tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67518345277998280832012-01-23T02:28:17.435-08:00A Commonplace Book of Readings in Chinese and Other History and LiteratureWanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.comBlogger4071100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-110917903921777452010-12-26T15:54:00.001-08:002010-12-26T15:55:44.351-08:00

Promethea: Book One by Alan MooreMy rating: 5 of 5 starsIf Prometheus, the man who stole fire from the gods and gave it to men, figures technology, then Promethea must figure the imagination. In Alan Moore’s vision, she grew up in America, with 18th century roots in obscure colonial poetry, and only came of age in the twentieth century, in comics and pulp fiction. A riumph of wit and

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-10953844506878713972010-11-06T13:16:00.000-07:002010-11-06T13:24:01.588-07:00

Yang Jiang with Bing Xin, Xinhua File photo re-published online January 16, 2008This article on Yang Jiang will get a mention in my dissertation. The author, Yu Jun, is a blogger; click here to read his musings on sickness and suffering, death and life. Warning: you have to listen to Karen Carpenter if your speakers are on.

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-15925285869593296822010-09-15T08:54:00.000-07:002010-09-15T09:01:09.258-07:00

Wang Zengqi, folk culture expert, writer, editor of a volume on food writing I'd like to see. He also illustrated a reference work on the potato, which has me dreaming of a volume of food writing. (From Fang's introductory biography). Thanks to this blog for the picture.Chinese Short Stories of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology in English by Zhihua FangMy rating: 1 of 5 starsI picked this up so

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-44973753069649976982010-09-09T07:14:00.000-07:002010-09-09T07:44:27.120-07:00

Cast photo from a recent production of "Making Lies from Truth" (Nong zhen cheng jia) by Yang Jiang; from this pageDooling, Amy. Women's Literary Feminism in Twentieth-Century China. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.After reading the long introduction to this book, I'm troubled once again by "feminist literary theory." Let me try to state the idea behind this big term very simply: literature

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-68368167054970264872010-09-07T19:12:00.000-07:002010-09-07T19:27:40.475-07:00

"Da Qin" (Rome?) in the Wenxian tongkaoI had an encounter with the Wenxian tongkao at reading group last week. HJ, who seems to have really been animated by our readings from the 1602 Ricci map of the world, was looking into the mention of a certain class of people known as 'dwarves' in the Shan hai jing, who have their own land south of the region of Da Qin -- which reference point said in later

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-67103734459721142612010-09-07T07:07:00.000-07:002010-09-07T07:20:24.416-07:00

Yep, that's how I feel; thanks artist Tom RichmondIt's the first day of school at the University of Minnesota. I'm always so nervous!Huichung, Emily Chua. “The Good Book and the Good Life: Bestselling Biographies in China’s Economic Reform.” The China Quarterly, 198 (2009): 364-380. Here's a source that AW recommended; it will surely come up in my next chapter, on the phenomenon of progressive

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-10963235580507200522010-08-23T20:42:00.001-07:002010-08-23T20:47:14.020-07:00

August 23, Chapter 3 in formation after reading Leo Ou-fan Lee's article "On the Margins of the Chinese Discourse" (1991)Lee, Leo Ou-fan. "On the Margins of the Chinese Discourse: Some Personal Thoughts on the Cultural Meaning of the Periphery." Daedalus 120.2, The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today (Spring, 1991): 207-226.

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-84512077884917560172010-08-23T09:50:00.000-07:002010-08-23T20:52:00.916-07:00

I hope the model had fun posing for this photo I found at this page, which also reports that it can happen to anybody (studies were done!).This blog by psychology researchers at the University of Sheffield awakens me to the value of scholarly research blogs in inspectional reading. In this entry, we can quickly learn two key terms: "interpersonal affect regulation," or trying to change someone

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-14874974061797581552010-08-23T09:07:00.000-07:002010-08-23T09:45:12.225-07:00

"Affect" happening live, online?Jarrett, Kylie. "Labour of Love: An Archaeology of Affect as Power in E-Commerce." Journal of Sociology 39.4 (2003): 335-351 I need to understand exactly what "affect" means if it is to be the keyword of my entire dissertation, so it will have to be the subject of a set of inspectional readings. The big difference that I am putting into inspectional reading this

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-59230438177638249012010-08-23T07:07:00.000-07:002010-08-23T07:22:50.951-07:00

4-minute video version of the story by Ray UzwyshynThanks to my friend B. for pointing out this 2006 New Yorker story of the solution to a famous problem in mathematics called the Poincaré Conjecture. I'm fascinated by the figure of Grigory Perelman, the elusive Russian who clearly believes his distance from institutional centers is necessary for creative work -- the problem is that mathematics

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-22753994818768559022010-08-23T06:57:00.001-07:002010-08-23T07:03:35.715-07:00

First Vision of Chapter 3, August 18After a long break to participate in a conference and suffer generally from paralyzing anxiety, I'm back to writing. My anxieties are numerous: I read too slow, I don't work hard enough, I'm not very good at abstract, syncretic thinking. But all of these weaknesses are ones that I can and should be working on. And I am, I think. It is very disappointing to see

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-18059982853836266572010-08-13T11:57:00.000-07:002010-08-13T12:05:06.576-07:00

Wang Meng at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2009. Looks like his voice is still projecting! (From wikipedia)Scoggin, Mary. Ethnography of a Chinese Essay: Zawen in Contemporary China. Dissertation: University of Chicago, 1997. One way to take great heart for one’s dissertation-in-progress is to consider what successful dissertations have done before. After reading Mary Scoggin’s chapter profiling how

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-3700009127537541872010-08-12T15:36:00.001-07:002010-08-12T15:47:10.281-07:00

Torture of Intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, from hereToday I went back to an already-published translation of Yang Jiang's essay "The Years of the Horse and the Ram," going through all of it very carefully, selecting and typing up passages and ideas. My reading of the essay will emphasize how Yang Jiang turns the experience of trauma into a story of growth and adaptation, from an

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-68235324952409016292010-08-09T20:50:00.000-07:002010-08-09T20:52:24.268-07:00

Beijing Doll by Chun SueMy rating: 1 of 5 stars"I knew that this novel, which records my youth and that of others of my generation, would only reveal its true meaning and value with the passage of time."OK stop right there. I'm wary of the contemporary 'book' (I'm not going to call it a novel, because I demand a story structure for that) that thinks it can simply photograph in writing the way the

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-79535745367198298452010-08-09T13:26:00.000-07:002010-08-09T14:17:13.289-07:00

An example of the Chinese aesthetic of "all mixed in" (yunji): Xiao Huisong, "The Grace of Earth" (bronze), from this pageOne of the things I have to do to get this writing project done is: read similar writing projects by previous students. This is a task that is always both interesting and painful, because I alternate between feeling in kinship with my fellow writers and in competition with

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-46062844397484498722010-08-09T10:26:00.000-07:002010-08-09T10:26:41.353-07:00

Music@Menlo free downloads: Antonio Vivaldi and George Crumb | Classical Minnesota Public Radio

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-26411192356453174732010-08-02T15:58:00.000-07:002010-08-02T16:07:22.354-07:00

King Zhuang: Chineseness, ho! Giddee-yup! This is from the "State of Chu" Theme Park at Mo Hill, Wuhan. Pic from this person's blogOne other thing I did today: finished revising my summary of another paper for the upcoming conference at my university. If you are interested in the perspective of a progressive Confucian on nation and ethnicity, check out the story of of certain Chinese scholars, by

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-40991426877881093662010-08-02T15:33:00.000-07:002010-08-02T15:45:33.278-07:00

Ah, Hawai'i, land of long shiny tables, potted indoor ferns, and bland leaders in pantsuitsI worked a good portion of the day on a proposal for a panel on Chinese writing for the 2011 meeting of AAS (the Association for Asian Studies). It's a lot of annoying red tape, and there is no guarantee our panel will be selected, but it does make me feel ever so professional. Delegating, being a

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-87212326544418081492010-08-01T09:55:00.000-07:002010-08-02T15:47:13.508-07:00

Just a few notes to remind myself how difficult it can be to find good entertainment with a netflix instant disc...Emma (1972) I thought this British television adaptation of the Jane Austen novel would be funny, but it is acted so bloodlessly, we begin to lose interest from the first scene.How About You? (2004) More accommodating indie film fans will find here a charming story about what youth

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-40890897290134466362010-07-31T19:10:00.000-07:002010-07-31T19:26:04.222-07:00

Trailer to FrankensteinOur lazy afternoon viewing was James Whale's 1931 "horror classic." What makes a movie a "classic?" Innovative camera work, mainly. Frankenstein has some truly incredible visual offerings: burying a man out in a creepy graveyard, complete with angel of death. A windmill out on a precipice. Arcs of electricity in a mad scientist's lab. The appearance of the monster. A scene

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-58399313215649807942010-07-30T15:37:00.000-07:002010-07-30T15:40:41.418-07:00

"And now he's here once again to capitalize on people's emotions." Berlant, Lauren. “Intuitionists: History and the Affective Event.” American Literary History, 20:4 (Winter 2008): 845-60I call this "live theory" because I'm responding even before I finish the essay. I think Berlant's writing lends itself to that -- much as with reading in Chinese, some translation and paraphrase is necessary

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-53229423982827825372010-07-30T09:17:00.000-07:002010-07-30T10:03:54.079-07:00

“Twenty Years a Dream" adapted for Chinese televisionAs I was cleaning up a messy file in my desk, yesterday, I came across a copy of the story “Twenty Years a Dream” as translated by John Minford in his recent version of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. This morning, in no hurry to get started on the difficult writing of my dissertation, I took the time to read the story again, and now I

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-51540683664389529932010-07-27T16:27:00.000-07:002010-07-27T16:37:16.400-07:00

Palmer's Lodge, Hampstead, London, (June 2010)Daruvala, Susan. Zhou Zuoren and An Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. I revisited the first chapter of Susan Daruvala’s book about Zhou Zuoren to get a sense of how she writes the “theoretical frameworks” that I have been told more than once is my greatest weakness.“Nationalism and Modernity,” the

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-64648480450767184682010-07-27T07:11:00.000-07:002010-07-27T07:34:02.201-07:00

A young Barthelme. Thanks to the Guardian books blog - this entry is part of a long series surveying the short story. I have listened to all of the New Yorker fiction podcasts, and I am now filled with complex feelings about the short story. It seems to me the form that privileges the craft of story first, entertainment value second, and lastly social and political commentary. For comparison's

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-2425214070635385632010-07-26T15:08:00.000-07:002010-07-26T15:38:30.836-07:00

NTU back when it was Taihoku Imperial University. From this great page of old posters, postcards and such. I made a small study of the wikipedia entry for Rao Yuwei this morning, and I’m left with the feeling that it might be a part of my Vancouver talk in December, one of the places where Yang Jiang’s essays have an afterlife. Either that or possibly a footnote in my dissertation somewhere.You

