex godd(ess), the typical U.S. airport would be a strong candidate. This airport is no exception. But the manuals must sell well, or they wouldn't continue to be stocked. Hmmmm.)
So, speaking of sex manuals, Wesley and Lilah... no, seriously, I finally watched the last two episodes of Angel last night. "Benediction" was actually a little better than I'd expected; "Tomorrow" was... not, apart from the Wesley scenes. It's a little late for me to issue a point-by-point critique, though. I'll settle for establishing the conditions under which I am likely to watch Angel next season:
Sooner or later, I will post this from my parents' computer, and then I will get on with the business of being home -- in the proper sense of "home" -- and even eventually being on vacation -- except that my book review isn't quite finished and is technically due today. Nobody in academia ever gets book reviews in on time, but I still feel guilty about it. Not guilty enough to work on it in the airport, though.
* -- In the trashy-but-fun novel line, I highly recommend Jennifer Crusie.
Today's Life Lesson I Could Have Done Without, Thank You Very Much, was the discovery that Large Midwestern University's library does not have an after-hours drop-off of any sort, anywhere. Pity I didn't learn that before schlepping two bags of books all the way around its exterior. And since that capped off the fun of heaving around lots of boxes in -- of course -- the only remotely summerlike weather we've had since mid-April... suffice it to say that I am debating the wisdom of just leaving some of those boxes in the car for the next month. After all, if you were planning to steal a car, wouldn't you choose something sexier than a nine-year-old Ford Escort hatchback with lots of boxes labeled "office books" in it?
But, really, today has been the final step in my professional formation as well as my research fellowship. I suddenly understand the need for a graduate assistant. Let someone else get paid for lugging around books for me, and everyone will be happy.
Oh, God. I'm turning into The Man. And now I have to get some of the office boxes out of my car and into my apartment, move part of the laundry hamper into my luggage, and catch a plane tomorrow morning. Also, it would have been a good idea to eat something today. Must fix that, as soon as I locate the Advil. Would also be a good time to watch Angel tape, so as to avoid having to pack it.
I wonder if graduate assistants ever tape programs for their professors who don't have cable? No, forget I said that. At least until August.
Office-packing continues apace; I ran out of boxes yesterday, but the nice people at the grocery store came through with additional cartons which once held jugs of spring water. Nine boxes of books and three or four boxes of files -- well, there will be, once I finish sorting through the six-inch layer of Absolutely Crucial Things which tends to take over my desk, hiding items such as library books and floppy disks. On the plus side, I have disposed of conference-discounted-book-order forms from May 2001. Go, me.
In keeping with my current immersion in books and deadlines, I've been mulling over the itty-bitty backlash against book clubs I've noticed popping up in a few places -- specifically, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Victoria's and Tinka's blogs. Now, I realize that I'm comparing apples and orange VW Beetles here, not because I distinguish all that sharply between blog entries and online newspaper columns, but because the Guardian piece is just obnoxious beyond belief. Author Jenny Colgan asserts that book clubs consist of "lots of lonely middle-class women" bewailing their husbands' inattention and demonstrating predictable and "acceptably middlebrow" reading tastes, while secretly hating to read. (It turns out that Colgan's former office's book club panned her book. Heh.) For the record, I myself have participated in a book club, and nobody -- nobody -- has ever managed to accuse me of hating reading (or, for that matter, of having an inattentive husband; I suppose I'm middle-class, though, since all Americans are by default). Personal anecdotes aside, however, cultural snobbery is not neither attractive nor persuasive. It's only inadvertently humorous, as when the snob is writing for the Guardian, uses "middlebrow" instead of "petit-bourgeois," and would clearly walk across hot coals to have had her book selected by Oprah.
I was a little surprised by Victoria's and Tinka's appreciation of the Guardian article. Both of them strike me as intelligent women who are not afflicted with acute cultural snobbery, and neither of them suffers from the sort of literary sour grapes Colgan exudes. But perhaps the NYT article offers a partial answer. Judith Shulevitz points out that Oprah's book club selections were designed to provide pleasure and self-affirmation rather than debate or self-education, and addresses the trend towards civic book clubs which select similarly inoffensive offerings in an apparent effort to produce "a unified body of productive citizens." I find these massive book clubs -- everyone who watches Oprah, the city of New York, and so on -- pretty unappealing, myself, and perhaps that's what Victoria and Tinka are thinking about. The whole point of a book club, as far as I'm concerned, is not to Get People Reading -- I mean, it's nice if it legitimates a certain kind of reading for someone who would otherwise be overwhelmed by other demands, but Shulevitz is right when she asserts that reading itself is anti-social and not terribly productive. Book clubs, to my mind, get people talking about reading, which is otherwise only done in our culture by people who use words like "middlebrow." And they get people talking to other people they might not otherwise meet, about topics they might not otherwise entertain. Certainly, book clubs can be couched in unappealing rhetoric, and I've never watched Oprah for more than five minutes because her "advice" strikes me as blindingly obvious and a poor excuse for TV entertainment. I still fail to see the problem with book clubs per se.
