dead dogs and baseball get me every time

I've only ever cried while reading two books: Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (did he write anything else of note? anyone?) and The Brothers K by David James Duncan. Duncan is a fellow Pacific Northwesterner (I'm Alaskan-born, but the Pac NW has more than adopted me by now) who penned something of an epic around 12, 15 years ago. It's a little schlocky in places (definitely a family values sort of read) and sometimes a bit heavy on the mysticism for my secular tastes. Nonetheless, he hits my love of baseball -- a hidden love, not unlike my clandestine Iditarod fandom -- dead-on, in great detail, and with loving justice.

I only bring it up because A) I reread it on the plane to Vermont last week and B) the world series is coming up, natch. Thing is, books don't make me cry. There are some heartbreakers on my shelf: Kundera, McEwan, Spiegelman -- wrenching stuff. The horrors of humanity or particularly (what? savage? indecent? can I judge? particularly something) individuals don't give me pause. It's snake-bit characters and hard luck what brings me down. I can't figure out why, either, since I don't particularly identify with any of the characters. The setting is very familiar, but I'm not blubbering about the Washington landscape here. It's puzzling. Meantime, I could use some more tissues.

On business, I know there's been little to no posting, but I've been away. The attendent being-back rush isn't going to treat me well either, but I'll make it up somehow.

The requisite thesis post

Since I'll be mired in it, I likely won't want to wax theoretical too much in the upcoming months. But I've yet to start classes (let's hear it for the quarter system...urgh) -- I haven't even bought books yet. So I'll give you a "just returned from a trip and haven't quite caught up with myself" filler post about it.

So translation studies is literary criticism as it applies to translation, involving history, cultural studies, linguistics, and literature (natch.) It's a very interdisciplinary discipline, and I chalk that up to its relative novelty as a field. Even though translation studies as a field is a new kid on the critical block, there has already been a movement toward feminist translation studies, which is the focus of my thesis. What bothers me a bit is that some scholars and translators, while advocating some manner or another of liberal-to-radical feminism also advocate restructuring languages (mostly target languages, although the source as well for some) -- well, this doesn't bother me per se. What gets my goat is that I feel compelled toward a more conservative theory of translation, toward preserving the source text and staying as loyal to that as possible. Intellectually, I think that's baloney. My brain tells me (among other things) that this schism of language represents a gender divide that has not been addressed by the predominantly male literary world. My brain also tells me that I like postmodernism. My gut tends to disagree.

Lately I've been thinking that I'm not actually being reactionary so much as cautious. Perhaps making Simone de Beauvoir read like Mary Daly or Kate Millett isn't too far off-base. That's not my issue, nor is a re-vamp of, say, Guenther Grass.* I just wonder if it's too obscure to really address and change gender disparity. Then again, that's the sort of defeatist reasoning that engenders apathy in my generation -- what I like to call, "I want a good job with good pay, but I'm not a bra-burning feminut" syndrome. (The abbreviation for that one is a bit cumbersome.)

*I mean outside of political reasons. Personally I think the hullabaloo over Grass' past is unwarranted. Who would blame him for keeping it a secret? At least the public found out on his terms. Naturally, Nazism was abhorrent. I don't excuse Grass, but I don't vilify him either.