Reading Week Two: Electric Boogaloo

Well, I survived the birthday drinking, and am now officially 26 (as opposed to biologically, which doesn't count). Highlight was definitely when the director of the English graduate program bought me a glass of bourbon, which knocked me over the edge after all the other drinks I'd had. (Apparently, claiming you want to stay with beer so you can last longer is really an invitation for people to buy you shots and hard drinks.) Again, if you put it in front of me, I drink it quickly. As usual, memories fade after that last glass, causing me to lament my faulty genes and horrible memory. (Note: It isn't just drink. I have a horrible memory for my own past events. I don't really remember any of my childhood before seventh grade, excepting occasional flashes and moments. And yet I can remember intricate plot points of the novels I read. Does that seem right?)

Friday's festivities made Saturday's hell, as did my reading load. We're doing modernist drama this week in my study group, which means O'Neill, Williams, and Miller. If you ever want to feel great about being alive and the potential this world has to offer, stay as far away from these men as possible. If you want justification for suicide, however, start reading them all, one after another. On a Saturday. While hung over. In oppressive humidity. On little sleep.

Now don't get me wrong. These gentlemen are fine dramatists. I love Williams (still prefer Streetcar to Glass Menagerie), and Miller's fine as well. O'Neill, though, goes above and beyond. I'd read Long Day's Journey before, but just now for the first time read The Iceman Cometh, which for reasons I can't begin to articulate struck me more powerfully than anything else I've read so far. It's profound, shocking, and deeply moving. (Maybe more so since I too am accustomed to hanging around with a bunch of drunks, talking about the past. I believe it's all theatre majors do.) I can see why people say Long Day's Journey is the better play, as it is more concise and has a purity about it, but Iceman just hit me on a gut level, so I had to stop reading after I finished it.

(And yet Nittany Lion argues that Miller is the better playwright. Thoughts from the readership?)

I now have hung on my door the complete prelims list, all 13 pages of it, next to each other. Each time I finish an entry, I cross it off in red. Its ghostly white presence haunts my room, and is the first thing my eye is drawn to every morning when I awaken, and one of the last things I see before I sleep. This may reflect a severe unbalance in my mind, or a need to torment myself. I personally see it as akin to the photos that Rocky puts up before a fight, only to tear them down right before the bout. By removing them, the Italian Stallion sees no longer his enemies, but himself. Of course, he's looking in a mirror, not a wooden door, but I enjoy my metaphor. And I hope the tape doesn't hurt the door or the paint. Either way, I plan to dance and sing along to "Eye of the Tiger" just before the test.

Until next time, here's a list of things I've learned this week:

Family is pain.
Friends are just those that help sustain your own lies.
Women are liars and whores, or mentally unbalanced.
Destructive forces win out.
I become too invested in plays with idiots. (I have had repeated fantasies about traveling back in time to the Salem Witch Trials and just shooting the judges with a Glock. Thank you, Mr. Miller.)
If you have dreams, they will be crushed and you will be crushed with/by them.
The South is a funny place.
Except when it destroys you.
Southern Catholics are particularly conflicted.
Holden Caulfield is more annoying now than when you're a teenager yourself.
Saul Bellow is longwinded and full of himself.