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The rain this morning is preventing me from doing some things I’d like to do, like ride my bike down to the post office and check out Goering’s to see if they’ll give me a decent price for a couple books I’d like to sell back.  If not I’ll sell them on Amazon, but if they come close to the prices I see for the same books on Amazon, I’ll sell them to Goering’s and buy some more books I’ll need for the coming semester.  Plus, it may be that students from my Age of Johnson class have sold back their copies of Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, a book which we covered very briefly at the end of the semester, which I didn’t buy at the time because of the $18 price tag.  However, if some of my fellow students have sold back their copies to Goering’s, I might be able to pick it up for $9 or so.  Also, other literature students may have sold back copies of some books I’d like to pick up as well.  I still need Richardson’s Clarissa (which is over 1,500 pages!) for my upcoming Eighteenth Century Novel course.

In a related story, I went to Barnes and Noble this week, where they have their own line of classic novels, but was disappointed in them.  It wasn’t for the price, since bundled as they were three or four novels to a volume they were quite inexpensive.  But I noticed that they had few, if any, endnotes, and at least one novel–it may have been one of Victor Hugo’s–was abridged.  I am becoming quite fond of the editions in the Penguin Classics series, the Oxford World’s Classics series, and the Norton editions.  I have been reading the Penguin edition of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and I must say that in older literature, it is helpful to have some degree of editing for spelling or punctuation (these books frequently have words spelled different ways from one chapter to the next, for some reason), and footnotes for allusions that are made or geographical references.

In a less related story, I see that NBC is set to have a Robinson Crusoe television series this fall.  I predict swift cancellation.

Now, as I hear it raining still harder I am beginning to suspect that I won’t be able to get out today.

So, this is it: tomorrow is the last day of Summer B, 2008.  I don’t really know how to feel about it, since my senses have been numbed so thoroughly by all the reading and writing I’ve been doing over the last six weeks, and especially the last three.

Tonight I finished the last of my papers, a review of A Land Remembered, the 1984 historical novel by Patrick Smith which describes Florida through three generations of a family.  In a nutshell: the MacIveys arrive in northern Florida just before the Civil War; they struggle to survive in a difficult and unforgiving land; their son does better–as a cattle rancher–when he grows up; his son does better still as a land developer.  But by then it’s 1968, and hardly any of the Florida that his grandfather would have known still exists.  Along the way all of the various issues of Florida history are woven into the narrative.  The purpose of the paper was to explain how, if at all, a historical novel helped expand my understanding of Florida, or how my understanding of Florida history helped me better appreciate the novel.

I did my best to explain all that, but I now have other novels on my mind, since I am already looking ahead to the Fall semester.  I’ll be taking Professor McCrea’s Eighteenth Century Novel course, and we’ll have to read:

• Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Works
• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
• Samuel Richardson, Clarissa
• Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews
• Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling
• Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
• Frances Burney, Evelina
• Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story

As I may have written here before, just this semester I read Fanny Burney’s Evelina, so I have a leg up there.  Meanwhile, this afternoon I stopped by my favorite independent bookstore–Goering’s on 1st Avenue–and picked up a few of the above titles to get a head start during my two week break before Fall classes begin.  As luck would have it, they had A Simple Story, Oroonoko and Robinson Crusoe on sale for half off, so I saved a bundle there.  But I couldn’t resist purchasing George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner; and Henry James’ Turn of the Screw.  Irony of ironies: being an English major has reawakened my appreciation for narrative fiction!  I have therefore resolved that I will build myself a great library of classic poetry and prose, concentrating primarily on the great pre-twentieth century writers.  The good news is that this material can be had cheap.