The book club I belonged to was organized specifically for women, by a woman who moved into the same grad-student apartment complex as me over the same summer. She wanted to meet her neighbors and find some people to chat with about books, and that sounded good to me, so I called the number she'd put up on flyers. In the end, a rotating group of about ten of us proceeded to form a monthly book club, held at members' apartments, which I attended fairly regularly for three years and hosted on several occasions before I moved away. Our educational levels varied widely (most of the women had husbands in grad school, although several of them also had their own graduate degrees), as did our lifestyles, our religious backgrounds, our ages (mostly late 20s-early 30s), and our families (although there was a preponderance of married women with young children -- and attentive husbands, judging from the fact that everyone generally left their kids at home). We'd read anything someone suggested that we could reasonably find two or three copies of to hand around, and so we read some typical Women's Novels -- the sort Oprah usually picked -- along with some travel stories, some biography, some academic satire, some children's literature (well, Harry Potter), and a number of other subgenres. We shared interests in religion, it turned out, and in education (several of us had degrees in one field or the other); a lot of the books we picked addressed one or another of those themes. We also shared an appreciation for baked goods and at least a mild interest in baking them ourselves, such that the last two years' December meetings also featured a massive holiday cookie exchange. Some of the women apparently also shared fertility cycles, since we had two pairs of book-club babies born within a week of each other. (We threw showers.) We always caught up on each others' lives after we'd finished discussing the book, and sometimes we'd meet in the stairwells or outside the building and ask each other how the book was going. It was fun.
Oh, yes, we also talked about the books during the meetings. I am a veteran of many, many literature classes, at pretty much every possible educational level and in a great many institutions which think highly of themselves. I didn't notice anything missing from the discussions which ensued in my book club -- they tended to be light on the critical theory, but there are worse sins. We did, indeed, mention whether or not we'd liked the book; I disbelieve that anyone can successfully read books without forming this sort of opinion about them. Then we talked about why we had responded to the book the way we did. Some of us tended to wind up providing background about things we happened to know, ranging from Canadian attitudes towards indigenous peoples to theories of learning in gifted children to the history of a certain mainline Protestant denomination. Sometimes we focused on plot, sometimes on a certain character, sometimes on style or setting or all of the above. Sometimes we agreed in our opinions; sometimes we disagreed strongly. At all times, we remained friendly and civil, which is a quality I occasionally wish I could transport into more classrooms. I don't feel empty without a book club to attend these days, and I certainly haven't stopped reading, but I miss my book club.
Of course, now I have a blog community instead, and I know a lot of women who all get together to talk about the latest Buffy episode. All that's missing is the baked goods. Anyone want to come over to my place for some cookies?
I did promise to explain what I was doing in the library's self-help section yesterday, did I not? I mean, "what I was doing" in the sense of purpose, not in the sense of activity (which consisted mostly of skimming through titles and making faces). I was looking for That Hewlett Book -- you know, the one you probably heard about on NPR or in a newspaper article or something. The latest candidate for the Feminist Backlash Award. The one that apparently claims you should be having kids by the time you're 27 or you're dead meat. (Actually, it's 35. Whew.) I tend to believe that one should actually do one's damnedest to read a book through before engaging on lengthy, vitriolic rants about it. And that was how I wound up in the self-help (really, the Self-Help For Ladies) section making faces.
Now, the proper title of That Hewlett Book -- which I had sensibly blocked out until I actually had it in front of me -- is Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children. This gave me pause when I finally did read it, because, really, a quest for children? I am a sucker for quests. I will eagerly read about accounts of quests for rings, kings, artifacts, lost cities, true love, treasures, knowledge, god(s), and missing car keys. But I somehow doubt that having one's own children -- for that is indeed what Ms. Hewlett is addressing -- constitutes a quest.
Having judged the book by its cover, I proceeded to read it. Yes, every blessed page. (I can make it through pretty much anything except Tristram Shandy, so this is not necessarily a recommendation.) I realized that the "quest for children" was probably not a publisher's intervention when I came upon Hewlett's self-disclosure on p. 10, which begins, "To put it as simply as possible, children have been the most enduring passion of my life." My goodness gracious. To put it as simply as possible, I like children -- I am comfortable around children -- I would like to raise children, in the plural, one of these days, and think it would be nifty to get pregnant myself with at least one or two of them -- but "the most enduring passion of my life"? Uh, no.
Hewlett is, in fact, offering some very sensible policy suggestions for making simultaneous parenting and career advancement more practicable: restructuring retirement plans, allowing for career breaks, providing for up to three months of paid parenting leave, that sort of thing. These are excellent ideas. They are not gender-specific, incidentally; I can think of a few proposed reforms which would be aimed only at women (provision for on-the-job breast-feeding or pumping rooms; ergonomic attention to the needs of pregnant women; improved insurance coverage for pre- and post-natal care for mother and child), but these do not enter into Creating A Life. These policy suggestions take up perhaps half a chapter. The rest of the book... is directed specifically and exclusively at women. In the absence of policy shifts, you see -- or, apparently, in the presence of them -- it is up to us to ensure that we quest successfully for children.
Y'know, my memory's a little fuzzy on those middle-school Health classes, but I could almost swear that there's usually a Y-chromosome type involved in "creating a life." And, sure enough, many of Hewlett's interviewees have or had husbands or long-term male relationship partners. (Indeed, a few abandoned the possibility of having a child due to intervention from a husband or potential husband. How... charming.) In fact, getting hitched is a cornerstone of Hewlett's manifesto; the second of five conclusive recommendations to her readers is as follows:
Give urgent priority to finding a partner. This project is extremely time-sensitive and deserves special attention in your twenties. Understand that forging a loving, lasting marriage will enhance your life and make it much more likely that you will have children. The data presented in this book demonstrate that high-achieving women find it much easier to find partners at younger ages.