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-63605147072263609762010-07-26T14:58:00.000-07:002010-07-26T15:02:25.998-07:00

Hanjiang Road, Hankou (Thanks, wikicommons)Rowe, William T. "The Public Sphere in Modern China." Modern China, 16:3 (July 1990): 309-329What makes modern society so different from ancient societies? Is it just that we have new ways of working in groups on larger, more complex projects than before? Does having ways of working in groups make us any better at communicating with each other, or at

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-82138760184340243782010-07-26T14:53:00.000-07:002010-07-26T15:02:56.102-07:00

An example of the many interactions intimacy can have with institutionsBerlant, Lauren. “Intimacy: A Special Issue.” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 2 (Winter 1998): 281-288. On the third reading of this small, dense essay, I am just beginning to realize how difficult it is to use any of what Professor Berlant is saying, because I have not only to translate her often disconnected terms and propositions

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-84847370500545664772010-07-26T13:00:00.000-07:002010-07-26T13:16:25.775-07:00

A peasant of China's northeast (cribbing this article)Hershatter, Gail. Review of Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949 to 1999, by Yunxiang Yun. Contemporary Sociology, vol. 33, no. 4 (July 2004): 433-4Gail Hershatter’s review of Yan Yunxiang’s 2003 Private Life Under Socialism admires a sociologist and insider who writes an exposed, personal

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-64679719153212959012010-07-25T21:29:00.000-07:002010-07-25T21:39:15.740-07:00

Click for CostumesMonsieur N. is a textbook example of costume drama with nothing to say, much as in many history textbooks. This is perhaps a film about Napoleon during his last days, on the prison at St. Helena. But more accurately it should be called a film about the very dull ship of fools, English and French, that accompanied him in exile. None of these poor fools makes enough of an

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-29777724316198482542010-07-25T19:01:00.000-07:002010-07-25T19:21:16.145-07:00

Late 1970's funWith music by Ennio Morricone, 1970s girlish beauty by Linda Blair, Richard Burton in a surprising turn as the exorcist with the tortured soul, and James Earl Jones in locust headgear, you know that at minimum this sequel is going to provide camp fun. And it does. But what is such a surprise is what a thoughtful and spacey little film this is. The exorcism plot is re-invented as a

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-2877654811728558352010-07-25T18:43:00.001-07:002010-07-25T18:59:31.190-07:00

The Rainmaker proves mostly superstitionI can't believe this movie comes from Francis Ford Coppola, who I remember best for The Godfather. It's a totally clichéd story of a handsome young Gallant who brings together a colorful set of friends, including a nice old rich lady, a poor battered wife, a feisty little DeVito-sidekick device, and special guest start Mickey Rourke as the walking LA

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-84631480153018537112010-07-25T12:48:00.000-07:002010-07-25T12:51:17.387-07:00

Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays by John Meade HainesMy rating: 5 of 5 starsThis collection of essays is a long-term consideration of the writing life and all its aesthetic and critical potential. John Haines will stand out from now on to me as a voice from the wilderness, speaking of the need to consider all that has been lost as human beings cover the globe in an endless cycle of

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-76076797370887991162010-07-25T08:27:00.001-07:002010-07-25T08:57:49.625-07:00

Wiki commons illustration of a distaffProcrastinating my work, I came across an old poem that I remember reading as a child: Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheele compleat;     Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee.Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate,     And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee.     My Conversation make to be thy Reele,     And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele.

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-17653796822136511372010-07-22T09:53:00.000-07:002010-07-22T10:35:58.466-07:00

Demetri Martin - Person • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control- Watch more Funny Videos at Vodpod.Demetri Martin, if you dareI thought it would be nice to hear from a younger-generation comic. I heard he was very bright, very talented. He plays music! He does mindmaps! He dreams up whole costumed scenarios! He's appeared on the Daily Show, so maybe he knows satire too! Maybe, ooh...just

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-87424663722777886242010-07-22T09:14:00.000-07:002010-07-22T09:46:41.480-07:00

Trailer to Shutter IslandShutter Island is the story of a man nursing the wounds of war and his lost wife, working to change his deep guilt into a pursuit of justice against the insidious creep of legal and medical institutions into our lives and over the values he fought so hard in the War to preserve. Until the climax, that is. Then we discover that Shutter Island is the story of a man nursing

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-51126797379087860082010-07-21T14:51:00.000-07:002010-07-22T09:23:24.099-07:00

A quick mindmap to try to understand the interaction model.Foote, Bonnie. “The Narrative Interactions of Silent Spring: Bridging Literary Criticism and Ecocriticism.” New Literary History 38.4 (2007) 739-753.This article updates my sense of literary value: literature is language that exhibits dense internal interactions, as well as a great variety of interactions with its readers. “The sheer

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-4633264447098497352010-07-21T14:12:00.000-07:002010-07-21T14:33:21.753-07:00

This is NOT Qian Zhongshu, dummy As I re-read the essay "Qian Zhongshu and Fortress Besieged," I'm struck how Yang Jiang's voice is directed very specifically at a popular readership that stubbornly seeks biographical details from novels. So what she does in this essay is actually give her audience lots of biographical details, just as they wished, but showing at the same time how much of the

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-40341785415164586772010-07-19T14:13:00.001-07:002010-07-19T14:20:06.034-07:00

Yang Jiang's family, 1927. This is the setting of the first part of my dissertation.It's always so difficult for me to work on what I'm supposed to work on! But I'm back at last, to tackle my dissertation. This first section is intended for publication with Biography, though it has grown a bit too long, and it seems difficult to predict if it will get in or not. I definitely want someone to read

