The reading list for Imagining America includes Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Chopin, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Ginsberg, Dylan, Eastwood and Scorsese. I confess to being less than wildly enthusiastic about Whitman but I'll try. The rest I've read / seen and know to varying degrees. I know Poe least well I think (maybe Mark Twain and Chopin) but I'm looking forward to reading as much as possible of all the writers (even WW).
I want to get ahead of the unit. I can be lazy and often struggle to keep up with the schedule of reading, only because I tend to leave works to the last minute. So I've spoken sternly to my inner self, telling me to read, read and re-read as much as I can. (There's a bit of me wonders how well I might do as a student, how much I might improve my marks, you know, if I had a more adult approach to the reading lists. I kid myself on that I like to fly by the seat of my pants; brain the size of a planet, winging it at the last minute ... isn't that proven with those ninety-something scores? Well no Douglas and besides, you said you were returning to university to learn, to understand better ... maybe even to write better ... so scores alone signify nothing. They certainly don't indicate learning, merely an ability to write a decent essay, which is far from the same thing).
... in an incredibly brief period the entire building was wrapped in flames. All egress from my chamber, except through a window, was cut off. The crowd, however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder. By means of this I was descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a huge hog, about whose rotund stomach, and indeed about whose whole air and physiognomy, there was something which reminded me of the Angel of the Odd, -- when this hog, I say, which hitherto had been quietly slumbering in the mud, took it suddenly into his head that his left shoulder needed scratching, and could find no more convenient rubbing-post than that afforded by the foot of the ladder.
Whimsical is a word that comes to mind. But I did smile.