Of course, Hewlett's data also support her claim that "high-achieving women continue to carry the lion's share of domestic responsibilities." However, this fact produces absolutely no further response or advice to readers on Hewlett's part. God forbid we should, perhaps, prioritize finding a partner who has heard of that crazy new thing called feminism and is capable of taking some parental leave himself or maybe even staying home with the kids for a few years. God forbid, moreover, that we should worry a trifle about the ethics of marrying someone at least partially for stud purposes. (If it comes to that, I understand that there are sperm banks and adoption clinics, but Hewlett assumes that all women want to carry Their Own Child and that all men will require their wives to carry Their Own Child.) I won't even get into the massive heteronormativity of this whole project. Obviously, women and men who wish to marry others of the same sex and/or raise children with them do not exist in Hewlett's world. Similarly, women and men happy to form families with children to whom one or both of them has not personally contributed genetic material are alien to her. Divorced fathers exist only as barriers to their second wives' quests.
So, yes, I dislike this book rather intensely, as I thought I would. Hewlett's own marriage -- she discusses her personal history in some detail -- is not the sort I would want. She compliments her husband for having "devoted a huge chunk of his imaginative intelligence to supporting and celebrating his wonderful--if demanding--children and his high-maintenance wife," and I wonder if the two of them have heard that Ike's running for a second term and the Commies are trying to put a man on the moon. She tells us how she ditched two careers in order to have children; I would have probably have sued after the first, and would definitely have let Hubby Dearest take his turn before I quit the second. It's sad, though, because I think many of her policy ideas are deserving of more attention. Unfortunately, they are overshadowed and even vitiated by her inability to conceive (ahem) of anyone other than professional women themselves taking responsibility for the current state of affairs with regard to their chances of having kids while keeping their jobs. I, frankly, have better things to feel responsible for.
That reminds me -- what I should be doing right now, and plan to do as soon as I finish updating my journal, is writing a review of a very different book. It deals with a woman of the fourteenth century. She felt called to the service of God and the Church from an early age, but married obediently -- and happily, by all accounts -- had many children, and only after her husband died did she embark on a long, high-profile, and extremely successful career as a voice for moral, ecclesiastical, and political reform across Europe. The fourteenth century was, in some respects, a more liberated era for European women than the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. However, I would like to think that women have made a little progress since the fourteenth century. And if they haven't, they certainly need to.
God help us all if that's a revolutionary statement.
Mercifully, the library's Self-Help For Ladies section is next to the gardening and cookbook sections (John Dewey, of the Dewey Decimal System, was a man of the nineteenth century), so I also picked up an entertaining history of American cooking, a new book on mints, and one on bulbs. My quest for the perfect back-porch garden will commence later tonight.
Tell me, do any of you remember the Christian Children's Fund commercials? Those endless proto-infomercials with smiling white adults (many of them Sally Struthers) holding the hands of pathetically malnourished dark-skinned children? I think there are a whole slew of different charities doing the same thing now, but I was forcibly reminded of the CCF when I flipped on the TV last night and discovered that, lo and behold, my local Buffy-showing station had decided to break with all precedent and show the season finale on Wednesday instead of Saturday night. Or, to be more precise, I was forcibly reminded of the CCF every time we flashed back to shirtless Spike. If the camera really adds ten pounds, I am worried for James Marsters's health. (Why, yes, I have been skipping lots of Buffy episodes this season, which no doubt explains why I hadn't already memorized the contours of his naked chest.) Otherwise, Spike didn't belong in this episode at all, and certainly not at the climactic moment. I sort of look forward to having a few things from the show's internal mythology cleared up next season, though.
(Somewhat spoiler-inclusive remarks about "Two To Go" and "Grave" follow. Tomorrow, for the entertainment of non-Buffy fans, I shall recount my daring foray into the local library's self-help section for inspiration on Women's Issues.)
Fortunately, I managed to tune in to "Two To Go" several scenes before Giles showed up, or I would've been seriously annoyed. (I believe I missed Willow telling off Dawn. Oh well.) It was, on the whole, a pretty good showing; I am increasingly fond of Anya, nearly reconciled to Dawn's presence, willing to live with Xander's many faults, and... no, not really okay with the way Willow is apparently being forgiven for her trespasses because they came from corrupting "evil magic" (you know, the kind we've never heard of before), and downright disturbed by the evil Jew-turned-Wiccan-turned-Satanist (?!?) being saved by a carpenter's selfless love and gratuitous wound-suffering (at least they missed the hands and feet) while Buffy reaffirms her commitment to self-effacing mommyhood against a backdrop of lyrics borrowed from St. Francis... oh, wait, where was I? Right. Good qualities.
I'll gloss over a great many of unfortunate exposition and poorly plastered plot holes because, well, Giles. And Giles-Buffy interaction. And Giles-Anya interaction; goodness knows that if I had to choose between Giles and Xander, and had teleportation powers thrown in to solve any long-distance-relationship issues.... And I like Buffy again, which is a huge relief, although it's a pity she still hasn't learned to anticipate the ritual end-of-season distraction ploy from her enemies. Of course, it's more obvious than ever how absurd Giles' exit earlier this season was, but I figure we're going to get at least a few Giles scenes at the beginning of next season, so that's something.