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-39355616269804552462010-07-19T12:04:00.001-07:002010-07-20T09:08:21.134-07:00

Wang Hui's big contribution to English, so farI made some comments earlier this year on my efforts to read the essays in The End of the Revolution by Wang Hui. I found him a bold and original thinker with a typically challenging intellectual writing style. I just want to note here that I have discovered from the China Beat, a (usually quite boring) China studies blog, that Wang Hui is now the

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-83978003016357506142010-07-19T08:36:00.000-07:002010-07-19T12:37:34.764-07:00

IABA 2010, final keynote. L-R: Jay Prosser, Lauren Berlant and Margaretta JollyI really had a great time at the International Auto/Biography Association biennual conference in England, and I was honored to be asked for a conference report. I confess I spent an inordinate amount of time on it, so I hope it's good...IABA 2010 Conference Report Many thanks to Margaretta Jolly and Sam Carroll for

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-37619012067910200822010-07-19T08:27:00.000-07:002010-07-19T08:41:51.785-07:00

"The performers are like the live plastic material in motion, with their physical movements directly translating the concepts of nuclear physics..."I recently had a chance to translate some Taiwanese arts criticism. After doing so much history, it was refreshing to be asking all these big questions, and to have such stylish, colorful language in playThe Terrible Message of Environmental

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-75380608958504347932010-07-16T12:50:00.000-07:002010-07-16T12:56:40.362-07:00

In Ancient Greece, aspiring teachers had to do these elaborate courtship dances, just as we do today in America (I'm kidding. Sort of.)Teaching Philosophy: Language and LiteratureIn everything I do, I believe in asking questions, I believe in pursuing what is right and true, and I believe that life is best seen as a never-ending process of making new connections. I am completely committed to

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-27892364553292110252010-07-16T09:44:00.000-07:002010-07-16T09:46:56.230-07:00

La'er Mountain, still a site for non-Han communities. From a tourism websiteThe Lesser Wall of China (an unpublished paper I’m not supposed to cite -- I’ll update with citation info if the author publishes or gives me permission)A new paper from an upcoming conference on “borderlands” at my university presents a fascinating new view of the Ming state conducting what amounts to diplomatic and

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-36987528384523919992010-07-15T08:06:00.000-07:002010-07-15T08:10:05.249-07:00

Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist that academics love to hate. Well, that's one point in her favor...At the IABA 2010 conference, Nancy K. Miller mentioned Maureen Dowd’s June 1, 2010 column “A Storyteller Loses the Story Line” as evidence of the popular equivalence between the story of recovery and recovery itself. Miller seemed to me clearly following Barbara Ehrenreich, and when I

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-46891739587745260992010-07-11T12:12:00.000-07:002010-07-11T12:18:33.105-07:00

Inciting Incident on Youtube: I wouldn't be surprised if this goes offlineI watched this film on my last night in London, absolutely wretched that I could not pay attention to anything else in the hostel common area. Terrible as it is, it brings a joy to the simple manipulation of convention. It reminds us that hack story telling is often great story telling. The values that underlie this film at

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-54949804339085445702010-07-11T11:24:00.000-07:002010-07-11T12:10:26.564-07:00

Embedded from Archive.orgFinally, months after I advised one of my students on a project to write about the 1937 film Song at Midnight 半夜之歌, I watch it myself. The sensitivity of the writer for the film s/he is writing about is best made evident to the reader if the reader has also seen that film. That doesn’t mean I didn’t do a good job grading my student’s paper without seeing the film; it

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-11384324262193646652010-07-10T15:43:00.000-07:002010-07-10T15:44:25.727-07:00

Happy: A Memoir by Alex LemonMy rating: 1 of 5 stars"My new body. My girlfriend. My friends. My life. And I'm too afraid to let anyone see me. I've always been afraid people would think I was a pussy, and now, that's exactly what I am.""Happy" is the story of the young American male. Probably it would be of great interest to anyone curious about what a wide range of ways to be angry really exist

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-27341965880823140872010-07-10T15:38:00.000-07:002010-07-10T15:39:37.495-07:00

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax by Noam ChomskyNote: I haven't actually read this book, but I just got through the excerpt included in Critical Theory Since 1965 and I wanted to set down my thoughts. In the first section of his book, Chomsky develops the idea of a “deep structure” within the mind that helps us generate language. Only this essentially rationalist approach (modeled with mathematics

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-51793451577322484412010-07-10T15:35:00.000-07:002010-07-10T15:37:23.477-07:00

Old Floating Cloud: Two Novellas by Xue CanMy rating: 4 of 5 starsTruth is often a tiny, dim star enveloped in thick layers of cloud and fog, quite beyond recognition by ordinary eyes. Only sophisticated yet simple and sincere creatures can "discover" it in meditation. - Can Xue, "Yellow Mud Street"Readers need only set their imaginations free. Even if they do not always understand Can Xue, they

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-66911459481647512032010-07-09T14:07:00.001-07:002010-07-09T14:08:56.390-07:00

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley RobinsonMy rating: 2 of 5 starsOne day in the street, rattling off some story or other, she stopped and looked up at him, surprised, and said “I want to know everything!”I respect very much the intentions of this book: to re-invent a wide range of historical readings, to activate the historical imagination, to envision a world where Islam might not seem

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-5071196411416303192010-07-09T13:06:00.000-07:002010-07-09T13:08:19.506-07:00

