Me again

I really should avoid neglecting this space. It's just difficult to get back into the habit after falling out of it for so long. But, I've gotta do it somehow.

Anyway, not a lot has occurred lately. I finished and submitted my applications to Berkeley and Michigan last week, which is good. Up next are Columbia (15 Dec.) and Stanford (16 Dec.). Fortunately, I shouldn't have a lot to do for either of those. I essentially just need to rewrite the statement of purpose I first wrote, adapting it to fit the word length and other specific criteria set by each school. That, and excerpting an appropriate number of pages of my thesis (which, arguably, could prove more difficult).

But I'm really looking forward to grad school The academic life, in general. I really like the thought that, although I'll be a historian (-in-training), I'll get to dabble in other disciplines, like sociology and anthropology, even political science and economics, though to a lesser degree. Plus, I can read a lot of great literature and watch some fantastic films. I was browsing Amazon or Barnes and Noble online last week and there are just so many fabulous Eastern European films I've either seen (small number) or want to see (big number). It's great, too, because as a scholar of the period, I can place these films in their historical context and thus appreciate a lot of the themes and issues they address. Chief among these is Musíme si pomáhat (titled "Divided We Fall" in English, though a truer and more fitting translation would be "We Must Help Each Other" or even "United We Stand"), an outstanding film that raises tough questions about the nature of collaboration. Films like this that illustrate an issue like this in so many shades of gray convey an idea, capture the essence of an era, in a way difficult to accomplish in other forms. So, I'll definitely be making liberal use of films as a teaching aid when I'm a professor.

And, there's also literature. Again, in the Czech case, there are scores of talented, brilliant Czech writers who really capture the spirit of a nation and its history. (Czech film is highly distinguished in its own right, from the émigré works of Milos Forman to the less ballyhooed directors Jan Sverak and Jan Hrebejk.) The really difficult, grueling, thankless work ahead of me, of course, is to read all these literary works and watch these films. Tough job, but someone's gotta do it, eh?

I also continue to entertain notions -- delusions, really -- in my head of writing works of a literary nature. Unfortunately, I think such an endeavor will prove rather fruitless, or the fruit it bears will be sour or rotten. First, I can't envision putting in the long hours and effort necessary to conceive a great work and make it really come to life, developing a plot, crafting a narrative, employing the myriad literary devices required to produce something of value. Not bloody likely. Even worse, if somehow I did acquire the discipline or compulsion to sit down and write, I'm afraid I'd be stumbing over my academic-ese. I like to think I write extremely well for a scholar, but my writing still bears the hallmarks of, well, a scholar. I'm given to dense prose and all sorts of other academic conventions of speech that play in the ivory towers of academia, but don't really lend themselves to literary masterpieces. I just don't quite have that ability to turn a phrase, that absolute mastery and command of the language, and more importantly its devices, to make it happen. Alas.

Still, I'd like to try, on some level, to make a go at it. But I don't exactly have any brilliant ideas for how to get started. Maybe I should heed the advice Kurt Vonnegut gave a previous graduating class at Northwestern. (Of course it wasn't mine; we had to get Wendy Chamberlin -- Wendy friggin' Chamberlin, a USAID hack helping screw up Central and South Asia even more, and serving up us grads "Wendy's Top Ten Words O'Wisdom Dot Com", a pathetic caricature of most every commencement speech ever delivered.) Vonnegut told the grads to create something and then throw it away without ever showing it to anyone, essentially exhorting us folks with an edumacation to create art for art's sake. So perhaps that's the route for me to follow. To write things and then delete them.

Sure, I'd be driving all of my loyal readers (Colleen) the torture of reading my prose, but I might feel like I've made some strides or at least scratched my creative itch.