Still, I always figured Buffy for a crypto-Marxist subtext when it came to religion, not a crypto-C.S.-Lewis subtext. This is messing with my theories but good. Add that to the pathetic excuse for "Osiris" we saw in "Villains," and I will have to shut up entirely about the clever ways in which Buffy used to play with established mythology. Reducing polytheism to demon-worship is... how shall I put this... not terribly innovative. (And, hey, was anyone else fascinated by the iconography of Propexia*? Let me put this another way: if you saw a woman dressed in a snake portrayed in a church context, who would you think of first?)
So everyone's ready to live happily ever after, and Spike's got a soul. Well, heck, it sounds about a million times better than the Angel finale, which I continue to avoid watching.
* -- Or whatever her name was; I didn't have the VCR on. Anyone who can figure out where Joss & Co. derived that name will receive my thanks; all I can think of is a drug for curing male pattern baldness, and while I'm sure there's an interesting subtext in the fact that if "the active ingredient in PROPECIA is swallowed or absorbed through the skin of a pregnant woman it may cause a male baby to be born with abnormalities of the sex organs," I'm hoping there's a less disturbing explanation. Yes, I realize that they may have made it up. This way is more fun. ;)
After spending the best part of yesterday afternoon discovering that my car's alignment is really just fine, I sensibly set my VCR timer to record last night's Angel, but somehow... I'm in no great hurry to watch it. And the rumors for next season sound pretty atrocious. So I'm thinking I might just wait till after the season finale, fast-forward through both episodes for the handful of scenes which interest me -- that'd be the two per episode with Wesley and possibly one or two with Cordelia, because I'm developing a certain macabre fascination with her plot-resolving "powers" and the way the writers have been doing verbal gymnastics to avoid overtly religious language about them -- and, as I've suggested before, look for a new TV show to watch in the summer. Or the fall. Or ten years from now. It's, um, possible that I'm not feeling quite as calm and rational about this as I want to be.*
(No, dear readers, I am not going to start watching Six Feet Under or The Sopranos -- quite apart from the fact that I don't need and can't afford premium cable. I prefer to avoid graphic violence and realism. I like fantasy elements, a strong and well-developed internal mythology, the occasional joke directed at a literate audience, and a strong dose of idealism. If "Alias" expanded its prophecy subplot, maybe. Or if "Firefly" is any good -- although after seeing Joss Whedon's continual pontifications about Giving The Audience What They Need, I am tempted to boycott any future Joss shows as a matter of principle. I need many things -- food, clothing, shelter, family, knowledge, power, and God, not necessarily in that order -- but my "need" for any given development on any given TV show is way the heck below my "need" for wedge-heeled burgundy pleather boots.)
Now, in other news, I need to do laundry, pack, and get to bed early tonight, because I have a long trip to Boondoggle tomorrow and lots of appointments set up for Thursday. Posts in here will be infrequent, if they appear at all, for the next week.
* -- In fact, I've been doing a textbook version of the five stages of grief during this season of Angel -- I could name episodes to go with "denial," "anger," and "bargaining," and I'm currently in "despair." Or at least "intermittent melancholy," because... well, I used to really enjoy it. But at least "acceptance" is around the corner.
Finally got around to "Seeing Red." (The following post contains spoilers for that Buffy episode, but not for any future episodes. Those of my readers not interested in Buffy characters should probably back away slowly.) I wonder how many people I could simultaneously infuriate by pointing out that based on their track record with Willow and Tara, Mutant Enemy should have no problem hooking Buffy and Spike up again?
Actually, the good thing about Tara's death is that I can pretend that she was just gearing up to tackle important issues with Willow. (I'm not sure how I can explain "whoops, I just decided keeping Buffy's secret doesn't matter any more," much less "whoops, I'm not the least bit put off by remembering that last time I did this you'd just wiped my memory," but in my imaginary Buffyverse, Tara can explain them.) And the good thing about my being out of town next weekend is that I can pretend someone will nullify the whole "magic addiction" plot instead of continuing to take it seriously, thus returning Willow to the interesting (and, to my mind, much more sympathetic) level of jaw-dropping yet character-consistent I've-always-been-the-smartest-kid-in-the-class arrogance she seemed to have at the beginning of S6.
I thought the nerds worked out well, and the return of mid-combat zingers to Buffy's conversational repertoire was much appreciated -- although, let's face it, Warren should've gotten himself a much bigger gun there at the end, given what we know about his personality. Xander... well, hey, I'm a sucker for nice reconciliation scenes, but I wish they'd find him something a little more substantial for him to do, like apologizing properly to Anya. Who is, by the way, loads more fun as a single vengeance demon than as Xander's Girlfriend Who Makes Inappropriate Remarks. (In my imaginary Buffyverse, next week also features someone pointing out that while Anya probably had a human soul up through "Hell's Bells" -- she was no longer a demon, and she showed no signs of the sociopathy which the canon associates with soul-challenged humans* -- she's now a demon, and if her soul isn't changed in any way, I'd love to know exactly what that transformation consists of. I'd also love for this to be consistent with whatever's happened to Cordelia on Angel. Yep, I'm a dreamer.)
