This might be turning into a tradition.

[icepixie]

I re-read Possession this week. I read it before starting grad school, and it seemed appropriate to do the same after said schooling. (I did a similar read/re-read of Kluge's Alma Mater pre- and post-Kenyon.)

I still feel much the same way I did four years ago, although this time through, I could see, well, deeper into it than before, since I actually have a clear idea of the differences between structuralism and post-structuralism, or who Lacan is, or the crappy working conditions Roland in particular labors under.

...I had some thoughts about my own scholarship and criticism and the novel, but I don't seem able to put them in words. It was something about how the novel privileges both the historical context and the text, and so seems to be similar to my own style of criticism, which I think of as a blend of updated New Criticism and New Historicism (which, yes, I realize is like saying I am both a libertarian and a communist, or something equally impossible, but...it works for me, really), with a bit of cultural materialism/Marxist criticism for spice, mostly because I spent the past year with Jameson; and it was also something about how close readings seem to be coming back in style in contemporary criticism, though with the shadow of the context-heavy New Historicist style laying on them, which means that for once I am on the vanguard of a zeitgeist.

Anyway. I submitted my grades today, so I am officially finished with the semester, and thus, school. I should be thrilled, but at the moment, I'm staring down the abyss of real life and trying to get up the courage to jump. Hope my parachute works.*

* I should probably do a chromatic analysis of it at some point in the near future.