The thing that really, fundamentally bugs me about Thoreau is that this is accurate. Walden Pond was a short stroll from Boston; he nipped back into town every second day or so for coffee and newspapers. You might as well claim to be living in the wilderness by putting up a tent in Hyde Park.

Eventually, all the small arguments for expansion over consolidation were put together in one neat analogy by David Crowther of the History of England podcast: monarchical dynasties are like family firms. They’re not defined by their holdings (the means of production!), nor by their populations (employees), but by the people who make up the leadership. And their sole function is to perpetuate and benefit that leadership, by increasing the resources available, and making sure that no other kingdom (rival company) gets big enough in the area (the market) to be real competition. So, as in modern companies, they head as fast as they can for a monopoly, opposed all the way by other existing kingdoms (firms), and sometimes by revolutions and uprisings (unions and strikes) within their own kingdoms.

It’s a small thing, but it makes European history make a hell of a lot more sense to me.

It’s the history that’s kicking my ass at the moment; I’ve had four months where I wasn’t reading huge chunks of non-fiction every second evening, and the comprehension and concentration skills have atrophied. And HIS2 moved the marker up while I wasn’t looking, and now requires four to five chapters per unit. And whereas Kümin, from last year, was a collection of shorter, snappier essays, and Merriman was the long-winded historian, it’s now the case that Merriman (in a second volume) is the comparatively compact writer, and the poorly edited Gildea, who seems to assume he’s summarising something you already know, is the long-winded one.

Thus far, I am managing to keep up to schedule, and even a little ahead. However, last year, two weeks into the term, I was about three weeks ahead of schedule. So I’m a little concerned about keeping pace, particularly given that I’m already doing some of the reading while commuting, and took a chunk of last Sunday as well.

It will get better as I get back into practice, though, and as I start to have a grasp on the references, as it were. The first two units of the history module, in particular, are dealing with all of Europe from about 1800-1870 in broad sweeps, and it’s hard to keep up with that. The third one, which I’ll be starting this evening, covers German and Italian unification – of which, thanks to the previous two, I already have a rough picture. So hopefully the more specific topic will be easier to manage and understand.

There is another book that I’m not buying simply because I balk at paying more than €50 for a book that I’ll read four chapters in and then not look at again – that’s Aldcroft’s The European Economy 1914-2000. That I’ll definitely get from the library instead.

However, there are two more books that are referenced as required reading -
Growth of the International Economy 1820-2000: An Introductory Text by Kenwood & Lougheed, and Cold War Europe, 1945-1989: A Political History by John Young – both of which are out of print. Or rather, Young’s book is out of print and the Kenwood and Lougheed one is in some strange state of limbo where it’s definitely being reprinted, but nobody seems to know when. I can try to track down second-hand copies, or extract it from the clutches of the library – but it seems a little odd to include out of print books as required reading. It makes life marginally more difficult than it would otherwise be.

Also – somewhat selfishly since I could read them online for free via the college’s subscriptions – it’d be lovely if some of the required, additional, or suggested reading was papers in journals, rather than expensive and hard to acquire books.

Things seem to be running smoothly, though; the system was up and running this morning when I tried to log in, and I have the complete course material for each module already. The dates for the first assignment in each is already set, and an email from the programme director says that all assignments will be out by the end of October, so that we can plan better. Accordingly, I’ve laid in a solid course of study up to December, which covers the first assignment for each course, and manoeuvred around the various other commitments I have, from the SCA to work events.

The tutorial timetable hasn’t appeared yet, but it should be out very soon (tomorrow, most likely), and with that in place, I’ll be able to finalise plans. It’s exceedingly likely I won’t make it to every tutorial – indeed, I know I won’t, since the tutor for LIT3 posted the date of the first one she’s taking, and it clashes with another event – but I’ll make it to those that I can. They’re not compulsory, and I’m not completely sure how much use they are in the strictest sense of learning, but they do help with confidence about how the course works.

Of course, having the day off has enabled me to get a head start on the reading as well, and I’m already a bit ahead of schedule. That almost certainly won’t last once the History module, in particular, gets up to speed, but it’s a good way to begin.

