Sternely rebuffed

Sternely rebuffed

I’ve got a problem. People who have read me, or talked to me for very long generally marvel at it. One thing always leads to another. Where I end up is often a surprise to everyone, including me. Some people tell me I’m a good writer. I hate it when that happens.

It’s been happening a lot lately. I keep trying to put it out of my head, because I know what happens anytime I get anywhere near success. I blow it. My ex-wife figured that out, way back when I was a salesman. I could be leading the store for nearly an entire month, but the second I glanced at the figures and saw how well I was doing, my sales dropped drastically. It’s as if I am allergic to success. I hesitate to repeat some of the praise I’ve received in the past two weeks, mostly for that reason.

One of the top two or three students to participate in the program since it’s inception (about ten years). Your writing is a model of clarity and insight, etc. Folks who have been reading me here for long know that isn’t always the case. Often, I get pretty twisted up in ideas and have to write my way out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s largely why I started keeping a web log. So I could isolate the moments of clarity amid all the noise of constant associations. Everything reminds me of something else.

My mentor in the English department has a short attention span. If I want to be put in my place, all I have to do is talk to him. He’s got a Ph.D. from Duke, and is always so wrapped up in his own ideas that he doesn’t have much time to spare for other people. However, he’s brilliant and I talk to him when I can. I was really let down that I couldn’t take the seminar he’s teaching now on Blake, Sterne, and Locke. I spoke to him at the lecture a few days ago. I tried to tell him about what I was working on right now, but it was too complicated to explain in short sentences. He stopped me cold:

C’mon, get to it— you’re worse than Tristram Shandy!

The paradox brought me back to earth. In the Rhetoric department, they think I’m a model of clarity and insight. In the English department, I’m often accused of rambling. Thank god! The worst thing in the world would be starting to feel successful; that would be a guarantee of my failure.

I haven’t read Tristram Shandy, and that’s why I wanted to take that seminar. Blake and Locke I know, but Sterne . . . After the quote from it on Wood s lot that I read the next day, I just had to go out an buy a copy. Damn it, I can’t read it right now. I’ve got too much other stuff to do. But . . . I read through the first eight or so chapters and settled on a suitable defense:

Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out, — bear with me,— and let me go on, and tell my story my own way: — or if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road, — or should sometimes put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,-- don’t fly off, — but rather courteously give me a little credit for a little more wisdom than appears on my outside, — and as we jogg on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any thing, — only keep your temper.

I believe that if I had a blogging manifesto, that would be it.

Sometimes thinking like Tristram Shandy can be problematic. Unfortunately, I don’t have much choice in the matter. I suppose I'll always be irritating to somebody.