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. FranklMy rating: 5 of 5 stars“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” -- NietzscheSince I had just heard about Barbara Ehrenreich’s new work against the rhetoric of “positive thinking,” I was more skeptical than ever about a self-help book as I boarded my plane to England in late June 2010. But A. had passed me the book, and I figured if it

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-3429283085853800522010-06-22T15:48:00.001-07:002010-06-22T15:54:27.159-07:00

Me todayToday I studiously avoided distractions, but as usual it feels like too little too late. I used the morning to scan half of the French dissertation on Yang Jiang's work, which doesn't look particularly useful but which I should have read through by now. I wrote a fair-ish paragraph introducing my subject and practicing for the AAS panel description I need to write, but I've lost the

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-13446637246347799882010-06-22T15:33:00.000-07:002010-06-22T15:47:56.188-07:00

"Britain's most significant interdisciplinary journal of culture, politics and theory."I read Roger Lockhurst's contribution to the special issue of new formations devoted to "life writing." I was hoping for some close reading's of Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, but instead I got a brief meditation on the significance of trauma memoir. I was interested, and found Lockhurst really hits

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-29204109773264947152010-06-21T21:51:00.000-07:002010-06-21T21:56:48.150-07:00

Habermas, the philosopher of the momentWriting today. Excruciating as it gets this close to presentation time. Reading a bit too. Finally with the Habermas:They already sprang from the needs of a bourgeois reading public that later on would find genuine satisfaction in the literary forms of the domestic drama and the psychological novel. For the experiences about which a public passionately

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-60383806468753212122010-06-20T08:41:00.000-07:002010-06-20T13:13:18.052-07:00

Seems Like Old TimesI only watched the first few minutes of this film before it became apparent that neither Goldie Hawn nor Charles Grodin, and least of all Chevy Chase, do anything that is remotely funny to me. Still, I might have continued to watch because this is the story of a progressive bourgeois family that serves to re-inscribe the rules for behaving in the public sphere by focusing

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-89099434341039117862010-06-15T14:21:00.000-07:002010-06-15T14:29:04.999-07:00

Portrait of Modernity as an Old Man (Thanks, Tianya)Productive day of writing on my own. I'll share a snippet of a portrait of Yang Jiang's Gatekeeper: "I am the gatekeeper of the Yang household of Temple Lane. My name is Zhao Peirong. That's ‘Zhao’ 趙; ‘Zhao’ spelled with with a ‘xiao’ 肖 and a ‘zou’ 走.” To this day his voice is still in my ears...He was in his fifties, thin, and of medium build.

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-34397762844033777692010-06-10T13:26:00.000-07:002010-06-10T13:31:44.125-07:00

Center for Writing's HomepageOn my evaluation of the retreat, I said that I am now convinced of the value of "community, structure and support" for writing. And it's true. This will change the way I teach and think about writing, probably forever. Early this morning, we were given the following questions in bold as our pre-writing assignment for the first day. As I continue to complete my

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-73357922624198222042010-06-09T13:18:00.001-07:002010-06-09T13:28:28.045-07:00

Old Lady Meng Handing out the Tea of Oblivion, reproduced in a book by Vera SchwarczI'm so sad that my retreat is almost over. I've gained a measure of discipline by working in this group, and in the meantime I have really gotten a glimpse at the scope of my dissertation, its limitations, and the work involved. It's all so emotional for me right now!Today I began what I thought would be a short

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-90114069516008255772010-06-08T13:21:00.000-07:002010-06-08T13:32:37.590-07:00

Rachel Carson, who I read a little bit about todayI'm in a worse mood as my writing deadline slips away, my draft seems flimsy and in need of so much more reading, my prospects for getting published look dimmer, and my prospects for ever getting a job look nil. The worst thing about all this is that it kills the desire to work. Luckily, one great thing about the dissertation retreat is that I

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-19748962478677855042010-06-07T13:18:00.000-07:002010-06-07T13:32:30.803-07:00

Japanese Moving in on Suzhou, 1937I'm feeling bad about myself again. This is just too damned hard, and I'm working far too slow. I'm less than 2/9 done with my chapter draft, which makes it nearly impossible to imagine myself finishing this up by the end of the week. I'll keep to that deadline though and just bite the bullet if I fail. Next up, I need to bring the Yang Bi essay to its climactic

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-17476823733373445802010-06-06T10:30:00.000-07:002010-06-06T10:31:07.526-07:00

M. Butterfly. by David Henry HwangMy rating: 4 of 5 starsSong Liling: Under the robes, beneath everything, it was always me. Tell me you adore me.Rene Gallimard: How could you, who understood me so well, make such a mistake? You've shown me your true self, and what I love was the lie, perfect lie, that's been destroyed.Song Liling: You never really loved me.Rene Gallimard: I'm a man who loved a

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-9531469046180989992010-06-03T13:22:00.000-07:002010-06-03T13:31:13.617-07:00

The Crazy Monk, with pouty lips 嘴唇尖呀尖At long last, after completing a really decent outline, I got some real writing done that I feel good about. I chose to approach my chapter beginning with the second of three sections that form the first of three parts to the body of my chapter. So I estimate I'm 1/9 done with the body. That's excruciatingly slow progress, much less than I'd hoped for this

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-42932527202065441162010-06-02T13:26:00.000-07:002010-06-02T14:13:20.965-07:00

The Poet Yu Jian 于坚Still not dead, as one of my best friends says on his blog. The last week has been devoted to dissertation work in the mornings until 3:30, and my progress has been...distinctly satisfactory, I think. I've almost finished all of the readings I want to do for this chapter of my dissertation, and today the mean time I have created a really substantive outline. Tomorrow I will

