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2001-02-01
Finally I shut off the TV and sit down to begin work upon my Ph.D. thesis proposal. I entitle my thesis, "Style and the Infinite Extensibility of Self." Then I rest.
I survey the task before me. The Doctoral Thesis—daunting, like Everest, only more so. More probably fatal, at least. Am I equipped? I snap my gum. Of course I am. In my secret card catalogue brain I have collated sources ceaselessly, for many years. So I wrote nothing down. The brain is mysterious! I think I remember reading somewhere that when you’re writing the thesis you’re really going to finish, the quotations just come to you, out of the blue ether—spiriti verbatim, I’m sure they’re called—and that when you get near the end of the thesis you’re finally going to finish they’re coming at you in clouds—page numbers, publishers, dates of first publication. That there’s really not this need the neophytes expect for a great deal of written preparation. And it’s not as if I’ll be vulnerable to criticism upon any stage of my ascent—after all, I’ve rehearsed each and every necessary line of self-defense so many times over by now that I’m just waiting for my cue, it’s impossible to shake me. In fact, as I arrive, at last, at the Doctoral Thesis, and look up, I am so prepared for my performance of this showiest of mental labors, I am so made up for it, that I am virtually fluorescent in goggles and wig.
When I recall that I am not—nor have I ever been—in graduate school, I wonder whether it follows, in that case, that I should turn the TV back on again? Why does it feel like it follows.