I find, more and more now, that my classes teach me things that I actually think about in life. I'm kind of in love with WGS because of that and wish I had discovered it earlier in my college career, but alas. And I suppose sociology gives me a broader lens with which to look at the world. As if any of this will be useful 10 years from now. Besides, of course, being able to refer to a play as Brechtian or a novel as post-Flaubertian at a cocktail party, which, really, is what going to Harvard is all about, no? Also, the ability to pretentiously overuse commas.
Anyways, I thought this quote was good after what I was thinking about yesterday in terms of not being debilitated by the tragic things going on in the world:
"This was disturbing. Only in the detachment of an incurable complaint, in the sanity of near death, could one cope with this for a moment. In order to exist rationally, Pnin had taught himself, during the last ten years, never to remember Mira Belochkin... because, if one were quite sincere with oneself, no conscience, and hence no consciousness, could be expected to subsist in a world where such things as Mira's death were possible. One had to forget..." ~ Nabokov, Pnin
I like that I took my first English class (The Novel after World War II) my freshman fall and am taking my second one (Post-War British and American Fiction) my senior spring. Such a lovely cycle with useless knowledge the meat of a sandwich made from Nabokovian bread. James Wood and Leland de la Durantaye are both endlessly fascinating, and having their soothing voices read out loud to the class is like being brought back to kindergarten when the teacher used to read "Trumpet of the Swan" and you'd try not to crunch too loudly on your animal crackers.
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