Wild Green Thoughts

I've been thinking a lot lately about how other people perceive me. I know this is generally not a good thing to do, but I haven't been thinking about it in a way that makes me nervous or bad about myself. I more mean that I have just been curious about what other people say when they talk about me. I know they do – everybody is talked about to some extent. You exist to other people when you are not interacting with them, just as they exist to you. I've just been really curious how.

I think part of this curiosity has come about because of the books I've read recently. I'm currently reading a collection of five plays by Oscar Wilde, and it begins with a brief rundown of his life followed by an introduction that discusses his life and its effects on the things that he wrote. The biographical briefing is only a few pages long, hitting only the most important parts of his career. I started wondering if those points that the book deemed important would have included all the parts of his life he considered significant. Biographies are wonderful things; I want to be the kind of person they write biographies about someday. But I can't help but wonder how much they leave out. Would Oscar Wilde's autobiography look different from the ones written by everyone else? Does one exist? I don't think one does, otherwise I am certain this biography would have mentioned that. That, at the very least, seems like something they wouldn't leave out.

But if, against all odds, a biography about me gets written some day, I can't help but wonder what would be in it? Certainly there wouldn't be a passage about every single person I dated in high school or college. What would be considered the turning point? Where would they say my big break came? I might just be wondering these because I'm trying to figure out what my plan is after graduation. But I do think these are interesting things to consider. A biography absolutely cannot include everything about someone's life. Considerations must be made for cultural significance, what is interesting to read, and the fact that extremely long books can often be intimidating for publishers and audiences.

However, this question of mine doesn't just come from the introduction to a collection of plays.

This summer, I also read two novels by John Green: Looking For Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars. I loved both of these books, of course; I'm not the one person in the world who doesn't like John Green. I might have been rather reserved at first, going into Looking For Alaska, but once I let my preconceptions about the characters go and allowed them to speak for themselves, I really found myself in love with the book. After the heartbreaking and lovely ending that was that novel, I went excitedly into The Fault in Our Stars and found exactly what I was hoping for. John Green writes young adult novels the way I wish I did. His characters are flawed but infinitely likeable. The emotion is always palpable between them, and their dialogue switches well between quick and lengthy. Not to mention I felt tears in my eyes at the end of both novels. I'm not afraid of that.

In The Fault in Our Stars, there is a big deal made over the significance or insignificance of funerals. Now, discussion over the validity of eulogies isn't particularly new. The Orson Scott Card novel Speaker for the Dead concerns itself with this as the majority of its underlying plot, and, putting aside my polar differences with Card's personal philosophy, that will still always be one of my favorite novels. But whereas Speaker for the Dead decides that the only way to truly remember the dead is to put their full, uncensored past on display, the characters in The Fault in our Stars disagree. While they hate the superficial nature of eulogies, the cliches that are spouted, the sugarcoating that happens, they ultimately decide that a funeral is never really for the person who died. Rather, they say, it is to comfort those left behind.

And while I would agree with that, I would also disagree with a larger theme that plays out in both Green novels. There seems that the characters hold a great deal of resentment towards those who are left behind. Not the close friends, of course. But many of the characters state that they feel that people who mourn but weren't close are fake or insincere in some way. I am inclined to disagree with that. Maybe I'm not the best person to state this, since I haven't particularly mourned the passing of anyone in a long time, but I think that someone touches the lives of a lot more people than they realize. Sure, there might perhaps be those who pretend to feel bad just to get attention, but I legitimately believe there will me more people than someone might expect at their funeral.

I think my point is that I would be curious to see who would be present at my funeral. That's something of a morbid thought, I suppose. I'm certainly not wishing for death, or even contemplating my own at all. I just really do wonder how I would be remembered if I was gone tomorrow, or how I will be remembered when the time actually comes. This isn't out of some vindictive spirit, nor do I think this with any particular vanity. But I really do wonder what exactly my significance is to people. I want to make a difference in people's lives, and I would love to be able to know exactly what difference I have made.

I think maybe that's one of the reasons why I write.

On the Pitfalls of Literary Study

Whenever someone asks me what I hope to do after college, or what I hope to have as a career, I find it a difficult question to answer. It's not that I have no idea. It's that I have so many ideas. I want to do everything! I want to write, I want to edit, I want to report, I want to work in a theater, I want to be a published playwright and poet and author and I just want to do! Everything!

One of the things that I really want to do is teach English literature. Granted, you might have guessed that from this blog, but I will pretend it's an enormous revelation, and we'll move on. But the endgame for me is probably a literature professor. I struggled with this, because it seems such an obvious answer for an English student to say that people assume it's all that an English degree is good for. And I've tried to work hard to fight against that perception.

And now here I am, really wanting to be an English professor. It's not the fault of the English degree. English study isn't useless. I have learned so much about how to formulate an argument, develop critical thinking skills, write like there's no tomorrow, and understand the human condition. There is a heck of a lot you can actually do with an English degree. And there is a lot that I plan to do with it.

It's just that nothing is quite as enjoyable to me as discussing the finer points of literature, or the hidden details in a movie, or the motivations of a character, or the recurring themes of a screenwriter's work. It's just my favorite thing to talk about, and if you get me talking about the cultural significance of a movie like Captain America: The First Avenger, you had better have a comfortable seat, because you will probably not be allowed to leave for a couple hours. And if I could share this passion with others as a part of my career? That would be the best thing in the world.

I actually spend a good deal of my daydreaming time devoted to making mental lists of possible curricula. I understand that this is probably the nerdiest thing I could do with my free time, save possibly for ranking all the mecha in Gundam in order of least to most available horsepower, but I honestly do not feel any shame about divulging this information. I often wonder what kind of classes I would or could teach if given the opportunity. Maybe I would teach a class on rhetorical usage in the films of Quentin Tarantino. Or perhaps a history of comic book adaptations from Superman through The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. Or a class on adaptations and reimaginings of various famous works, like the plays of Shakespeare or the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Or the influence of anime on Western cinema and the influence of Western cinema on anime.

If it seems like film is coming up a lot on that list, that's because film really is my favorite medium of literature. Do not get me wrong, I adore novels, I love poetry, I live for plays and music. But when it comes right down to it, I get the most mileage out of films. It's so much more of a recent mode of literature, and it has its very roots in adapting previous works. It has developed its own language of tropes and conventions throughout the decades, and new things are innovated all the time, and they are adapted and perfected and overused so quickly. Few forms of literature can be as escapist as film, but few forms of literature can be so symbolically and intellectually dense as film. Really, if you wish to examine the zeitgeist of a particular time from the beginning of the 20^th Century on, it is so clearly apparent in its film.

I would not, however, begrudge the opportunity to teach something else. I love teaching. My style is a bit more informal than some, maybe, but I think that in a university setting, this would be a good thing. I probably couldn't teach the way I want to in a high school. But for me, getting in front of people and talking about something I am passionate about or leading a discussion is actually something I can do rather naturally. And it's something I highly enjoy doing. So maybe there will be a few steps in between. And maybe it's the obvious answer. But when it comes down to it, I really want to teach literature. I'm sorry friends. I have fallen victim to the legions of English students who want to teach. You're going to have to find someone else who can lead that fight.