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-52752784231667710072010-05-24T21:14:00.000-07:002010-05-24T22:15:36.943-07:00

Good day of reading and working: three full essays completely read through and annotated. One I got through was "Huahuar the Cat" which shows up on a Baidu blog along with this illustration. The essay begins: I probably can't be counted a cat lover, because I have only loved one or two cats, and even then only because they weren't like other cats, and even almost surpassed the feline.I was happy

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-38082445440990980182010-05-23T10:04:00.000-07:002010-05-23T10:20:58.166-07:00

Renegade: the Ahayuasca trip Thanks to D. for introducing us to Renegade, which we watched again just the other day. The film is incredibly fun, through and through, at least for anyone who likes graphic novels or entheogenic substances (preferably both). I'd like to use it as a teaching tool in a theory class sometime. I'll explain the term "episteme" and the larger patterns of French thought

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-89637574091775970162010-05-23T09:27:00.000-07:002010-05-23T10:04:02.163-07:00

Gummo (1997) a film by Harmony Korine I happened to watch the movie Gummo just after I had finished the novella Yellow Mud Street 黄泥街 by Can Xue, and I was really struck by how both advance a portrait of grotesque communities. Both have horror elements that are buried deeply in the scenery -- trash, mess, odd growths like black mushrooms, fat albinos with no toes, maggots that appear everywhere,

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-51644740022162027742010-05-09T14:03:00.000-07:002010-05-09T14:08:24.071-07:00

One Model Writing TeacherAs I push along with the grades, I find more and more notes to put into my next edition of the syllabus -- notes on a full lectures series that takes students through writing research papers step by step, in greater detail than I've ever taught before. I'm doing something like a cross between The Craft of Research and How to Read a Book, I think, with a healthy dose of

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-1905625865976053812010-05-05T17:34:00.000-07:002010-05-05T18:01:20.162-07:00

The Punishment of Strangulation -- from this site with poorly scanned images of a book of punishment illustrations.It's not surprising that my entire workday is expended in the course I'm teaching for the past few days and the next few as well. Still, work goes on a sluggish pace. Last night at our classical Chinese reading group, I had an exchange with one younger history student from China. He

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-37566707710108343362010-05-04T11:18:00.000-07:002010-05-04T11:37:04.543-07:00

Snippet from my dictionary work, 5/4I'm really struggling to get time to read and write as I finish up this class I'm teaching, along with other duties, and of course my normal lazy leisurely activities. I haven't done such a good job since Thursday, but I did re-discover the need to consult dictionaries. "Dictionary work" is becoming a household term. As in, A. : "Oh I do want to watch that

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-17788828877421558482010-05-01T11:12:00.000-07:002010-05-01T11:25:16.380-07:00

It's not quite true that I did no writing on Thursday; I did write the following book review: The Te of Piglet by Benjamin HoffMy rating: 1 of 5 starsThe Fèn of Eeyore.One day I was walking through the bog, gazing wistfully at the muddy water, when I came across Eeyore in his den. A lovely smell was coming out of the crumbling donkey shelter."Hallo old friend. What's cooking?""Hola, amigo. Why

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-32902250489575312592010-05-01T11:00:00.000-07:002010-05-01T11:06:47.741-07:00

Johnson's reading tables, 1729.No writing on Thursday or Friday due to meetings with students, lecture, meeting with others, social gatherings, and frequent attacks of Sloth. This morning I read about an online exhibit of Samuel Johnson memorabilia, including the earliest known letter he wrote, at age 16, looking to his cousin for a teaching job, and the "libellus" (little book) that he started

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-43251351404924485992010-04-28T21:00:00.000-07:002010-04-28T21:10:25.224-07:00

Chapter 4 Chart of works read, in progressWell, I didn't quite write a full 1,000 words, unless you count my review of Kramer vs. Kramer, which I tend to do, but only self-indulgently. Still, I did get through the story "Romanesque" all in one sitting and wrote a brief response to it, which definitely counts for something. Before taking off for the day I also put in place the chart of works I'll

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-62912090068649860172010-04-27T20:39:00.000-07:002010-04-27T20:53:57.209-07:00

A Glimpse of My DraftI really lost my motivation again today, making work of any kind a real pain. And yet, I did manage to get in 1,000 words of writing, as well as a fair lecture delivered to my class. In some way, I feel heartened for the progress to be made tomorrow. I think I just have to work to seem to be concentrating to actually be.To do after my next reading is complete: clean up the

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-22575775546387098592010-04-24T12:42:00.000-07:002010-04-24T12:59:56.115-07:00

Cover of Zhang Xianliang's first major work in its English edition.Below I paste in code from a review I wrote over at Goodreads.com, which seems both a nice tool to send off reviews to Twitter and a community of intelligent readers. See the site for a well-written negative review of this book and several other interesting comments.Once again I feel the need to press some internal "reset" button

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-8831068054786118252010-04-08T21:37:00.000-07:002010-04-09T07:34:52.985-07:00

Ancient things today hard to sell./These two masters were a pair of phoenixes,/The most resplendent and charming of the hundred birds. Thanks, HK Jade marketWhew! This is just one poem from the paper I'm finishing up. What work this is! The author takes this poem as one example among many of a characteristic style among many. The whole paper is basically just a small anthology of poems with tags.

