Was all this canned beef a good thing?

That question was asked by Miles Orvell from Temple University in his talk "Main Street in the American Mind: Crucible, Crossroads, Utopia." It's a question we all wonder about, no doubt. No doubt.

I have just barely revised and printed out a paper I wrote on Saturday, read 199 pages, considered most considerably my next paper due Thursday (it shall be dreadful, I fear; I haven't the heart for it right now. After 4 years, you'd think it would get easier; it doesn't), written 1 page of heartless paper, read a chapter about writing, read a short story, and then wrote a 2 page response. I get the sense that if I stop for a moment and procrastinate, I may never accomplish anything ever again. And I feel as though I've just woken up after a nap in the late afternoon to find that it's now dark and time is running out if I am to salvage any of the day to feel as though anything has really been accomplished. And this after having gotten up at 6:30, worked, and done all of the aforementioned activities. Also, I have eaten half a pork chop and a large salad. There is simply never enough time.

I want to curl up in a ball and watch Lawrence of Arabia in HD for the next five weeks. Fast forward to summer. There are things to do.

I haven't updated my blog in ages. And this isn't really an update. When you start three sentences with "and," you're just running from one thing to the next. And right now, I think I'll leave Ruthie reconfiguring darkness; and you, dear reader, you can pretend you're Virgie's struggle with hard plaid.

So what?

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. “To take upon us the mystery of things” — what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia — this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol’s “The Greatcoat”, or more correctly “The Carrick”); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”) — so what? There is no rational answer to “so what”. We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity — that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.

From “The Metamorphosis”, an essay in Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov