OT: 60th Obsequious Banter Thread: Some Guy Named Nate Raduns

[Magua]

When I went back to finish my degree, I took 63 hours - I got As in 60 of them. The only one I got a B in was a horrible Milton class where I had the audacity to challenge the old, old, Milton-aged (300+ year old) professor. But because I'm too stupid to live, I acted the same way in the second survey of American Lit course. Luckily, no one can @ me when it comes to the 20th century and I blew their doors off anyway. The idiot wasted 3 weeks on ****ing Mark Twain - I was pulling my hair out.

How on earth do you not like Twain lol? I feel like you’d LOVE Twain!

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

How on earth do you not like Twain lol? I feel like you’d LOVE Twain!

I'm from Missouri, right, and when people characterize people from Missouri as southern hicks, it really bugs me. Not that there aren't plenty of them outside St. Louis and KC, because God knows there are, but I don't want that taint on me. This ultimately goes back to my very visceral hatred for country music - all bohunk hayseed talk circles back to country music in my head, and I will not allow any of THAT taint on or about my person. The most famous Missourian is Mark Twain (the greatest is TS Eliot, one of my heroes, who was born in my hometown exactly 80 years and 4 days before me, and the second most famous is Harry Truman), who is from Hannibal, which is out in the country, and as you know, even though he was a clever man and a good writer, he peddled that bohunk hayseed **** through his characters. I resent him for that, even though I don't really blame him - I know that sounds incongruous, but that's how I feel. I just have never had any desire to embrace him because of it.

And ultimately my problem wasn't with him - at all, really. The professor was a Twain scholar, so he was always going to spend a lot of time on Twain, and I didn't need it. I didn't need ANY more Twain, because I had had plenty already, but the second half of an American Lit survey course has to include him, so that's fine. But three weeks? Out of a total of 16 or whatever it is? That's absurd. I was DESPERATE to get to the 20th century, especially the 50s and beyond. I'm (unofficially) a Salinger scholar - that's my guy - but I wasn't particularly concerned with him, either - you can only touch on so many things, and I had already taken care of him in my own time. I just wanted to get to postmodernism, because I hadn't had enough of that yet. This was in like 1995, so there weren't that many scholars around (relatively speaking) who had specialized in that, and I was starving for it. For him to waste three entire weeks on Twain was irresponsible, at best, and drove me completely around the bend. And we did, indeed, run out of time to get anywhere in the end.

The one saving grace? We got to "Entropy" by Thomas Pynchon, which blew my mind and changed my life. Well, I guess it didn't really change my life, but I loved it lol.

 

[YEM]

C's get degrees, man.

nothing wrong with the "Gentlemen's C"

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

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