Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story by Rachel Kadish

(In which happy endings are relative.)

***

How many times have we met intelligent, idealistic people searching for the one in their relentless pursuit of happiness? And either we lost track of their story or stopped caring altogether to find out how their conquest concluded. Or sometimes we just let our pessimism take over and knew exactly what will happen to them in the end. Sounds classic.

How about the classic happiness-related opening of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina? “Happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.”

Well, this is what Tracy Faber, a literature professor, wants to disprove in Rachel Kadish’s intellectually satisfying novel. Believing that Tolstoy has made a rather harsh generalization about happiness (making all those who blindly quote the Russian literary giant blind and unthinking), Tracy starts out a research project showing how literature unfairly treats happiness. She believes that it is ironic that writers want their characters to be happy, vindicated and satisfied, yet happiness never happens at the start of stories or even in the middle (true happiness, at least) but when happiness truly shows itself it means that the story has come to an end. Nobody celebrates happiness the way it deserves to be celebrated and it is simply not right.

But don’t think that Tracy is the epitome of happiness. With a failure of a relationship and numerous Valentine’s spent watching couples wait for each other and fight at coffee shops, who can say she’s completely happy? She said she’s happy about her profession and her books, though (which I totally agree to, but have I already said that that doesn’t make anybody completely happy?)

So when she stumbles upon dashing and smart Canadian George in a restaurant, she knew she was undone. Giggling like a high school girl over a telephone conversation when he said, “I have to ask the Canadian embassy if there are federal laws restricting me to give my heart to an American” (Honestly, that made me giggle too.), she let herself fall to a relationship she knows she deserves to be in. Everything was quite fine. Students and faculty members in the university she was working in notice the change in her that could only be caused by love. She was happy and she knows it. Until George proposes months after. 

Being a person who likes to plan things out, she was horrifies with all the sudden preparation she has to endure before marriage. And on top of that, politics in the university circulating her and her thesis advisee, as well as her tenureship packet seem all too much to bear. In this difficult balancing act, what’s at stake is her professional future as well as her future with George.

Poignant and literarily heavy, Rachel Kadish brings to a life a character all literature practitioner and enthusiast should meet. The objective is not only to relive our Melville and Hawthorne and Tolstoy experiences but to find whether happiness is as unique as the lack of it, as well as the sacrifices we have to take in order to find it.

Currently reading:

His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman

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His Dark Materials

A Mentor’s Musing: Listening to the Call

(In which a possible illusion-versus-reality inspired moment further reflects my worsening eccentricity.)

***

Before having our Wednesday Graduate classes, my classmates and I usually talk about our work and expectations and apprehensions about teaching. When I encouraged them to apply in a university, they thought I was kidding. But I know there is hope in their denial and disbelief.
“I want to try teaching. You know, I think teaching has been calling me and I have been ignoring it,” one bubbly female classmate blurted happily.
But knowing how much she has doubted teaching as her destined career, I absentmindedly said, “Yes, go ahead. Then you will see if it was really your calling and not somebody else’s you just overheard.”
She smiled. And as her smile widened by every couple of seconds, so as her brows knit deeper.

Goodness. I need a shrink.

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Calling

A Mentor’s Musing: On Teachers and Teaching

(In which the rumination seem endless.)

***

In one of Communication Skills classes, we discussed a story entitled A Classroom Full of Flowers by Janice Anderson Connely. It is one of the many inspiring stories about teaching which highlight the priceless fulfillment it gives despite the herculean tasks a teacher must triumph over. The hanging question for the class was whether or not they would want to be teachers after reading the story.

The story was inspiring all right. But just like any student assigned to read a text longer than five sentences, my students never ran out of excuses for failing to read the story. And so we had to use the classic approach for this situation, we read and discussed the text on the same day. But we managed to get through it.

When the time comes for the hanging question to be answered, I got surprisingly interesting responses. One of my female students said:

“I wouldn’t want to be a teacher. It is indeed fulfilling but teachers do not only teach. They do lesson plans and check papers and bring work home and are always tired. There are other jobs that are as fulfilling but less exhausting than teaching.”

You can just imagine how much it hit me. I often marvel at the bacteria-like multiplication ability of student papers and quizzes plus other documents in my shelf I start to wonder how big a teacher’s shelf should really be.

The discussion went on and another very classic reason why teaching is considered more of a calling than a career was discussed: salary. And then I asked them if they believe that a bigger paycheck would make education better in the Philippines. One young man wearing baggy pants and baggy university shirt and who walks as if he’s the reincarnation of Fernando Poe, Jr. raised his hand to answer. He said:

“It depends, ma’am.”

You see, students nowadays like to answer in installments. And whenever this situation arises I tell them that much as I would hate to cause their disappointment, I am not, and will never be, a pawnshop.

“I don’t think so, ma’am,” he continued, “Because it also depends on the students.”

Very true. Especially when the only thing they have to do to assure a fruitful discussion the next session was to read, a task they would chose to ignore. I saw another female hand in the air.

“I think it does, ma’am,” she said, “Most teachers choose to work out of the country because of the salary. And they are more often than not the best teachers. Filipino students will be taught by them if they will receive high salaries here.”

That actually reminded me of Mrs. Josette Biyo in a leadership seminar I attended to when I was in the university. She mentioned that teachers working abroad would rather stay in the Philippines to teach if not for compensation reasons. Filipino students, they believe, are easier to handle. And whenever a foreign student creates trouble (punch a classmate on the face or set another girl’s hair on fire during lessons) they will mutter _______ (insert currency on the blank) to themselves like a mantra.

Let me get this straight. I love being in the classroom. I have always thought that I belong in the classroom way back my university days. But my fleeting blissful moments in that sacred place would always be confronted by the fact that my job doesn’t end there. And never will. During these ruminations I am always reminded by the advice my college literature professor told us English majors: Corporate institutions are best for the youth for when you are young, you are energetic, idealistic and ambitious. Educational institutions, on the other hand, welcome the older ones with wider arms. When you grow old you become relaxed, practical and wise.

I would really like to succumb to the seductive thought of thinking about all these the whole night, then read Book 2 of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, or even write another blog post about the first book. But I realized I have consumed a good twenty minutes for this one and I still have papers to check.