It feels like forever since I've had anything to report on the book. I haven't heard anything back from the potential publishers yet, and I've been swamped by administrative and teaching tasks since the term started two weeks ago. Last week all I managed to do was fill out the bibliography more. It's very close to complete now. I haven't yet decided whether I'm actually going to go to the trouble to do translations of everything yet. Each publisher does it in a different way, and I would hate to go to all the trouble only to have to change everything one or more times. I think at this point I'm just going to submit the manuscript without translations.
Today, I decided I just needed to stay home so I could make at least a little progress on the final polishing of the book manuscript before January ends. I realized quite a few weeks ago that I had missed a major early national drama in my review of the light musical comedies that Ibsen wrote "against" in Peer Gynt, namely Peter Andreas Jensen's Huldrens Hjem from 1852. I found out about it when reading my colleague's article on Ibsen's journalistic writing from the early 1850s. Apparently Ibsen butchered the play in a review from 1852. I haven't actually read the review yet (I'll be able to do that on Wednesday, I hope), but I did find a copy of the play. I finished reading it today, and it fit really well thematically with the other four I've been looking at in comparison to Peer Gynt. It (like most of the others) is a dreadful play, but it's a hoot to see how Ibsen turns the interlinking set of themes and images that they all use upside down.
I was able to insert short discussions of Huldrens Hjem into the chapter without too much difficulty. I'm going to take a little break now and see if I can't put the finishing touches on chapter five too. I've not quite yet resolved what to do about the the Peer Gynt at Giza production from 2006. I need to do a better job of fitting it into chapter five somehow. Maybe just reading through the chapter will help.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 1207
Monday, January 31, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Details, details...
Today I finally managed to arrange a trip to the National Library to revisit the Opøien/Øverland comic strip version of Peer Gynt. I was able to compare both versions, and thus figured out what was in the missing strips (sexual content! Anitra naked!), and also copy two articles about the comic strip from 1969 and 1970 that I needed to look at. It was then pretty easy to integrate that material into chapter three, which I'm now declaring totally done.
I can't remember if I mentioned that I skimmed all the older studies on Christianity in Peer Gynt earlier this week. It was good to get all that material in place conceptually, though it didn't add much new material or perspectives to my book. It was mostly just background material for the footnotes.
I also started reading Linda Hutcheon's A Theory of Adaptation from 2006, which I should really have read before I started the project. I added a short paragraph on it to the introduction, and now I feel I have all my bases covered.
My friend L just gave me feedback on my conclusion, and had two good suggestions for revision, so I'll be thinking about those over the weekend.
Finally, I was lucky enough to have been given a collection of Ibsen articles that was just published. There are five or six articles that touch upon Peer Gynt that I'll try to get through this weekend.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: about 800
I can't remember if I mentioned that I skimmed all the older studies on Christianity in Peer Gynt earlier this week. It was good to get all that material in place conceptually, though it didn't add much new material or perspectives to my book. It was mostly just background material for the footnotes.
I also started reading Linda Hutcheon's A Theory of Adaptation from 2006, which I should really have read before I started the project. I added a short paragraph on it to the introduction, and now I feel I have all my bases covered.
My friend L just gave me feedback on my conclusion, and had two good suggestions for revision, so I'll be thinking about those over the weekend.
Finally, I was lucky enough to have been given a collection of Ibsen articles that was just published. There are five or six articles that touch upon Peer Gynt that I'll try to get through this weekend.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: about 800
Friday, January 7, 2011
Switch-a-roo
Yay, today was another really useful day of revising. I stayed at home so that I could really concentrate on re-reading Skagestad's Peer Gynt parody, Det stig av hav. It took me a long time to make sense of the play, but I now feel I've got a good grasp of it.
My main revising task was figuring out how to improve the discussion of Det stig av hav into chapter three (what I had from before was really just a placeholder), which was already growing too long and cumbersome. In the back of my head all morning as I read I was mulling over what if anything I could cut from the chapter to alleviate the situation, but I didn't have any ideas until the moment I opened up the document on my computer. Rather magically, what I needed to do became instantly obvious to me, and I can't even believe I didn't think of it before.
I have two chapters in the book on literary parody: chapter 2 deals with Peer Gynt and the earlier plays that Ibsen himself parodies, while chapter three deals with late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century parodies of Peer Gynt. Back in December when I added the theoretical section on parody to the manuscript, I decided it had to be in chapter 3. This was a purely pragmatic decision: at the time, chapter 2 was long enough, and chapter 3 was way too short. But now that I've filled out chapter 3 in terms of analysis, it is actually way longer than chapter 2. It makes much more sense from a potential reader's perspective for the theory to come at the beginning of chapter 2, since it relates to both chapters.
It was pretty painless to extract the theory section from 3. I now have a separate document with that material read to insert into 2 when I get to work on Monday. And with those three pages gone, there was plenty of room to do a decent job analyzing Det stig av hav. Calculating words written today becomes a little tricky for my math-o-phobic self but here goes. I started with 10,523 words in chapter 3 and cut 754 for use in chapter 2. That left me with 9,769 words. I then worked like crazy on the new section and cut out nearly everything I had written previously, knocking me down to about 9,460 words. In the end, I came in at 10,185, with a vastly improved chapter and a net increase for the whole manuscript of...
