Endspurt.

Jun. 17th, 2007 07:34 pm
sister_luck: (Default)
[personal profile] sister_luck
Now that's a word I can't translate. I don't want to look it up either. It comes from the world of running and describes what you do when you see the finish: Even though you're very tired, you up the pace and sprint across the line.

That's what's going on here with the school year, though I'm more crawling than running. I was meant to be going to the theatre last night to see some of my students perform in a musical, but it didn't work out - I've done something stupid to my shoulder and neck muscles and was in two minds about going and when we finally got into the car to drive there one of the roads was closed due to an accident. We were late as it was and a detour would have taken too long. So, we were thinking about going to the cinema, but then we took a wrong turn and ended up on our way home. Which was probably a good idea..

Today there was a concert at school, this time performed by various teachers in honour of our ten year anniversary, but it's not really my sort of music and I'm still sore. I feel slightly guilty, but then I spent about three hours in the kitchen this afternoon preparing food for tomorrow's end of year bash. Cooking was actually very relaxing.


I've also been reading quite a bit - still on my second time through Talk Talk and I re-read a novel I had to read for school. We read about four times as many books than my students do in the same course and I appreciate my English teacher for introducing us to so many texts. There was one novel though, Room at the Top by John Braine which made me terribly angry, because I absolutely loathed the first-person-narrator. He's a misogynistic, manipulating and socially upward asshole and I was furious that we had to read this stuff. I was guilty of confusing the narrator with the author and transferred all my anger onto John (without a) Braine.
Upon re-reading I'm still not sure that the writer himself sees things differently than his protagonist. Sure, Britain's post-war society with its class boundaries and the trauma of the narrator's war experience made him behave like he does and he ends up a broken man. There is some writerly distribution of karma there, but the portrayal of the central female characters is what still makes me angry. Our narrator has got the biggest madonna-whore complex imaginable: The whore, who actually is a modern, sexually liberated woman, ends up killing herself in a car accident. The narrator rapes the madonna, the 19-year-old daughter of a factory owner and way above his status, gets her pregnant and thus climbs up the social ladder because this helps him to get her father's approval to marry her. Of course, he only ever really loved the whore, but it's too late now.

Isn't that lovely? There's a film, too, with Simone Signoret.

Maybe that's how life was in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Britain and elsewhere. Maybe the author just refrained from judging his characters. Still, I dimly remember that we didn't discuss the novel from a feminist point of view or looked at the portrayal of women in it. It was all about class and how the narrator is an angry young man.

There is much I missed in the first reading back when I was 17, but my gut feeling about the novel is basically the same. I've still got a problem with novels with asshole protagonists. I need someone I can identify with. I think back then I was especially outraged at the portrayal of Susan, the naive virgin. Today, I'm also frustrated about 34-year-old Alice who married the wrong guy and who sees herself as old and is perceived as old by her 24-year-old lover.

How do you cope with novels in which the narrator or the protagonists are utterly unlikeable? Sometimes the anger you feel is what the author intends, sometimes this anger gives you a new insight into the world.

Date: 2007-06-17 08:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mygothangel.livejournal.com
Isn't it "final spurt"

Date: 2007-06-20 05:30 pm (UTC)
ext_11565: (Default)
From: [identity profile] sister-luck.livejournal.com

Hmm, I'm not sure the two words go together in English. The combination does get the point across - a quick googling of the phrase gave me lots of results in continental European English and some hits where it's actually about sports - mainly rowing!
I wonder what our native speakers say? Is it a collocation? Can it go beyond its literal meaning?

Date: 2007-06-17 08:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] frances-lievens.livejournal.com
We're endspurting as well, but we do it with an added i.

Two more weeks of school and then two whole months of vacation. Oef!

Date: 2007-06-20 05:32 pm (UTC)
ext_11565: (Default)
From: [identity profile] sister-luck.livejournal.com

Where in god's name do you manage to fit in an extra i? eindspurt?

Yay - it's Wednesday now and I'm actually on holiday!

Profile

sister_luck: (Default)
sister_luck

November 2020

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
151617 18192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags