Intro to Lit, Fall Semester. First class tonight, 10 week session. Some interesting students. Jessica from Canada who legally had her last name changed to Sideways. Her desert-island book is ISO (IN Search Of): The art of Dating, Relationships & Sex For The Discerning Lesbian. This lead to a conversation about dating services, and then opposites attracting. Jessica said she wouldn't date her opposite... a self-hating Republican. I asked her if she would date an other-loving Republican and she said no.
Then there was Butch, the bus-driver. His desert-island book is any Stars Wars fan fiction. He also doesn't watch movies, only ballets. He likes how ballets have no words and therefore the interpretation is up to you. We briefly discussed the idea of a ballet based on Star Wars and he said he would never leave the theater.
Other memorable desert-sland books were Flowers In the Attic, Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club", Anne Rice's Jesus books, "any redemption book", Mahabarata and Lord Of The Flies.
At the end of the class I handed out their first assigment, translating a Mallarme poem. I told them it was a notoriously difficult poem to translate and we were diving in the deep end. But I let them know I had faith they could do it. Jessica Sideways says "Then you don't think we can do it, because faith is a lack of logical evidence." She had me there. I could only reply with, "then I have to say I don't think you will be able to logically do this." That effectively stumped her up for long enough to move the conversation to the next topic, which was goodnight.
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