Incompetence and sisterhood

I was reading an editorial about Sarah Palin today (because, despite my better instincts, I can't stop making fun of her). But this editorial happened to contain some quotes that speak to, oddly enough, our friendship:

You don’t have to be perennially pretty in pink — and ditsy and cutesy and kinda maybe stupid — to have an inner Elle Woods. Many women do. I think of Elle every time I dress up my insecurities in a nice suit. So many of us today — balancing work and family, treading water financially — feel as if we’re in over our heads, getting by on appearances while quaking inside in anticipation of utter failure. Chick lit — think of Bridget Jones, always fumbling, never quite who she should be — and in particular the newer subgenre of mom lit are filled with this kind of sentiment.

You don’t have to be female to suffer from Impostor Syndrome either — I learned the phrase only recently from a male friend, who puts a darned good face forward. But I think that women today — and perhaps in particular those who once thought they could not only do it all but do it perfectly, with virtuosity — are unique in the extent to which they bond over their sense of imposture.

[...]

Real life is different, of course, from Hollywood fantasy. Incompetence has consequences, political and personal. Glorifying or glamorizing the sense of just not being up to the tasks of life has consequences, too. It means that any woman who exudes competence will necessarily be excluded from the circle of sisterhood. We can’t afford any more of that.

--Judith Warner

Are we bonding over being impostors, Nancy? Are we excluding competent women from our sisterhood?

HA, need I even ask these questions! Of course we are!

My thesis, part 1

Since this blog is supposed to keep a record of our lives, it's only fair that I introduce the terrible preoccupation that rules my life: my senior thesis.

Nancy and I both major in East Asian Studies, which doesn't require seniors to write theses; nonetheless, out of a combination (you can decide in what proportions) of profound intellectual passion, hunger for glory, and foolhardiness, we are both writing theses this year.

It's only September, the year is young, and crushing reality hasn't set in yet, so I'm still wildly in love with my thesis. Let me introduce it to you! Here is a brief description I filed in a form yesterday:

I will investigate the use of classical Japanese literature in Enchi Fumiko's work and how it relates to what Nina Cornyetz calls her "literary configuration of femaleness." The center of the thesis will be a translation of selected essays about The Tale of Genji from Enchi's Genji monogatari shiken. Through her nonfiction writings about the Genji, I aim to clarify the role of classical Japanese literature within her oeuvre and specifically her work about gender. Finally, I will attempt to put Enchi's use of classical Japanese sources in the context of gender theory, 20th century Japanese feminism, and the similar literary efforts of her peers.

What makes this project so exciting to me, at least in part, is the way it pulls together so many of the disparate threads of my academic career here. Translation is, of course, my current passion and one of the things I want to work toward in my post-college life. I've written term papers on Enchi in both my sophomore and junior years. And Genji itself is my shameless obsession--I've taken two seminars on it, I learned classical Japanese to read it, I've hunted down art, plays, movies, and literature based on it, and I am basically an enormous dork about it.

This thesis lets me play in all of my sandboxes at once. Through one project, I can deal with gender theory, feminism, modern Japanese women's literature, classical Japanese women's literature, Genji studies--everything! It's all still in an embryonic stage, but I love it so much already!

(P.S.: In Rachel Opera Project News, Berg's Wozzeck is still totally eluding me, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin was pretty dull, and I've given in and am now listening to Britten's Billy Budd. Because I love Benjamin Britten. A lot. I have to say, the Opera Project is actually increasing my quality of life quite a bit.)

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

This is the most famous photograph of World War II and possibly the most famous photograph in history.



In the photo, five Marines and one Navy corpsman are raising a flag on the top of Mount Suribachi. Published stateside, this photograph became unimaginably famous.

Although Mount Suribachi (which means mortar, as in mortar and pestle, in Japanese) was the most tactically important location on Iwo Jima (which means "sulfur island"), the battle continued for a month after this photograph was taken. In spite of the continuing carnage, the image of an American flag going up on Iwo Jima inspired hope in Americans. The three surviving flag-raisers, Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, and John Bradley went on a bond tour and raised $26.3 billion for the war.

To me, what is amazing about this photograph is not the impact it had on the US during the war, but the man on the very end at the left, Ira Hayes. Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian from Arizona. He was apparently a model Marine, until he was recalled from Iwo Jima for the bond tour in the United States. He said, "It was supposed to be soft duty, but I couldn't take it. Everywhere we went people shoved drinks in our hands and said 'You're a Hero!' We knew we hadn't done that much but you couldn't tell them that." He became a serious alcoholic and died ten years after he left Iwo Jima.

Ira himself has inspired the popular imagination in books, movies, and even song. There's something admirable in a morbid way about his refusal to accept the myths people tried to build.

The Kiss in Times Square

What an iconic photograph, no?

Apparently, the sailor, after returning from World War II, went around kissing every girl he encountered in Time Square. As it happens, this nurse slapped him.

To see other photographs that "changed the world", click here.

-.-

In my inbox yesterday morning:


Dear student returning from travel abroad:

I hope that your summer experience was fulfilling!

We are asking all Harvard College students who traveled this summer to countries with a high prevalence of tuberculosis to come to UHS ( Fifth floor ) on October 20, 21, or 22 between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm for a TB screening and skin test. You are receiving this e-mail because you were listed in the Office of International Programs’ travel database as having traveled to a country with a high prevalence of TB.

[redacted]

Chief of Medicine

Harvard University Health Services

Harvard University Health Services sucks. Globalization sucks. Most of all, TB testing sucks (because I always test positive ._.). Curses.

Nancy's room

This looks marginally more welcoming than when I first moved in. I still don't have spare furniture, but the walls are looking decidedly less institutional!