As for Buffy and Spike, I'm going to make the assumption that all my readers are sane, intelligent, enlightened human beings, and that we all therefore recognize that the act of forcing sex on someone who is not consenting is Very, Very Bad, regardless of the gender, species, prior history, or moral capacity of either party. Please do not depress me by suggesting otherwise. I'm also going to go out on a limb and note that I for one (and I am not especially perceptive in these matters, whereas Spike is supposed to be) had very little trouble distinguishing between Buffy's no-meaning-yes several episodes back and her no-meaning-no in this episode well after their breakup. I have had no trouble distinguishing between different sorts of "no" in my own relationships, either. Context is essential. And I need hardly add that if Buffy gets back together with anything in the form of James Marsters, it's going to send a really disturbing message.**
That said, what I find confusing about that scene, and its follow-up with Clem, is whether or not we were supposed to sympathize with Spike. I really hope we're not, but on the other hand, he's being portrayed as something approaching a tragic hero -- that's "tragic hero" in the good old-fashioned non-Byronic sense of "protagonist brought low by inevitable actions stemming from one or more intrinsic flaws," not in the sense of "dreamy hunk whom we all love no matter what he does," although I realize there's some confusion about this distinction, possibly because of the whole black-clad motorcycle deal. But I'm thinking Oedipus, not Heathcliff. (Anyone who is still trying to remember where the title of this post comes from: remember the end of "The Puppet Show"? It actually kinda fits, except that Clem would make a lousy Chorus.***) The thing is, if vampirism becomes simply a tragic flaw, it's no longer a tragedy in and of itself. It's a character trait -- or even a piece of background information -- rather than an all-encompassing identity. And that conflicts with pretty much everything else the Buffyverse has ever said about vampirism. I'm going to assume that this is another sparkling example of the Buffy writers trying to have it both ways, so as not to alienate the many viewers who have sharply polarized views about Spike's character and Spike's relationship with Buffy. Me, they just confuse.
On the positive side, in my imaginary Buffyverse, Buffy's fondness for reformed bad boys ought to lead her straight into Jonathan's loving arms. But, then, in my imaginary Buffyverse Giles is still in Sunnydale, and Season Four turned out in a very different way, and Season Five was all about Buffy's Slayer nature and infiltrating the Council of Watchers, so... right. I haven't watched all of Buffy S6, but I suspect this was one of the better episodes, really. Still, I think Xander-as-Oedipus summed it up: "Unfolding, restless, visitant, sped by an ill wind in haste. Madness, and -- madness and stabbing pain, and, aaand, uh... oh... oh... memory of, uh, ill deeds I have done."
Gosh, sounds like fun, doesn't it? Now excuse me while I go watch "Waiting For God" on late-night PBS.
* -- Cf. "Living Conditions" on Buffy S4 and "I've Got You Under My Skin" on Angel S1.
** -- Spike has gone off to change things. The following is, for once, pure unspoiled speculation: I really can't believe Spike's going to do something as simple and predictable as just getting the chip out, can you? And I also disbelieve that we'll get another souled vampire, so that leaves us with either Chipless Loveless Spike The Badass Vampire or William the Newly Human. Chipless Spike would be a Big Bad, and if not, I fear a Buffy/William relationship next season. I mean, I thought Angel did a decent-ish job demonstrating that he and Angelus were the same person, or at least that Angel needed to cope with everything he'd done as a soulless vampire -- uh, before he gave up on the redemption thing last season and turned into a self-centered asshole, but I think I'm getting off on a tangent.
*** -- Imagine Xander-as-Oedipus's speech in Spike's mouth after That Scene. Now imagine Clem as the chorus responding "No marvel if in such a plight thou feel'st / The double weight of past and present woes." Now imagine Clem recommending a wet cloth.
Today, for a wonder, it is sunny and relatively warm. Tomorrow, of course, it will rain again, but today it's been gorgeous, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly as possible. I took a walk across campus with one of my office neighbors, then got a barely coffee-related iced drink from Starbucks* and wandered back to the office through green quads where groups of Large Midwestern University students were busy moving out of their dorm rooms, playing frisbee, and singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" in something approaching key. (No, really. I don't know what got into them, either -- it seemed a little early in the afternoon for alcohol, but I think they just finished finals, so maybe that was it.) I did experience a brief twinge of melancholy as I realized that my student days are irrevocably over, and that I'm going to have to avoid wandering the Wonderful University campus in blue jeans, a sparkly knit top, bare feet, and leather next year in order to maintain my Professorial Persona. Then the sugar from the frappucino hit my bloodstream and I decided I could cope with being All Grown Up, although I reserve the right to add glitter to my toenail polish to compensate. Moral of the story: feelings of profound alienation and existential angst are way easier to deal with in sunlight.
According to my intermittent Talmud study -- wait, I promise there's a logical connection here -- Simeon bar Yohai claimed that Abraham had a precious stone he wore around his neck which instantly healed anyone who looked at it. When Abraham died, God took the stone and hung it on the sun. Hence, Rabbi Simeon explained triumphantly, a proverb which notes that people feel better later in the day. (The logical application of this doctrine to seasonal affective disorder apparently escaped the Talmudic sages, but it's good to know that enjoying the sunshine is more of a Jewish tradition than one might think from, say, reading The Chosen too many times.) Which reminds me of something else I picked up from the same source, and those of you who don't want to read about Naomi's Take on Jewish Law should probably go page through Spider-Man's Greatest Bible Stories instead, then enjoy whatever sunshine you can get. But the entry title only makes sense if you read the rest of the entry....
...right, then. The whole Abraham's-stone bit comes from the Talmud tractate I'm currently slogging through with the help of several different email lists -- it's in Bava Basra (Betra, if you use Sephardic pronunciation) 16b. Bava Basra is the third of three "Bava" tractates -- "Bava Kama" and "Bava Metzia" are the other two, and the names actually mean "first gate," "middle gate," and "final gate" in Aramaic. This is possibly the most interesting thing about them, because they deal with various types of civil disputes and torts. Unsurprisingly, they're really long. And kinda dull, unless property law turns you on. I, personally, am mostly just waiting to get to the much niftier rules about dealing with idolaters later in this section. But every now and then something fun turns up. Abraham's stone, for instance, which came up a few weeks ago.