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-78731819815876499632010-04-08T13:29:00.000-07:002010-04-08T13:45:24.220-07:00

"Boy Painting Lilies" by John Lautermilch (Thanks to FineArtAmerica)But when you raise bitter intentions to lofty heights, None would imagine that in ending the poem, the dusk of the way is tears ---- Mei Yaochen, "Poetry Addiction"“但将苦意摩层宙，莫计终穷泣暮津。”（《诗癖》）[These lines are fairly mysterious to me still...]This week I've decided firmly to re-approach Chinese poetry as a paying job, an artistic

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-11299934983669644852010-04-08T12:51:00.000-07:002010-04-08T12:55:05.911-07:00

Even a few reviewers of the book back in 1989 couldn't resist commenting on how striking Ms. Wang's back-cover author photo is...Wang, Anyi. Baotown. Translated by Martha Avery. London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1989. This is an extraordinarily thoughtful story of an impoverished but benevolent Chinese village. It begins with slow-moving portraits of various characters -- the boy who wants to be a

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-75771134861140845842010-04-08T12:47:00.000-07:002010-04-08T12:51:14.316-07:00

Cover of the Book Fish, Stanley. Save the World on Your Own Time. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. This is an elegant and extremely enjoyable read that has the effect of really making me want to teach. The key chapters are "Do Your Job" and "Don't Try to Do Someone Else's Job," which confront the problem of liberal ideals in higher education.In a surprising attack not just on

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-4884712797989358052010-03-30T19:58:00.000-07:002010-03-30T20:03:42.218-07:00

"Moloch" directed by Aleksandr SokurovThe Negation of the Anti-Hero If you remember Casablanca, you'll recall that Rick is a man who begins the film dead on the inside. His heart is broken, he is an alcoholic, he's perfectly neutral, and he doesn't stick his neck out for anybody. But as the film progresses Rick rediscovers his own life again and goes on to take a roll in the war. "Moloch"

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-30104367435007855752010-03-30T19:30:00.000-07:002010-03-30T19:37:41.274-07:00

A Mantis Painting I found on the Internet. Clearly this is what is referred to in the line 拒者如举臂, no?A new poem draft, thanks to help Jonathan Chaves 1970. ...In the fourth year of Qingli (1044), Mei Yaochen has the poem "On Seeing Juning’s Insect Painting:" 观居宁画草虫The ancients painted tigers and swans, They never surpassed dogs and ducks. Now I look on paintings with insects: Form and intention

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-48091216256127659432010-03-30T19:05:00.000-07:002010-03-30T19:26:45.634-07:00

List of characters with proposed modifications from Tianya.cnA little-reported policy proposal in China is the reform of 44 Chinese characters. All the changes are minor in the extreme -- mostly just calligraphy modifications from straight-hook 坚钩 to plain straight 坚 strokes. And yet, huge numbers of Chinese are uncomfortable with the changes. It's a popular political question now open in China.

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-34640406867357024572010-03-29T19:27:00.000-07:002010-03-29T19:34:20.999-07:00

"Sweeping away illiteracy," China, 1952. From what looks like a nice article on literacy programs.Last week, I failed to finish my translation once again -- I have a terrible block on it, there's no avoiding it. It's not that I don't know how to translate it, it's just that I can't sit down and work on it. A psychological problem revealing itself. Anxiety about working on my dissertation, clearly

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-25842167818946375592010-03-29T06:54:00.000-07:002010-03-29T06:57:33.238-07:00

"The Sun" was a good way to introduce ourselves to the minimalist, detail-obsessed films of Alexander Sokurov -- so thanks to Minnesota Film Arts for showing it at St. Anthony Main, February 2010.Sokurov's Emperor Hirohito is not only humanized in this film, he finds redemption, if in a limited way that leaves him assailable for his true weakness: weakness of will, anxiety of spirit, and dreamy

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-28655487954520674392010-03-25T10:03:00.001-07:002010-03-25T11:40:30.288-07:00

Summer of 1958, Liaoning Province, Beipiao County, Under Elms Village, Longtan Farming Commune, taking a break from work and “leap-horsing” in the fields. Thanks to Tianya via VirtualChina.orgOkay, time to get freakin' serious about writing. McKee repeated the line that a professional writer will clock a thousand words a day. In other words, the writer sees his work the way the accountant, the

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-19143679655835703142010-03-25T09:03:00.000-07:002010-03-25T09:14:29.900-07:00

The McKee story seminar seems to me at this moment to be more important to my future career than all my years of graduate school. Now perhaps that's an exaggeration, but truly, I don't feel that way. The clip above, for example, combines story structure ideas that I was taught in high school with the supplement that the writer can change story form with a plan in mind. I learned something a

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-10194934789944709352010-03-23T11:41:00.000-07:002010-03-23T11:49:52.865-07:00

I return from the desert outpost ready to serve.Well, spring break 2010 may not have been the most enjoyable experience, but it was the most educational. No strike that -- despite its ups and downs, this was the best spring break ever, I think. I return from the McKee story seminar with too much work and not enough time. And that seems just about right to develop my story. Its a timeless tale of

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-15559600089114140672010-03-16T13:40:00.000-07:002010-03-16T14:09:50.292-07:00

Scene from Adaptation dramatizing the McKee story seminar. Never thought when I first saw this film that I would take the seminar!It's spring break at the University. Goals for me: Finish fellowship application (check!)Finish the Yang Jiang Translation (probably not possible, but one must keep trying)Put in some time at the Tretter Collection (check!)Keep reading classical poems. I have in mind

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-44216671587658188922010-03-12T07:41:00.000-08:002010-03-13T14:31:49.177-08:00