This is my "Turkish harem" corner. That is, as soon as I get more pillows and gauzy fabric and Turks.

Just kidding. Maybe.

This is currently my favorite thing on my wall right now. In case it's not clear from the photograph, the poster reads: "E-COW-NOMICS: Economic Models Explained with Cows."

In a rare display of spontaneity, I bought a pot of orchids.
This picture doesn't really do the blooms justice (the color looks bizarrely artificial), but the plant is poetically beautiful. The great thing about orchids, or at least this particular subspecies, is that they are hardy and thrive in mediocre conditions. Not at all the fragile beauty that I had assumed them to be, and I find that very charming.

WienerCat

My previous knitted stuffed toy may have been an enormous, floppy disaster, but I am not discouraged!  Meet--WienerCat.

WienerCat is thus named because he is an adorable cat who kind of resembles a wiener dog.  I am quite pleased with him and his cuteness!

Library adventures

I spent several hours this morning on an extended library pilgrimage--an epic adventure that brought me to the very depths of hell (by which I mean Pusey Library) and back!

The day began in Yenching Library, my spiritual homeland.  Although it appears modest, Yenching is the largest academic East Asian collection outside of Asia.  No question, this is one of my favorite places in the world, and I feel quite comfortable here.  I spent a while looking Enchi Fumiko up in encyclopedias of Japanese literature in both English and Japanese, and felt innocent delight that I didn't have to deal with call numbers at all--I'm so familiar with the reading room that I can just walk over to the bookshelf by the window on the right and pluck the 近代文学事典 (or whatever) off the shelf.

At Yenching I picked up six volumes in Japanese about/by Enchi Fumiko (including a memoir by her daughter and the Enchi Genji!), Doris Bargen's book on spirit possession, and a book about Ono no Komachi in literature (Komachi, you say?  intriguing!  it's almost as if you think you might write about Enchi's 小町変相!  but that would be foolhardiness).

My backpack is beginning to become a little heavy.

I then proceeded to spend a fruitless half-hour in Widener Library, Harvard's largest library, with 65 miles of stacks.  I was attempting to hunt down some mysterious monograph by someone I've never heard of that may or may not have been in German, in the interest of thoroughness.  Despite help from librarians, I was unsuccessful; however, I got to visit my favorite part of Widener, so it wasn't a total waste of time.

Widener actually has two separate classification systems: the Library of Congress system and the Old Widener system.  This is because the Harvard library collection is actually older than the United States, and they never bothered re-classifying the original collection.  So there are about four bookshelves hidden way in the back of the stacks classified under "Jpn" that contain some unimaginable treasures.  There are just heaps and heaps of ancient, fragile books, bound in knobbly leather and gilded and in all sorts of European languages all mixed together.  It is here that you find the archaic books about Japan by Europeans and Americans that are terribly unsuited for objective academic research but brilliant period pieces.

There are somewhat political books by Baron Suyematsu, the first translator of the Tale of Genji into English!  (I bet you thought it was Arthur Waley, didn't you?)  Here is a particularly delightful quote from a 1903 book entitled Queer Things About Japan:

In matters of taste the Japanese never can grasp the Western standpoint.  The worse the color, the more worthless the material, the better they like it...

FUN FACT:  Harvard's library system contains three books bound in human skin.  Please think about that for a while.

I was attempting to find a copy of a dissertation filed here, at Harvard, only eight years ago.  This was unexpectedly difficult.  A Widener librarian directed me to the Harvard Archives, which I'd never visited before.  They're in a featureless, rather musty-smelling basement guarded by a white-haired elderly lady who warned me that I shouldn't carry around so many heavy books or else I'd feel it in my back when I was old like her.

The archives have even more aggressive library security than other Harvard libraries; you have to be buzzed in and out by the person at the desk, file a form to be allowed to even look at materials, leave your belongings in lockers, and keep all materials inside the library.  This was a bit overkill for me, but fortunately the archives lady was very nice to me and told me that I should go to...

Lamont Library, the undergraduate library here.  Lamont is often open for 24 hours, and it contains both many comfy couches and a newly constructed cafe; it is not an exaggeration to say that many Harvard students routinely spend days on end at the library without leaving.  At all.  Really.  (The bathrooms are also notorious gay cruising spots, but this is unverified rumor.)

At Lamont, I picked up a book for JASC (whoo-hoo!) and four more operas (opera project going well!):

Beethoven's Fidelio

Adam's El Niño

Berg's Lulu

Berg's Wozzeck

Alban Berg's Lulu, an opera about a woman who destroys various men's lives in increasingly improbable ways.

My backpack can no longer contain all of my books at this point.

One of the things that really makes me feel like an old, cranky senior is that they renumbered the floors in Lamont.  One of Lamont's many (dungeon-like) charms is that it is half underground, as is Widener.  You enter Lamont on its third floor.  When I came here, the floors and elevators all properly identified the ground floor as the third floor, the third floor as the sixth floor, and the lowest basement as the first floor.  It was weird and charming.  Now, they've made the ground floor the first floor, the third floor the third floor, and the basements are A, B, and C.  Straightforward and intuitive--for shame!

Anyway, I went to the microfilm research center for the first time, where the two enthusiastic librarians both showed me where to find the tiny pieces of plastic that contained the dissertation, how to use the microfilm machine, and how to scan the microfilm to pdf.  I felt very grown-up using the microfilm, and very satisfied to finally see this dissertation after using several online databases and visiting three libraries to do so.

So that was my library adventure--I emerged unscathed, except for some very sore shoulders (oh no!  the little old lady security guard was right!).  I will be so educated!