Today's "something fun" isn't especially wacky, but it's something I'd only seen before taken out of context. In context, the rabbis are rattling on with all this stuff about whether a woman can buy from or sell to her husband, how various non-Jewish authorities or even Jewish converts have different legal standing than Jews, and a lot of other exceedingly non-progressive business standards. It's difficult for me to find anything particularly meaningful or helpful in all of this -- I happen to like my status as a fully enfranchised legal adult, and I don't think that should anything to do with either the birth religion of my mother or the fact that I have ovaries.*** Partway through an especially mind-numbing discussion of what to do if Reuven buys land from a non-Jew but Shimon starts digging in it, though, a line pops up which I'd heard before: "the law of the kingdom is the law."
Now, this ain't Christianity -- although the difference is less obvious in other places -- and "the law of the kingdom" refers very simply to whatever legal system has jurisdiction over property transactions in the place where the land is located. In other words, "the law of the kingdom/nation/state you're in right now is binding." This principle turned out to be pretty fundamental for later generations of Talmud-reading Jews, who were invariably operating under a series of laws that were not identical with the Jewish ones. It's important because it allowed Jews to function in non-Jewish communities without their (a) necessarily requiring non-Jews to conform to Jewish law or (b) routinely breaking all sorts of non-Jewish laws.*** It makes a lot of sense, really. For a document that's at least half devoted to detailing the rituals of a Temple that had been destroyed for 100-500 years (depending on what layer of commentary you're in), the Babylonian Talmud is remarkably practical. Honest.
It's not that Jews are expected to be perfect little law-abiding citizens at all times, of course; the earliest layers of the Talmud were written in the aftermath of a severe Roman beatdown, and they're positively brimming with snappy little sayings that boil down to "never trust the government."**** So I can keep going nine miles over any posted speed limit with a good conscience. What I find especially neat about "the law of the kingdom" in context, though, is that it reminds me how there's room to adapt ancient religious beliefs to a modern world while respecting both parts of that equation. If the laws of my country treat me -- female, unmarried -- as a full legal adult identical to a man my age, then maybe I should think about behaving like a full legal adult identical to a man my age for religious purposes, even though most of the Talmud itself would be less than welcoming to such a development. I have very few qualms about taking on the responsibilities men usually accept in Judaism -- this sort of study being one of them -- but it's nice to have something new to add to my usual arguments in support of my practice, which range from "look, it's the twenty-first century, and I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy" to "let me tell you what Maimonides said about divine accomodation."
And, certainly, if Shimon starts digging on my land, I can darn well order him off it. (Without going to my father. Who, as a non-Jew, would... produce a massive legal headache for all concerned, and one that has nothing to do with my father's personality, either. ;) That's something, isn't it? Also, the sun is still shining.
* -- Mocha Coconut Frappucino. Tasty, but I'm having a tough time justifying it to myself as "coffee," and I say this as someone who has been known to claim that ordering tiramisu counts as "coffee" (because, of course, it usually contains some sort of espresso flavoring). I also refer to ice cream as a "calcium supplement," but only for my mother's benefit -- I do have some slight grip on nutritional reality.
** -- And, yes, of course I have issues with the way Judaism is integrated into the government of the State of Israel, but that's a post for another day.
*** -- All of this makes me curious as to what the various schools of Islamic legal thought say about shariya and living in non-Muslim countries. Do any of my readers have an idea about this?
**** -- The earliest layers of the Talmud were also, apparently, put together by a Roman-appointed Jewish leader. But nobody ever said we had to be consistent.
Last night's Angel was, as I suggested yesterday, not too bad. Note my contagious enthusiasm. (I doubt that there are real spoilers for "A New World" in the following assessment, but read at your own risk.) The kid playing Connor can act, which is a blessing. You can tell Angel didn't raise him, because he actually exhibited concern about the plight of someone not related to or working with him.* I'm normally skeptical about anti-drug plotlines, especially since the federal government encourages them, but this one fit in reasonably well, reminded us that the show is set in L.A. rather than Never-Never Land, and wasn't too predictable. I'm annoyed (not the least bit surprised, but annoyed) that Angel's continued disregard of the whole "dimensional rifts can destroy the earth" subplot in favor of father/son bonding was rewarded by having said subplot handily fixed, but at least Lorne's friend was kind of fun. Finally, I'm becoming increasingly fond of Groo, as the use of the above quote (yes, it was sarcasm) will indicate. Obviously, though, since Groo is implicitly questioning the Angelcentric Theory of the Multiverse, he will shortly be kicked out of the Hyperion.
The real high point of the episode, of course, was Wesley. Completely non-intellectual reaction: jeans and T-shirt. Yummy. Semi-intellectual reaction: I think Wesley and Lilah are just fascinating together, but I believe and hope he knows better than to join with Wolfram & Hart (wouldn't a double-agent scam be tough to pull off with the mind-readers and all?). Admittedly, this is also a selfish desire of mine; I'm apparently one of the few Buffyverse fans who does not find evil sexy -- in fact, it's a big ol' turn-off. Still, I find character massacre even more of a turn-off, and for Wesley to agree to join with W&H, he'd have to be totally broken, all the way back to where he was in "Bad Girls" and then some. I don't see that having happened.