Wang Anshi 王安石, Chancellor of the Song, Reformer and Pragmatist, and Sometime PoetLast week on Facebook I made some comment like "We need a man like Wang Anshi again," thinking of how the reformist poet plays in my mind like Hoover might have to Archie and Edith as they sang the All in the Family theme song. Later on my adviser P. made a comment about me and my "precious Wang Anshi." I liked the

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-54727489784590704492010-03-11T08:27:00.000-08:002010-03-11T09:49:03.139-08:00

Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹, image used on a Taiwan postage stamp, apparentlyI guess the most interesting figure I learned about in the translation I have almost completed is Fan Zhongyan. He was a reformer, just like I would like to be, and interested in everything from increasing agricultural productivity to poetry. Actually these two things were much closer in those days, which is really the whole reason

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-11448642226439448232010-03-10T14:06:00.000-08:002010-03-10T14:29:51.527-08:00

Telling Stories, 2008. Submitted in Evidence for a Fellowship YearMy next fellowship application has simply got to succeed. I can feel it! I'm going to make it my first accomplishment in the realm of "interdisciplinary studies," and I'm going to do continue some of the work that the authors of the book Telling Stories have done here. Maynes, M. J, J. L Pierce, and B. Laslett. Telling Stories: The

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-41505569309983275662010-03-10T07:35:00.000-08:002010-03-10T07:41:13.305-08:00

Fareed Zakaria says we can fix the deficit by taxing a bit morePersonally, I like Zakaria's reasoning, and I think he's calculating he can attract some momentum for tax increases now. The same idea is expressed in his column from last week. As a job seeker, this is yet another issue I must now follow carefully if I want consider my decision about where to live and work a responsible one. Stress!

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-34754425444012698732010-03-10T06:31:00.000-08:002010-03-10T12:46:12.964-08:00

"There are so many ways to serve eggs at breakfast" : A Lesson at UICA really exciting article published earlier this year from the Chronicle gives me several places to start looking for jobs, including a new private liberal arts school. This school UIC in Zhuhai is definitely worth pursuing! Click here to watch the staff recruitment video, which has some hilarious scenes of foreign teachers

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-92017087121543479792010-03-09T09:05:00.000-08:002010-03-09T17:05:17.537-08:00

Sometimes I feel like the incompetent king and the frustrated minister at the same timeDisappointment piles upon disappointment. It's Tuesday now but I still have not finished the latest translation gig, which has grown into something quite gargantuan indeed. One more post on it when I'm through. Other goals this week: Apply for Fellowships (one proposal has already had to be aborted,

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-72095287283792136822010-03-02T21:59:00.001-08:002010-03-02T22:15:27.054-08:00

Art by Pop Art MachineThe new translation I took on is coming together slowly, with patches still in pencil and paper but to be typed soon. I've made 1.5 passes through all 15 major poems in the piece, which means that I've gotten through all poems and get the general sense of them but not necessarily every line. For example, a magnificent poem by Mei Yao-ch'en: The ancients painted tigers and

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-76780111688847342372010-03-01T11:40:00.000-08:002010-03-01T12:02:02.023-08:00

"Luke" of 2 Live Crew, one of Berlant's unlikely allies in the fight to be treated like an adult in America Berlant, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1997. In chapter 2, "Live Sex Acts," Berlant looks at the work of feminists like Andrea Dworkin, religious rightists like Jerry Falwell, and morality advocates

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-37574789421748038142010-03-01T06:54:00.000-08:002010-03-01T08:26:31.386-08:00

From Shelton Walsmith's studio; photo by John Pack. Ten points if you can figure out how I got to this image from my theme.As I was saying to my teacher JM last week, I think the reason my Fulbright application was unsuccessful was that I did not sufficiently explain, even to myself, the reasons for doing literature and the humanities. It was almost a good thing to have suffered that failure if

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-27475404481544622542010-02-24T22:20:00.000-08:002010-02-26T08:58:43.559-08:00

This page will remain under construction.Once again, I attempt to create a unifying mechanism which will contain my dissertation. Be contained, you!This time, taking a page from Lauren Berlant, I call it "My Archive" : One does not find the materials of the patriotic public sphere theorizing citizenship in either beautiful or coherent ways. These materials frequently use the silliest, most banal

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-40787467518630531702010-02-24T21:26:00.001-08:002010-02-24T22:13:18.525-08:00

Mei Yaochen, tonight's featured poetUntitled (Thoughts of a 30 Year-Old Man in Ancient China)Suddenly I wake to find my oak of wisdom has grown thin.Lazy, I open the precious mirror to put on my face.With the approaching wind, I fear exhaustion will make me quit,Like herb of yi-shan, my song of fear grows long.Green cassia perfumes my airy clothes,Magic tallies adorn my silken bookbag.The Western

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-89693401925919403922010-02-24T20:44:00.000-08:002010-02-24T21:24:31.854-08:00

Attempting to channel the dead souls of the warring statesI commence podcasting! Yay! This .mp3 records an original story I wrote for a class in creative literature I took with Allegra Lingo. Text of story:For several days, Wilson had awakened each morning to the sounds of the boatmen’s oars, slicing gently through the brackish river water, the gentle chirping of waterfowl nesting near the river

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6751834527799828083.post-30861765029461582482010-02-22T19:15:00.000-08:002010-02-23T06:50:55.433-08:00

Wang Anyi, whose chinaculture.org profile proclaims "has written more than five million Chinese characters, winning important awards from both home and abroad dozens of times." My favorite Anyi quote at the moment: "An infinite number of misfortunes weighs us down every day."Finally, as if I've been searching all this time without really even knowing it, I find some academic writing that I'm

WanderMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796033022643644163noreply@blogger.com0