iebb

the weather was miserable on friday night, but, regardless, i took e. and participated in improv everywhere:  brooklyn bridge. the whole project is not yet on-line (i imagine it will be a great deal of work to make up the photo-flipbook and edit the video) but you will eventually find it on their website. my poor polaroid was not so useful for this adventure, or i would post my own photos.

e. hates the rain.

reading “the metaphysical club”

i never did respond to “the erotics of pedagogy.” so here it is, it was interesting–asked questions about the relationship between teacher and student, but more about the relationship between teacher and his/her own authority, and the value or uses of his/her subject of expertise–but i would have called it “the power relations of pedagogy.” adam pendleton did do some nasty talk (thanks!) but otherwise… of course, “power relations” is not nearly so sexy as “erotics.”

now that i am finished thinking about susan warner (temporarily anyway), i have picked back up “the metaphysical club.” i am only into the first section, which i have read before but over a year ago, and i have already become overwhelmed by names and dates. i am an excellent reader for style, form, theme, character development and all things related to language and how a story works, but i have difficulty with factual information. menand’s writing is very clear and direct, but he begins writing about civil war battles, the people involved in them, and the ideologies of the various groups participating in order to (i hope) establish early influences on wendell holmes, but he is so broad in scope and so very brief in explanation (it is not the purpose of the book to address the politics of the civil war, except to give a sense of them for the larger purpose of explaining the four men in whom he is interested) that i am now doggy paddling in names and numbers. maybe i will end up reading this again in another year, and then it will settle in more firmly.