Totally intellectual reaction: I do have quibbles with Wesley's and Lilah's characterization, and I know why: the writers are so anxious to remind us that Angel's tops that they make Lilah -- Lilah, people! -- compare him to Jesus. And then both Lilah and Wesley continue conversing as if this were even dimly reasonable. Besides, I disbelieve that neither of them would realize that the only appropriate denizen of the Inferno's ninth circle he could be compared to is Brutus. (Quite apart from the motives behind Wesley's "betrayal," Dante's description fits: "Vedi come si storce, e non fa motto!"**) In the interests of not boring everyone else to death, I won't get into other quibbles with how the Inferno was described. I should probably just be thrilled that they made an honest-to-gosh literary reference.***
One additional note about Wesley, Lilah, and possible plot developments: bringing Ethan in to counsel Wesley and Lilah, or just having the latter two go for the side of chaos, is a wonderful idea. I've seen this in several places in the ever-shrinking Angel hive-mind, and fanfic writers everywhere have my blessing -- heck, my engraved invitation -- to let 'er rip. (That and three bucks will get you a mocha frappucino.) But do bear in mind that chaos/order and evil/good aren't quite the same things -- I've been saying this for months, and I think it's been amply confirmed at various points throughout the Buffyverse, but we got direct canonical confirmation in "Forgiving." The girl in the White Room likes trouble but hates chaos. The girl in the White Room also seems to have some sort of privileged status at Wolfram & Hart. So Lilah's employment status, and a few other things, ought to get interesting. Just sayin'.
* -- Oh, heck, I'm being unfair. Angel also occasionally interests himself in third parties who either pay him money, distract him from contemplating his navel (gosh, that pig's blood does bloat, doesn't it?), or allow him to project his issues onto them.
** -- "See how he writhes, and does not speak a word!" This is where Angel fans should start having "Sanctuary" flashbacks. Holtz, of course, would make a superb Cassius, and I think Angel's capacity for self-delusion does indeed add up to something resembling Caesar's. But if you're going to think of Angel as a Christ-figure, then there's only one reasonable candidate for Judas: That Woman On That Other Show That Angel Has Totally Broken Away From, Yessiree. I mean, sure, she had to send him to hell to avoid having the world destroyed by a dimensional rift, but Our Hero Angel knows better than to worry about those pesky things.
*** -- If I finally wrote up that rant about the use and abuse of foreign languages on Angel, would anyone read it?
I offered some general conference-going advice after I returned from MPC #2, and there's only so much to add. Comfy-yet-professional shoes are a good idea. Bringing your own snacks and drinks is essential. Plotting out each day's activities in advance is useful. Staying hydrated is always a good idea. Have current business cards available if at all possible. Have no other gods before me. Only YOU can prevent forest fires... okay, I'm getting sort of punchy, but I don't think most of my readers need a freelance academic advisor in any case.
I love conferences. I imagine that I'll become less "professionally active"* eventually -- having kids, at some point considerably in the future, would cut down on my jet-setting ability for awhile, and full-time teaching will also keep me busier than before -- but I find most conferences to be at least somewhat fun and useful. (I'm plotting to reform the one that isn't, but that's another story.) Major Professional Conference #3 is probably my favorite event of the year, despite the remarkable and consistent suckiness of its chosen venue. I wonder if this isn't actually a brilliant organizational strategy, since I have long noted that awful conference venues generate conversation opportunities where no others would exist.** Apart from the venue, however, MPC #3 is pretty ideal: there are dozens of smaller sub-organizations which help one to meet new people in manageable settings, there are any number of friends and acquaintances on hand, there are especially helpful book offerings in the exhibit hall, and there are many fascinating and relevant papers being presented throughout the weekend. In case of financial emergency, the conference can be attended relatively cheaply for those within driving distance, and close attention to one's evening reception schedule can even provide free suppers of cheese-and-crackers. One can organize a session or arrange to give a paper in someone else's session quite easily, without most of the paperwork and politicking required to accomplish something similar at other MPCs. It's not really a job-market conference (too late in the year, for one thing), so there aren't people wandering about in extremely formal suits exuding desperation -- in fact, it's a relatively casual conference, such that I'm on the dressy side in a nice unstructured suit-type thing. And it's in early May, when the weather is usually decent and is at least not snowing.
On another conference-related note, what Jenny-O describes almost dissolves the shaky boundary between academic conference and fan convention entirely, except that I take it nobody was demanding autographs. It sounds fascinating. (It's really just as well that I wasn't there; I can speak media theory in emergencies and I wouldn't demand autographs, but I would want to corner poor Jane Espenson and demand that she take back all the stuff in the F/X commercials about how they don't need to do any demon research.) In response to one of Jen's observations, however, I feel compelled to point out that I'm a female academic who is (a) if not fat, not the least bit skinny; (b) only hovering on the edge of blonde; and (c) not always wearing black, and pretty much never head-to-toe. Only in English departments (and certain languages, and maybe art history) are people all that militant about wearing black -- and then it depends on how urban your colleagues are. I very sensibly opted for a discipline in which many practitioners are somewhat fashion-deficient, allowing me to look sharp when I wear things that, y'know, go together and fit properly.
