Comments | gaijinxy: Musings of an Existentiell Nature

gaijinxy

Musings of an Existentiell Nature

Feb 27, 2008 22:55

I have a bit of extra time tonight and feel I ought to write something, but I just don't feel like existing in a biographical sense. Like Heidegger, I can't get Holderlin out of my head.

You may build your house of straw ( Read more... )

Comments 4

I liked your poem! pnolan February 27 2008, 18:09:24 UTC

You know I like your writing, gaijinxy, so I thought I would ask you who you like to read? Whose writing inspires you ( ... )

Re: I liked your poem! gaijinxy February 28 2008, 00:59:41 UTC

There are a lot of books in the world...I read a lot as well, but I haven't read any of those except Haruki Murakami. I'm working on Kafka on the Shore right now and have read Norwegian Wood, which I think I like better, though Kafka is quite imaginative. I'm wondering if he'll take a more Kafka-esque direction with it and simply not explain anything, though probably not ( ... )

Where are you from? pnolan March 3 2008, 21:54:50 UTC

I can tell from your reply that you are classically trained in literature and I admire that. Where did you go to school and were the classics stressed? I could have spent a lot more time reading the masters than I did, but I guess I was just lazy and preoccupied (with the music and politics of the 60s). My biggest influences in college were probably Hendrix and the Beatles!

You remind me of some of the really brainy guys I went to Harvard with. Mostly prep-schoolers. Being from Indianapolis (a really backwoods kind of city in the 60s) and from a public school background, I was in awe of the guys who read Marx and Trotsky and could recite ancient Greek and discuss economic theory!

Anyway, I will check out some of the authors you mentioned, and maybe even go back to Milton! I did read a lot of Shakespeare and Dickens back then and enjoyed it. I am sorry you didn't get your assistant professorship, by the way, although I know a little about academia and I'm not sure that world's for you. Very petty and territorial it seems.

Re: Where are you from? gaijinxy March 5 2008, 02:19:40 UTC

You do me too much honor. If anywhere in my journal I've implied an assistant professorship, I apologize! No, I graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a simple bachelor's, with plans to go on to graduate school with my girlfriend of four years, who was applying to medical school. When things fell apart in my relationship, so did all my other plans, and I wasted time trying to get shot as an Armored Truck courier. I was working fifty plus hours a week and needed time to get things together...I was already working on the novel that came out of all that havoc and still considering graduate school. On the other hand, I just wanted to get away from everything, get myself together as well. So I decided on a coin toss...if I got the glorified secretary position in the English Dept. of my school, I'd stay with the plans for graduate school, and otherwise I'd go to Japan. The toss should have been rigged, though, considering how much influence I had on campus and how well my interview went, but according to my friend and ( ... )