What? Me write?

Okay, so I haven't been writing. Put it down to romance, or business, or the effect of daily sunshine on the already-indolent. Sloth, plain and simple.

The goal of the blog was to get me writing more regularly, and, in that sense, it's been somewhat successful. Dr. Freeman and I published that little ode to Christopher Isherwood in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January. We then finished off the Dead Poet Project in the spring. (An article on W. H. Auden's relationship with Isherwood for a forthcoming British anthology.) With all that writing, who needs a blog?

Also, in the meantime, to update you on previous posts: I sold that rat-trap in Duluth I used to own. At a loss. After 36 months on the market. I feel lucky given These Tough Economic Times. Also, I was forced to relinquish the Writing Porch, both because I loaned the laptop to a friend and because I had to vacate the apartment when the owner decided he wanted to live in it. The nerve.

Then the plans for writing in these long, summer nights in Palm Springs. Who can write with a love-interest around? But I won't tell tales out of school. Plus he's away for the summer, so what's stopping me from a few weekly stream-of-consciousness ramblings fueled by a spot of vodka? (Or gin and Dubonnet, as the fake Queen_UK spouts on Twitter.)

I mentioned the sloth.

But wait, a new project is cooking. Nothing like a new project to get your writing juices flowing. It looks so good, and so long (it'll take five years, I'm thinking), that the blog will cry out! as a diversion from the real work.


And PS? My friend and model blogger Jocelyn has packed her family up and taken them to TURKEY for a year. She's blogging about it, with drawings by her multi-talented husband, Byron, over at layingfallow.com. Stop by.

Now a Major Motion Picture

It's a rare thing. To be a scholar of some (small) repute on a minor English writer is reward enough itself. The joy is in the work.

Nevertheless, when that minor writer has his best book adapted into a film,  there are many other pleasures, small though they may be. I've been very pleased to watch Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, climb up the Amazon.com best-sellers list since the release in December of a recent adaptation, starring Colin Firth. The novel's publisher, the University of Minnesota Press, came out with a movie-tie in version of the book in early December. My very casual eye has seen it break the top 500 on Amazon. Not bad for a book 45 years old.

The press has set up its own page devoted to the novel.

As I said, the joy is in the work. So, with the help of the UMP, I pitched an article about the novel to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the most-read national publication dealing with college and university issues. I enlisted my sometime collaborator, Chris Freeman, to write about the genesis of Isherwood's novel in his own experience teaching in southern California universities. The article, called "Isherwood the Multiculturalist," can now be seen online at The Chronicle Review. It's password protected (ooh, we're "premium content") for now.

Oh yeah, you can also watch the trailer for the film online.

What Academics Do on Thanksgiving Weekend

The X-BF once told me, “Shopping is an activity that may or may not end in a purchase.” Finally I began to understand the endless trips looking for the perfect drapes for the living room. Those windows were bare for years, even after he’d found the perfect curtain rods.

My own world was so different from his, but I found comfort and wisdom in this idea. Applying this saying to academic work leads me to consider research as an activity that may or may not end up in any findings.

Sometimes finding nothing is an answer, e.g., My Dead Poet did not keep any letters. Ever. From anybody. (Cursing the Dead Poet, optional.)

Sometimes finding nothing means you keep looking, which can seem futile, but can also lead to narrowing your search. Or it may lead you to look somewhere else. For example, Nope, nothing about this issue in the WHOLE Huntington Archive. Maybe I should go to New York and look at the public library. (This is either an exciting opportunity or a chore, depending on the status of your travel funds.)

So what’s all this about a Dead Poet? I’m glad you asked.

Last spring I was asked to contribute a chapter to a book about W. H. Auden, hereafter referred to as My Dead Poet (oh, let’s just go with the acronym, MDP, this is a blog). The book, called “Auden in Context,” is slated for the Cambridge University Press. My chapter is to be on Auden in the context of his lifelong friend and sometime collaborator, Christopher Isherwood. My deadline is sometime in Spring 2010.

A literary Hope and Crosby, Isherwood and Auden head to China to write about the Sino-Japanese War.

Toot Your Own Horn Department, All False Modesty Aside Unit: I am something of an authority on Isherwood and have published three books on him and his work. (See here.) Two with my own Sometime Collaborator, Chris Freeman, about whom more in a minute.

See the University of Minnesota Press page on Isherwood. Please.

I spent several weekends at the Huntington Library and Gardens last summer reading letters from My Dead Poet to Isherwood. MDP wrote a lot of letters to CI, who really must have written back, because many of MDP’s letters begin “thank you for the letter.” But, as we know, MDP never kept anything that was useful. On the other hand his personal life and living quarters were always a messy mess mess.

My research agenda was to find in the Isherwood papers some new, undiscovered vein of raw material that would show this relationship in a new light. Trouble is, while this material is newly available in the archive, every every scholar who has written about MDP seems to have had access to these papers before. There are several biographies of MDP and CI, and their relationship has been written about ad nauseum. (Seriously, after shopping, er, researching, for a few months on this you do get a little sick of them both.)

Auden in later years.

So there it sat, this little Dead Poet Project. Sad and dejected, the project languished. I let leads go unfollowed. I consulted with an Eminent Scholar in England (via email) and dropped that inquiry.

Until once again, on the cusp of admitting defeat, I consult with Sometime Collaborator. Over coffee the morning before Thanksgiving and cocktails later on, we’re on a roll again. Co-authoring will be the way out of this morass! We’ll consult Eminent Scholar again! We’ll interview The Widow again!

We’ll challenge the conventional view.

We’ll head back to the library.

And life is a celebration again.

Happy Black Friday.