It's a disease

I have a love/hate relationship with Mark Twain. He is an antagonistic genius and I am simultaneously in awe of his pen and distanced by his manipulation. It's almost as though I'm a baby bird in Mark Twain seminar. I open my little beak and food is regurgitated into my throat so fast that I have just a second to enjoy it before- UGUCKACK! I choke. And still the food comes.

I finished all of my reading for the class yesterday. Not only is that on time... it's early. Release the doves and saddle up the horses, I was ready to live happily ever after! A smile plastered on my face, I decided that I would use my breath of fresh air to check my e-mail. There was one message in bold, sitting heavy as it waited to be opened. Inside was a list of five additional sources to read for our next class. Shoot.

Welp, as the discussion leader, I've got another 40-some pages to swallow. It's no wonder I've got Twain on the brain.

(2 hours later: Let me give you a little taste of the odd place I've found myself today. All of the articles about Mark Twain's graphic 1601 are decently colorful. Here is an excerpt from my readings.

"Nearly every visual artist... has been drawn to the erotic and the pornographic. So have literary artists throughout human history. Sometimes the urge has been to stimulate the genitals; sometimes the urge has been to stimulate the mind. Since the mind and the genitals are part of one organism, why distinguish between masturbatory dreams and aesthetic ones? Surely there is also an aesthetic of masturbation that our society is too sex-negative to explore." Thank you, Erica Jong, scholar and sexual optimist.")