Last night I was feeling super nervous about starting the new semester. I didn't teach last term and I was worried that my course -- on women's autobiography -- would fall flat. But I opened this week's New Yorker to find a piece on our collective obsession with all things confessional. Daniel Mendelsohn's article was prompted by Ben Yagoda's new and rather fun history of memoir that I read this past weekend. J and I both really like Mendelsohn -- whose own memoir J read aloud to me shortly after we met. In any case, Mendelsohn explores what William Dean Howells termed something like the American love for tragedy with a happy ending. After I read the review, I slept easily, knowing that there would be plenty to talk about.
A side note: J likes memoir less than I do, though about a month after we started dating I was scanning his book shelves, noting in that truly geeky way how many of our books overlapped. We both have the Joy of Yiddish, how perfect! We each own Perry Miller, neat! We both seem to have a long-standing affection for Faulkner, how poignant! It was all very self-satisfying. But then I noticed a spine that I had never seen before: The Surrender by Toni Bentley. I asked J about it: "hey what's that Toni Bentley book?" Without skipping a beat, "oh, it's an anal sex memoir." He was utterly unfazed. Wow, I thought, this guy is really something. The memoir, on the other hand, not so much.
In any case, I felt pretty good walking into class armed with a kind of Mendelsohnian legitimacy. The girls responded to my prompts right away, even though we began class with a "silent" discussion on the board. The room was packed and still they seemed engaged. Of course, I worry that they'll all drop it between now and Monday, but actually, we could stand to lose five or six for some breathing room.
I was fortified by this lovely little dinner that J whipped up last night. Perhaps I should ask him for the recipe?
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