Greetings from the Bell Jar
agony
I offer today's post as a tribute to all the PhD. candidates out there
groaning beneath the awesome, shin-splintering burden of their
dissertations. You know who you are. As I labor this week to complete
the revisions on my book manuscript, a semi-literate work of hackery
based on a dissertation I finished writing around this time in 2001, I
come with a message from beyond the threshold:
As much as you may hate what you're writing at this exact moment, you
will only feel a more precise and exhausted loathing toward it later
on. Your prose will seem more lame, your conclusions more uninspiring
and aimless, your insights more delusionally smug than you can
possibly imagine as you sit there today in your pajamas, choking with
writer's block and wondering if you should take a nap, drink yourself
sideways, or simply heave yourself beneath the tires of a bus. You
will wonder by what miraculous intervention you possibly could have
been admitted into the ranks of the accomplished, and you will
silently calculate the measure by which your university, by conferring
your degree, has cheapened the value of doctoral work across the
globe.
But don't think about that right now. As my wife -- who at the time
was just one more friendly gawker at the train-wreck -- used to advise
so delicately, "Just climb up on that desk, squat yourself over the
computer, and shit that thing out."
I'm going to take that advice now for the second time, and so I will
not be blogging again until I have finished revising the manuscript
into an undigestible, shapeless mound of gristle that any publishing
house in its right mind would quickly regurgitate. If you don't hear
from me by Monday, assume that I have packed my nostrils with
strychnine and that I am in a far, far better place.
In the meantime -- for inspiration -- I offer you an excerpt from my
dissertation's acknowledgements, the only five pages of the entire
project that I enjoyed writing:
A few years back, the notion of starting (to say less of completing)
this dissertation was less interesting than figuring out the most
extraordinary ways to dodge it. Short of faking my own death (which I
discovered after some research seems to present more inconveniences
than it solves), the options were rather grim indeed. At various
points, and with varying degrees of planning and commitment, I mulled
the following alternatives:
(1) Opening a shelter for abused and malformed cats. While this
detour would no doubt have cultivated an enduring sense of mission
in my life, it might not have done much to blunt the monotonous,
staggering despair that had sent me poking about for new activities
in the first place.
(2) Joining a law program. Beyond replacing the apparently
limitless vistas of dissertation-land with three years of
predictable structure, law school offered few additional lures.
(See also [1] above re: "monotonous, staggering despair.")
(3) Accepting $10/hour (tax-free) from a friend to "keep tabs" on
the drummer of a local rock band with whom she was mildly obsessed.
Steady employment notwithstanding, working as a professional
stalker would have required too much time sitting alone in my car,
were I would likely have snacked compulsively and degraded the
circulation in my legs beyond repair.
(4) Astonishing friends and family with a bizarre and unexpected
religious conversion. If this plan offered nothing else (and it
didn't), it would nonetheless have transformed me in the eyes of
former colleagues from "that guy who bailed out of graduate school
for no discernible reason" into "that guy who freaked out and
joined a cult." Unable to complete the degree, I would at least
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