A Brief Update

Dr. McCarthy has moved up north. He has taught his last Religion in Lit class at Penn State. I hear he has a beautiful view of the ocean from his new house. There will be no more Shrove Tuesday breakfasts in this part of the Northeast, though I hope he has enough of his wife's family and makes enough new friends to consume all the buckwheat cakes coming off his griddle.

His brother, Cormac, is riding high, though according to a recent interview in -- was it Poets & Writers? The New Yorker? -- he's quoted as saying he doesn't much care. About the money. About the fame. About readership. His care is in the writing. And, with a movie on the horizon based upon one of his books ("No Country for Old Men"), he should be quite comfortable while executing that care.

Spring is my last semester as an undergrad. I only need two courses to graduate, so I'm filling up my schedule with things I want to take (when did I ever not?). The American Renaissance. An honors writing course. Perhaps "The Hero in Literature" -- but it's offered at a very inconvenient time. I've requested the syllabus and I already have the text. Perhaps it's time to return to self-teaching.

I've spent time defending Joseph Campbell in my Women's Studies courses. Campbell, in agreement with Jung, says we have no relevant myths. Some students taking the intro mythology course feel he would have endorsed the male supremacy movement (most notably the "Promise Keepers") as a new mythology. I argue that the issue is in changing society, which invalidates old myths. It's not a matter of telling old stories in a new way. It's in telling new stories. That's what we are lacking. The same questions are asked of the universe, but the answers have changed.

I'm reading Jung now, so perhaps this blog won't like as dormant as I thought it would