Category: Minor English Major Musings

As I discovered a few years ago, deciding to get your undergraduate degree in English – especially when you are a student of non-traditional age – is an open invitation for confusion and ridicule.

Nobody ever questioned me when I was a marketing major or a business management major or an accounting major or a computer science major (I had a lot of majors), but when I finally committed to being an English major, people looked at me askance. Potential employers reviewed my resume and demanded explanations for my strange path. My friends tut-tutted. My parents stared at each other in horror. Why? everyone asked. Why in the world would you get an English degree? What are you going to DO with it?

Quite a lot, actually. In fact, I’m going to boldly state that the older I get, the more I think every English-speaking person should be an English major, even if they DON’T want to be a writer or work at the Starbucks!  So there!

All right, all right. Calm down.  I know that’s a little extreme.  But just consider this – when you pursue a degree in English, you….

• Learn how to interpret incomprehensible stuff.

You think that spreadsheet you’re working on is hard to understand? Please. Try reading anything written by James Joyce and interpreting it in a meaningful fashion – then we’ll talk.

• Learn how to present your ideas clearly and intelligibly.

Let’s face it, what the world needs now isn’t love – it’s business people who can actually write an email that makes sense and gets their point across.

• Learn how to compose a sentence, a paragraph, and a paper.

See comment above. You need the tools before you can produce.

• Learn how to organize your thoughts.

Compare and contrast the personification of evil in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Dante’s Inferno. GO! Can’t do it? Wimp.

• Learn how to be creative.

After you’ve had to write, not one, but several essays on the deep truths supposedly hidden in “A Rose for Emily,” you know the real meaning of creativity.  (more of my thoughts on “A Rose for Emily” here.)

• Learn how to do research and support your opinions.

Opinions are grand and glorious, but it’s often wise to look into them a little bit before spouting them all over the universe. Document, people!

• Are forced to read all sorts of literature.

The professors make you read things and think about them and maybe even grow your mind or expand your horizons a little bit. Bastards! (although, granted, I could have done without the novel where the kid thought he was a pig and pooped all over the kitchen floor.)

In short, pursuing an English degree helps you learn how to think, and how to communicate your thoughts and ideas. What’s wrong with that? Nothing! Where can you use it? Everywhere!

Okay, yes, I guess we need doctors and lawyers and business people and other professions too. But being an English major means you can comment thoughtfully on the Christ-imagery at the end of Harry Potter book 7, and that’s a good thing. Thinking is good, and the world needs a lot more of it.

In my humble opinion.

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

-William Shakespeare

My friends, I am a total Shakespeare geek. There. I’ve said it. Laugh at me if you will, but I love that little bard.  And lovin’ him ain’t hard.

Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better. (Twelfth Night)

We don’t really know when Shakespeare was born. His baptism date was April 26, 1564. Most historians celebrate his date of birth on April 23. For the most part, they decided to do that because he died April 23, 1616 and it just makes a nice circle. Historians love them some nice circles.

The course of true love never did run smooth. (A Midsummer’s Night Dream)

So, to celebrate the birth of my favorite playwright, I thought I would share photos of some of the geeky Shakespearen items that have found their way into my possession. I’m not quite sure why I’m sharing these photos. Perhaps I want to shout my geekiness to the world. Perhaps I believe Mr. Shakespeare would be amused.

Perhaps I just need a blog post.

Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds. (Sonnet 116)

But I digress.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. (Hamlet)

P.S. – all quotes in this post are from William Shakespeare.  In case you couldn’t figure that out for yourselves.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting. (Much Ado About Nothing)

First, my Shakespeare bobble head doll. Every home should have one.

Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing? (As You Like It)

Next, a Shakespeare action figure – with removable quill.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. (Hamlet)

Another, tinier Shakespeare action figure. He’s bendy.

Oftentimes excusing of a fault

Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse. (King John)

A Shakespeare insult mug. This comes in very handy at work.

There’s many a man has more hair than wit. (Two Gentlemen of Verona)

And, naturally, a life-size poster of the great man himself.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. (Twelfth Night)

When I had this hanging in my cubicle at work, it would scare people coming down the hall. That made me laugh. Ho, ho, ho.

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. (Measure for Measure)

To tie this all in with my book, what does Luc say when his dog makes a mess on the carpet?

You guessed it.

“Out, out, damned Spot!” (MacBeth)

And, to round out today’s Shakespearean lovefest, here is a picture of my first cat, and one of my own great loves.  William Morris Shakespeare Horvath, aka Mr. Shakey-Bakey  (1988-2003).  I sure miss him.

Happy day-after-we-think-it-was Shakespeare’s birthday, everyone!

Parting is such sweet sorrow. (Romeo and Juliet)

No, I’m not!

Yes, you are!

QUIET!

You know what I mean, right? Right?

*tap, tap, tap* Is this thing on?

Anyway, it’s like I have an inner parent nagging at an inner adolescent who refuses to pay attention. And if that’s not bad enough, yesterday I realized that much of my inner parent’s advice to my inner adolescent is a scary mimic of Polonius’s advice to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet.

Now THAT set me back a little bit, I’ll admit. But I’ll prove it to you. First Polonius, then inner parent Betsy.

Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;

Keep your big mouth shut unless you have something useful to say. And for God’s sake, don’t just jump to do stuff without thinking about it first.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.

True friends are really hard to come by. When you find one, “grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel”. But not everyone with whom you are friendly is actually a friend.

Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear ‘t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.

If you have to get involved in a fight or a quarrel, then for pity’s sake, handle it with dignity. And try not to just burst into tears and run away sobbing.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Don’t judge people or situations based on what other people are saying. Because nine times out of ten you’re not getting the full story.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

CUT UP THE LANE BRYANT CARD! For heaven’s sake, you don’t need that many clothes!

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

Stay out of debt, because debt is a prison sentence. And be careful lending to other people with the expectation that you will be repaid. Because that is a sure-fire way to lose a friend. If they really need something, just give it to them and forget about it.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

You must be yourself. It doesn’t matter what other people say. It doesn’t matter what other people see when they look at you. You must be yourself. You don’t have to try to fit in. You don’t have to pull down others to build up your own standing or reputation. You don’t have to be what everybody wants you to be.

See? Weird. And yet the advice is pretty good. Sure wish my inner Laertes would listen to it more often.

And you know what’s even stranger? Sometimes I hear my inner Polonius singing his advice in the voice of the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXId5jOTxdg

Now that’s creepy.

In the world of fiction, there are two categories. Literary fiction, and everything else.

Literary fiction confuses me.

There. I’ve said it. I, your hostess, an English Major, am confused by literary fiction. It’s not necessarily the books themselves I find confounding (although, hello! James Joyce anyone?). It’s the definition. What exactly IS literary fiction anyway?

Here’s the definition of literary fiction from Wikipedia:

Well, that puts me in my place. Apparently only works classified as literary fiction can be “serious” and have “literary merit” and be read long after the author is dead. Okay. So, who exactly decides what “serious” and “literary merit” means?

You may think it’s silly to wonder about this, but the fact of the matter is that, for the most part, only fiction classified as literary fiction gets reviewed in the big newspapers. Only literary fiction is spotlighted on NPR or other “serious” media outlets. You’d better be considered literary fiction if you want to win a prestigious award. Literary fiction is respected.

Genre and popular fiction are not.

This is why authors who are considered “literary”, like Margaret Atwood, argue vehemently when their fiction is considered to be genre. They can’t afford to be ghettoized.

On the other hand, genre and popular fiction are what sells. Hence the name “popular”. So let’s hope there actually is psychological depth and character in at least some of those books.

Here are my thoughts on the matter. Because I know you care.

I don’t give a darn if a book is considered literary fiction or genre fiction or popular fiction. If the book is entertaining, if it’s thought provoking, if it pulls me into the world of the author and transports me to a different place, I like it. So I liked Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, even though she insists it is “speculative fiction”, not science fiction. I love Jane Eyre and The Shipping News and Weird Sisters and a hundred other literary and “serious” books. But if the book is literary and serious because the author graduated from an MFA program and wants to prove how literary and serious they are, well, I just don’t have the time. I’ll let the New York Times Book Review editor read that one.

In other words, literary fiction still has to tell a story, and that story has to be interesting.

I also think that genre and popular fiction should be judged on their own merits. It shouldn’t matter how the critics decide to label a book. The worth and “literary merit” of a novel should be based on how well it is written, not by how it is tagged and marketed.

Because to some degree or other, aren’t all books literary?

Why, yes.  I would say they are.