HIS2: Europe and a Wider World
LIT2: Literature of the Twentieth Century
LIT3: Literature of the 17th and 18th Centuries

Book lists don’t seem to be available yet, but I’ll jump on them as soon as they are. It’s good to be getting started again.

Next year’s modules will be LIT2 and LIT3, and HIS2.

I read a very interesting post a couple of days ago on Tales From The Reading Room in which Litlove talks about Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone, and I’ve been thinking about it since.

The particular point which caught my interest was this:

“in genre novels, characters have to be terribly attentive to the effect they are having on the reader. Central protagonists have to be sympathetic, and their trajectory must be towards enlightenment and empowerment.”

I’m very interested in the border between literary fiction and genre, for all sorts of reasons, and this seems to strike to the heart of the matter. Among other things, it explains why China Miéville’s books, with their unsympathetic protagonists and often grim conclusions are considered serious literature, whereas much other speculative fiction isn’t. However, it seems to me that this is a reversal of a clearer statement, not about the commonly observed genres, but about literary fiction itself:

“Literary fiction is a genre in which protagonists are unsympathetic and trajectories are not toward enlightenment or empowerment.”

Genres are defined by their common themes and effective rules. And at first blush, this seems like a pretty neat encapsulation of all of literary fiction. Certainly, it seems to trivialise it somewhat – “downer fiction” – , but what genre designation doesn’t?

Is there material in the canon of literary fiction that doesn’t fit into this genre designation?

The whole thing came out fairly well in the end. The Sociology exam was not problematic, and I’d covered enough of the topics to be comfortable coming out of the exam hall. The History exam was, to be honest, a pleasure. I could have answered six of the eight questions, and I only had to answer three. And while the literature exam had some curve-balls on it, I still got my three questions in without difficulty. I’m confident of passing, which is all I need, and I might even do well.

I’ve a large pile of summer reading lined up – starting with Naomi Klein’s No Logo, which is of interest in terms of both sociology and, I think, literature – brand in literature seems like something that’s under-examined. It ties in to William Gibson’s Zero History, which I read earlier in the year and enjoyed immensely. A good chunk of the reading pile is unashamedly academic, too – some of my own, including one of the history textbooks for next year’s course, and some interesting looking items pilfered from my wife’s PhD reading.

I expect this blog to be quiet enough over the summer, and to pick up again around August/September, as I start planning the second year, wherein I’ll be doing two literature modules, and one history.

I mean that in a more literal sense than usual; there were three assignments to do, two with the deadline on the same day, one a week later. I powered through them, doing research and planning on weekday evenings,  and writing each assignment in a burst over a weekend. I cleared the last assignment at 17:30 or so on a Saturday evening, when it was due at midnight on Monday. And then I just about made it up the stairs to collapse and sleep for an hour. I woke up to one of the cats sitting on my chest and poking me in the face; something she only does when I haven’t woken up for any lesser motions, like the nose under the hand, or the loud purr in the ear. I reckon if she hadn’t woken me, I would have slept through to morning.

Exams are in a little over a month. I haven’t finished out the course materials yet, but I’m reasonably confident of doing well enough in them – I can deal with just about any question the literature course can throw at me, I can talk around points and principles well enough to pass the sociology exam, I think, and I intend to have a few select areas of the history course very thoroughly memorised before I set foot in the test hall – which will, conveniently, be here in Maynooth, not in the harder-to-reach DCU. Besides, for these exams, I really only need to pass; the assignments count for half my final mark in the modules, and the modules themselves don’t – can’t – count toward the final result of the degree.

I’m a little puzzled by the exhaustion reaction to the assignments. I didn’t feel, at the time, as though I was putting in vast amounts of work, and indeed, I did a lot of mining in Wurm Online in the background while I researched and structured and planned the essays. But it’s pretty clear from the resulting sleepiness, and from the fact that I dreamt in weird combinations of CSO statistics, south-west India in the 90s, and Enlightenment-era Russia for a few nights that they were weighing more heavily on the psyche than I knew.

I’m expecting the exams to have similar effects, but I reckon that’s a fair price.