An Academic Affair

Sincerity, my research had taught me, was often seen as a vulnerability. To earnestly express a feeling was a weakness. It was part of the reason people—including, but not limited to, Professor Christian Fisher—liked to hang shit on romance novels. There was something inherently earnest at their heart: a sincere love and hope and joy that readers often reacted to with the same feelings, a delicate flower that provoked some people to want to crush it.

There was a famous narrative theorist named Paul Ricœur who distinguished between "clock time" and "human time." Clock time was measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days: the things we think of as the basic building blocks of time. Human time, though, was measured in events: the basic building blocks of story - and thus, because humans love nothing more than to narrativize their own experiences, of our lives.

Eucatastrophe, in Tolkien’s words, is “the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn.’ ” In mine, it’s the moment in a story where, when it seems like all is lost, that things are going to be awful forever, that the only possible endings are full of misery and despair, something good happens.

I will concede,” I said, “that you said a pretty mean thing to your sister. But you’ve spent fifteen years saying mean things to me and I have loved you every second of them anyway.

I had a doctorate in literary studies, but I did not have the words to explain what it felt like to be looked at to be perceived – by Sadie Shaw

Everyone knows collaboration is more work than just doing it yourself.

I told Chess pretty much everything, but one thing I'd kept carefully hidden from her was the existence of Goodreads. If she ever took to writing reviews, she would definitely make some people cry.

There was a theorist called Zygmunt Bauman who wrote about "liquid love," the idea that late capitalism had "liquified" a lot of connections between people. When the world is a marketplace, he argued, we don't want to tie ourselves tightly and permanently to people. Instead, we always have one eye on the market, always on some level considering trading people for a better, newer, shinier version.

But who would I even be without him to measure myself by?

I can make sensible arguments to myself all day long. There’s something in me that just doesn’t want to listen.” “It’s your dick

It's not a disaster; it's a dramatic term. It's all through the literature on ancient theater. Four stages: prologue, protasis, epitasis, catastrophe. The catastrophe is the moment when it all hangs on the precipice. If it goes one way, it's a tragedy, and everyone will probably die; if it goes the other, it's a comedy, and everyone will get their happy ending.

I was in love with my wife. I loved Sadie Shaw more than words could wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space and liberty.

I’m not telling you this because I expect anything from you,” I said. “I never have. I never will. I certainly don’t deserve anything from you. If you want to walk away from me, I’ll let you go. But I need you to hear me when I tell you that I’m not going to walk away from you. I love you, Sadie, and there is nothing you can say or do that will ever make me want to leave you.

will concede,” I said, “that you said a pretty mean thing to your sister. But you’ve spent fifteen years saying mean things to me and I have loved you every second of them anyway.

The idea of him no longer being an academic was like reading fucking Derrida.

I didn’t know you felt like that about me.” “Oh, fuck off, Jonah.” “You just asked me to marry you!” “No, I asked if you wanted to marry me.” “What makes you think I want to marry you?

I’m wondering if you want to get married.

I would burn the whole world down before I let anyone get in my way.

Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

I don’t know when I figured it out. What is it that Darcy says to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice? ‘I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun’?

Eucatastrophe is joy poignant as grief. The joy cannot be truly felt in a world where the grief isn’t possible.

I will concede that you said a pretty mean thing to your sister. But you've spent fifteen years saying mean things to me and I have loved you every second of them anyway

pink and fluffy and nothing bad ever happens. Eucatastrophe is joy poignant as grief. The joy cannot be truly felt in a world where the grief isn’t possible.

We were both wearing our own variety of armor. I’d pulled my hair back severely, put on my favorite don’t-fuck-with-me black jumpsuit, and sung “Vigilante Shit” quietly to myself as I applied eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man.

I flexed my hand, trying to get the feeling of her sun-warm hair off my fingers.

She’d had her hair out then, fiery red waves rippling down her back, and it had made me want to find a dark corner to weep in.