Already on my “to buy” list are a number Samuel Johnson’s writings.  The more I read of Johnson the more I am convinced he was the smartest man who ever lived.  He said about Alexander Pope: “New things are made familiar, and familiar things made new”.  I’d say the same about Johnson.  After all, he wrote “He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty”.  As true today as when it was written.  So, as I type, en route is Boswell’s Life of Johnson, which I expect to contain endless wonders.  James Boswell spent decades following Johnson, documenting his life to prepare for the biography. I don’t know what it would be like to have someone around you day and night, but I don’t think it would be especially enjoyable, and I guess it went both ways for Johnson.  Boswell quotes him as saying, “Sir, you have two topics, yourself and me.  I am sick of both”.  How can you not love this man?  I will next purchase as an extensive an edition of his Dictionary as I can find, plus Rasselas and his Lives of the Poets.

I know that in this day and age, when Google is digitizing great literature and placing it online for free, it hardly makes sense to some people to pay good money for books.  But I like lying in bed with a book in my hands.  It’s much more comfortable than having a laptop on my crotch, which is how I am now seated.  And a book is easily portable, and it doesn’t strain my eyes, and I can put a little marker between the pages and pick up right where I left off, and it doesn’t use any electricity.  And Project Gutenberg, for all it’s brilliance, doesn’t have the helpful introductions and extensive footnotes that these Penguin Classics and Oxford editions include.

Yes, I am very excited about my new library project.

UPDATE: I found Joseph Andrews at Goering’s this afternoon, so, just three to go and I’ll have my whole reading list.

If i cam someone you once saw with any degree of frequency, you may be wondering where I have been. The short answer is that I have been at home reading - constantly.  I rather foolishly signed up for three classes this summer, which, due to the accelerated schedule, are held each day, all morning.  Since the instructors assume you aren’t crazy enough to have signed up for three classes, they have no qualms about assigning enormous quantities of reading.  There are two and a half weeks left in the semester, and, in addition to the three major papers I have to write before then, I still have to read Evelina, Persuasion and A Land Remembered.  That’s probably about a thousand pages of text, which doesn’t include the selected essays by Samuel Johnson I am reading on a daily basis (and which, by the way, are the best thing ever, and you should immediately go out and buy), plus assorted poetry and the entire second half of Florida: A Short History.  It’s overwhelming.  I am comforted by the knowledge that this, too, shall pass, and I will one day soon be able to do the things I once did, like go to dinner with friends, read the newspaper and watch television.

Summer school is in session, which will certainly reduce the frequency of my posts, since any energy I have for writing would be better served composing papers for class.  I am taking “Age of Johnson”, the Johnson in question being Samuel Johnson; a class on Florida history; and another class on Romanticism, hoping I might be able to use what bits of information are still fresh in my mind from the spring semester.

The most agonizing part about summer school is that, with class occurring every day, any assignments are due the following day, whereas in fall or spring you have at least 48 hours before the subsequent session.

Another agonizing thing is paying $55 for a book which has almost identical contents to one I already own, but is just different enough to necessitate my purchasing it.

I’ve written in the past about my English Romanticism professor, James Twitchell, and how brilliant–if a bit monster-obsessed–he is.  His class isn’t easy, and he doesn’t shy away from giving Ds and Fs if that’s what a student deserves.  Grade inflation is not his style.  Indeed, my marks have been disappointing, but not undeserved.  When I conferred with him recently after doing especially poorly on a test, he was remarkably understanding and sympathetic, but the grade was fair. 

Imagine my horror when, upon arriving at work this morning, I was presented with a copy of today’s Gainesville Sun, the cover of which featured this above-the-fold headline:

UF Professor Admits He Plagiarized in Several Books

Below these bold letters was a photo of James Twitchell and a damning article.  I was astonished and dismayed.  Twitchell has been a professor at the University since the 1970s, and has written many, many books.  He is a frequent guest on a call-in show here at my work, and some of my colleagues, substantially older than me, had him as a teacher during their college years.  That he could even be accused of plagiarism is shocking to me considering how serious a charge that is in a college setting.  It is spoken of in the same tone used to describe genocide. 

To tell the truth, I’m giving Professor Twitchell the benefit of the doubt.  Someone as apparently gifted as he wouldn’t need to steal another’s ideas.  If he says it was a note-taking error I believe it.