Tonight on Angel, the utterly non-spoilery wildfeed report: Wesley is interesting, as are any characters who show up in the same room with him. Two scenes. The Hyperion crew and their hangers-on are relatively unrepugnant, except that they no longer care about anything except themselves/each other and I no longer care about them. Tomorrow, instead of writing about Angel, I am giving serious thought to writing about the infinitely more interesting suggestions for Angel fanfic that assorted persons keep taunting me with.
* -- Does anyone else wonder about the relationship between the phrases "professionally active" and "sexually active," neither of which describe quite what you'd think they do? Just me? Right, then.
** -- No matter how massive the status differential, I can sidle up to anyone and engage in humorous complaint about the impossible-to-find meeting rooms or the lack of acceptable restaurants within walking distance. After my quarry has agreed with me, I can then, being well brought up, say, "Oh, excuse me, I'm... and I do...," phrasing the latter (that is, my research interests) in terms designed to evoke a response of "Golly, I do that too!" It's much more pleasant than simply marching up to an important person, sans introduction, and announcing that you'd like them to read your manuscript / write an article for your collection / hire you / become your best and dearest pal.
A few of my readers may connect the above phrase with one of Elizabeth Peters's least successful early thrillers, and a few may be scratching their heads and thinking "Anya's nightmares: next week on Buffy?" But only a very few of my readers are likely to remember that the "four hundred rabbits" alludes to a group of heavy-drinking-loose-moraled Aztec deities. ("Centzon totochtin" -- that's "four hundred rabbits" in Nahuatl -- also seems to have been used as a synonym for pulque, fermented maguey cactus sap; the deities in question were children of Mayahuel, the four-hundred-breasted goddess of pulque.*)
So. Masses of heavy-drinking Aztec deities. We all remember that I'm spending the weekend at Major Professional Conference #3, right? Do I even have to explain the joke? I'm not a heavy drinker in the first place -- I get my overindulgence ya-yas from chocolate, book-buying, and shoe-shopping -- but I'm even less inclined than usual to get wasted when I am (a) in the same room with a good third of the people around whom my career is built, and (b) planning to hit the book exhibits as soon as they open at 8 am. Neither of these insights seems especially profound to me, but a lot of people clearly do not grasp them. Well... more books for the rest of us. (Yes, I'm moving in a few months, but after you hit thirty boxes of books, one more really doesn't matter.)
I've been thinking about books and bunnies on and off, because last week my little cousin -- we'll call him A.J. -- called me two days running to chat about Watership Down, which he had to read for his seventh-grade GT English class. A.J. thinks Watership Down is unspeakably boring; I most emphatically do not (although I'm sure it helped that I didn't have to read it for an English class). This is nothing new -- A.J. and I love each other dearly, but don't have a great deal in common. I'm the rebel of A.J.'s many alpha-female relatives because I seldom level off dry measurements with a knife when I bake and live in cities instead of suburbs; he's an incredibly sweet, obedient child, probably because the puberty hormones haven't really kicked in. But A.J. and his sister figured out years ago that (a) Cousin Naomi has probably read everything they'll ever be assigned in school at least once and (b) Cousin Naomi has ridiculously good recall of details in books she read years ago. Neither of their parents have this sort of background. So I get these calls -- and I keep trying to figure out whether there's a tactful way to suggest that I'd feel a tiny bit more loved if they called me just to chat at other times, too -- when someone has an English (or Spanish, or Social Studies, etc., etc.) assignment. Especially one they hate.
I loved Watership Down as a child, and still enjoy it now, thanks to my previously established weaknesses for epic narrative, prophecy subplots, myths, legends, and sneaky social critique, along with my previously established ability to simply ignore a lack of strong female characters in the band-of-brothers variety of adventure story. I also still get a kick out of the invented language of Lapine, even though I'm now old enough to question why it doesn't have any apparent verb tenses or moods and follows the exact same word order as English. (Invented languages are not purely a fantastic or even a fictional prerogative; they pop up in unexpected places throughout history. For example, Hildegard of Bingen had a fairly elaborate one, although Hildegard scholars remain baffled as to what she used it for.) If my much-thumbed copy of Watership Down wasn't somewhere in the Book Boxes Not To Be Opened Until After The Next Move, I'd be re-reading it right now.
Not until this year, however, would it have occurred to me to do a Google search for Watership Down fanfic after I got off the phone with A.J. (The conversation went well, although I had trouble not launching into Unnecessary Lecture Mode when he asked me -- no doubt reading from a list of study questions -- what role the El-ahrairah myths play in the book. I did point out that this was like asking a die-hard baseball fan what's the big deal about the designated hitter rule.) Sure, enough, WD fanfic exists, complete with Mary Sues. I just resisted the masochistic urge to read past the first paragraph of something entitled "Woundwort's Daughter," but it seems that Hyzenthlay is "Female Chief Rabbit" of the Watership warren. (Fortunately for all concerned, I know better than to try and find out what constitutes a PWP involving rabbits.)
And on that thought, I should probably stop writing and extricate myself from this computer lab; I have a session to attend, a paper to give (complete with handouts!), and then two receptions and a business meeting. Somewhere in there, I am supposed to get dinner. I have a week to start organizing certain things for next year's Major Professional Conference #3. Tomorrow is the last day of the conference, which means that books will be heavily discounted and explains why it is worth getting to the exhibit hall to wait in line before 8 am. Have I mentioned that I really and truly love my job?
A proper conference-related post will likely show up on Monday.
* -- How does one find out what phrases people use in Google searches to bring up one's journal? I sometimes wonder, as I type a perfectly innocent phrase such as "four-hundred-breasted"....