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On Fresh Air today (Memorial Day), Terry Gross replayed a March 3 interview with Donovan Campbell, who served two tours of duty in Iraq and another in Afghanistan.  He has written a book describing his experiences there, and on the show he read a bit from the book, and talked at length about what it was like to lead men in the difficult street fights that have been the hallmark of the war in Iraq.

What was immediately clear in the interview is how extraordinary Lieutenant Campbell is.  Not many people would leave Princeton to join the Marines.  Modest and amazingly articulate, he recounted the challenges he and his men faced, and, through the interview, it became quite evident that intelligence, sound judgment and a strong moral compass abound in this man.  On top of that, of course, is tremendous courage.

Knowing that men like Donovan Campbell exist–and have positions of responsibility–is reassuring.

The first day of May is the last day of the spring semester at the University of Florida.  This morning between ten o’clock and noon, I was sitting at a desk in a windowless classroom in Turlington Hall–the worst building at UF, and, lamentably, home of the English Department–taking the final exam in Professor White’s “First U.S. Novels” course.  It was brutal.

Here’s how it worked.  We got five different excerpts taken from the five novels we’ve read since spring break.  We were to identify and contextualize the excerpts (easy enough), then explain how they related to or differed from at least two other novels we’ve read since spring break.  We had to respond to two prompts, meaning that we would need to address each novel we read at least once.  This format requires a tremendous amount of planning, since you must first pick the two prompts you wish to address, then decide to which of the other novels you wish to compare or contrast them.  I sat thinking about it for a half hour before writing a word.  The five novels or novellas we read since spring break were Ormond, or The Secret Witness by Charles Brockden Brown; The Asylum by Isaac Mitchell; The Secret History and Laura by Leonora Sansay; and The Champions of Freedom by Samuel Woodworth.  I chose a passage from The Secret History and compared it to Champions of Freedom and Laura; and another passage from The Asylum and compared it to Laura and Ormond.  It was incredibly difficult, and I was one of the last two people to finish.  I felt the need to apologize to my teacher when I gave it to him.  I wasn’t the only one, though: I heard several other students tell him how hard it was, and how they were mentally exhausted this last day of finals.  I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope everything works out.

Tomorrow I’ll write about my three other finals.

A picture of Shakespeare believed to the the only painted in his life has been discovered.  The painting wasn’t hidden away somewhere, but was simply overlooked.  The fellow in the painting looks so much like everybody imagines Shakespeare to have looked that it is difficult for me to believe nobody noticed it before.  If I had seen it hanging in a gallery next to a tag that read, “Unidentified Man”, I would have turned to whomever was next to me and said, “‘Tis not a myst’ry whose this visage is; / I knoweth William Shakespeare, and ’tis his”.  In iambic pentameter, just like that.  Then I would have high-fived anyone who may have been standing within earshot, and strutted out with a very satisfied expression on my face.

A baseball player with a .500 batting average would be MVP, but I don’t know if that standard holds for television.  And I know one program that is just that hit or miss:  Masterpiece Theater.  As I wrote recently, Tess of the d’Urbervilles was splendid, but the Wuthering Heights which followed was lousy.  Three weeks ago they began broadcasting Sense and Sensibility, and it was excellent.  The cast–especially the actress playing Elinor Dashwood–was super, and, as you’d expect, the costumes and sets were enchanting.  In the screenshot you see here, Elinor has just received Edward’s proposal.  She had until moments before believed him to be married to another woman, which had broken her heart.  But, as it turns out, that other woman had married his brother instead.  When Elinor hears Edward say that he is, in fact, not married, she is overcome.  What made the performance so affecting was the way the actress playing Elinor went from a placid expression to full-on break-down in an instant.

Last Sunday night, Masterpiece began broadcasting Oliver Twist, and it is, I am sad to say, awful.  Scenes important in the book are excised, others not in the book are invented, as is much dialog.  The characters do not seem at all like what I pictured from reading the novel.  Worst of all is the ridiculously anachronistic soundtrack.  There are screaming electric guitars.  I suppose you could point out that almost every movie set before the eighteenth century has a soundtrack that is not, shall we say, historically informed.  But Oliver Twist is set smack in the middle of the Romantic era, and it would have been so much less distracting to use acurate music.

So, I am a bit worried for what the rest of this season has in store.  Meanwhile, note to self:  if you ever become penniless, chose to live in the charming Devonshire countryside instead of putrid London.

Bravo, Samuel Johnson, for being Wikipedia’s featured article today.

As I have written repeatedly, I think Samuel Johnson is the smartest man who ever lived.  He rose from modest beginnings to become the most esteemed man in England.  Boswell’s great Biography has a wonderful anecdote about Johnson’s encounter with George III.  The king asked to be informed when Johnson was in the library, and introduced himself to Johnson there.  He asked if Johnson was writing anything new, to which Johnson “answered, he was not, for he had pretty well told the world what he knew, and must now read to acquire more knowledge”, and that he thought he had “done his part as a writer”.  “I’d have thought so, too…if you had not written so well”, was the King’s reply.  Johnson considered it such a high compliment that he could make no reply.  “When the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my Soverign”.

I consider my summer in Professor McCrea’s Age of Johnson course a life changing experience.  If I could recommend any writing to anybody, I’d say that everyone should read the great Rambler essays.

Huzzah, Johnson.