As I study American literature

I take great satisfaction in knowing that Hemingway and Wallace Stevens both hit each other. First Wallace Stevens punched Hemingway in the face, and then Hemingway got up off the floor and beat the shit out of Wallace Stevens, landing him in the hospital. This suits me just fine, because I do not like Hemingway, but at the moment I reserve my most vehement loathing for Wallace Stevens. I don't have to study Hemingway; in fact it will probably never be necessary (knock wood) for me to read Hemingway ever again. Right now, though, I am being forced to give some of the space in my brain, the space that could be used for, I don't know, becoming acquainted with Anthony Trollope or Saul Bellow or Anthony Burgess or Djuna Barnes (my present book experiments for which I have no time because I am so busy studying Wallace Stevens), I am being forced to give some of that space to Wallace Stevens' wretched poetry and his perfectly idiotic and nonsensical literary theory. So I am really glad that Hemingway beat the crap out of him. Serves him right.

I also do not accept a lack of punctuation. That's just unacceptable. Come on, people. God gave us punctuation out of the love he bears us, and we're just spitting on him if we refuse to use it. It's there for us to use. See, I've just used a period! And look, an exclamation point! And commas, commas everywhere! It's so tidy and organized; it makes such good sense; we comprehend sentences so handily because of the punctuation that explains where the breaks are. Punctuation! Join me, comrades.

(This is aimed at Toni Morrison. You stop that, woman. I don't like your book anyway, but there is no need whatsoever for you to suddenly stop using punctuation. Bring back the punctuation. I miss it. Your distressing depressing totally humorless story is not substantially improved by taking away the useful punctuation that made it possible for me to read it with a swiftness.)

And you know what else? You know what else? Ummmmm. (If I stop writing this blog post I'm going to have to return to studying.) Oh, I know. Okay. Moby Dick? It's boring! Too much stuff about whaling! Boring! Boring! And, and, you know what? Everyone is really mean about Harriet Beacher Stowe, and I think it's a little bit unfair because she did a very excellent thing with her book even though Uncle Tom makes me want to bash my head on bricks with his puky saintliness (and to be fair, Little Eva's just as bad).

Meanwhile I am searching for a place to live and hoping that I get this job for the summer, because then I will have a marketable skill and everyone will want to hire me, and I will no longer be desperately terrified about my future. If I cannot go into publishing, I can certainly go into grant-writing, which is in any case an idea I sort of fancy. The nonprofit organizations will be my best friend, and I am already their best friend because oh what good work they do! so it'll be a match made in heaven.