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 725 words
My main revising task was figuring out how to improve the discussion of Det stig av hav into chapter three (what I had from before was really just a placeholder), which was already growing too long and cumbersome. In the back of my head all morning as I read I was mulling over what if anything I could cut from the chapter to alleviate the situation, but I didn't have any ideas until the moment I opened up the document on my computer. Rather magically, what I needed to do became instantly obvious to me, and I can't even believe I didn't think of it before.
I have two chapters in the book on literary parody: chapter 2 deals with Peer Gynt and the earlier plays that Ibsen himself parodies, while chapter three deals with late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century parodies of Peer Gynt. Back in December when I added the theoretical section on parody to the manuscript, I decided it had to be in chapter 3. This was a purely pragmatic decision: at the time, chapter 2 was long enough, and chapter 3 was way too short. But now that I've filled out chapter 3 in terms of analysis, it is actually way longer than chapter 2. It makes much more sense from a potential reader's perspective for the theory to come at the beginning of chapter 2, since it relates to both chapters.
It was pretty painless to extract the theory section from 3. I now have a separate document with that material read to insert into 2 when I get to work on Monday. And with those three pages gone, there was plenty of room to do a decent job analyzing Det stig av hav. Calculating words written today becomes a little tricky for my math-o-phobic self but here goes. I started with 10,523 words in chapter 3 and cut 754 for use in chapter 2. That left me with 9,769 words. I then worked like crazy on the new section and cut out nearly everything I had written previously, knocking me down to about 9,460 words. In the end, I came in at 10,185, with a vastly improved chapter and a net increase for the whole manuscript of...
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 725 words
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Serendipity
Today was an almost uninterrupted day of work on the book. I added a bunch of citations to the bibliography and worked on chapters three and four. I've now passed 54,000 words and 180 pages, and there are still quite a few bits and pieces to add here and there.
Another book I had requested from ILL finally arrived, Robert Millar's Norges tredje turist attraksjon from 1945. It is freaking hilarious. I'm so glad it arrived, and I've already processed it (it's only 44 pages) and added a section to chapter four.
Serendipitously, a colleague who has written an article that I didn't know about on Ivo de Figueiredo's Slipp meg happened to see it on my desk. She told me about her article, and I promptly read it. It's quite good, and is actually one of the few scholarly analyses that I've found that supports my argument about the ways that PG is used to produce meaning. I'm so glad she happened to stop by my office today!
Oh, I almost forgot to add that I made a kind of snap decision today while walking back from the library: I had been thinking that I would just send the manuscript directly to number one publisher as soon as it was done, but today I decided I really should follow protocol and send an inquiry first. I sent it both by email and regular mail. I think it was a good idea to get the idea of the book planted in their heads asap, while I continue to polish the manuscript for a few weeks more.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 706 or thereabouts
Another book I had requested from ILL finally arrived, Robert Millar's Norges tredje turist attraksjon from 1945. It is freaking hilarious. I'm so glad it arrived, and I've already processed it (it's only 44 pages) and added a section to chapter four.
Serendipitously, a colleague who has written an article that I didn't know about on Ivo de Figueiredo's Slipp meg happened to see it on my desk. She told me about her article, and I promptly read it. It's quite good, and is actually one of the few scholarly analyses that I've found that supports my argument about the ways that PG is used to produce meaning. I'm so glad she happened to stop by my office today!
Oh, I almost forgot to add that I made a kind of snap decision today while walking back from the library: I had been thinking that I would just send the manuscript directly to number one publisher as soon as it was done, but today I decided I really should follow protocol and send an inquiry first. I sent it both by email and regular mail. I think it was a good idea to get the idea of the book planted in their heads asap, while I continue to polish the manuscript for a few weeks more.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 706 or thereabouts
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Harried
I got everything that was in my binders entered into my bibliography today. There are still many sources to add, especially newspaper articles. I'm going to have to go through the whole manuscript along with the bibliography and add the missing sources as I read along. Oh well, serves me right for writing in such a whirlwind of enthusiasm.
I added a tiny bit to chapter 3, but got distracted by administrative duties. I also read Tormod Skagestad's program commentary for his 1962 production of Peer Gynt at Det Norske Teatret, which I didn't know about, and I sent out an inquiry to my colleagues asking for help identifying the figures in a satirical Peer Gynt comic strip by Steffen Kverneland. If you have a Norwegian IP-address you can see it here (go to page 30). I also saw in Store norske leksikon that Skagestad intended Det stig av hav as his contribution to the EF-debates of 1972, but it doesn't indicate exactly where he stood. I need to read the text more closely!
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: I don't know, maybe 50?
I added a tiny bit to chapter 3, but got distracted by administrative duties. I also read Tormod Skagestad's program commentary for his 1962 production of Peer Gynt at Det Norske Teatret, which I didn't know about, and I sent out an inquiry to my colleagues asking for help identifying the figures in a satirical Peer Gynt comic strip by Steffen Kverneland. If you have a Norwegian IP-address you can see it here (go to page 30). I also saw in Store norske leksikon that Skagestad intended Det stig av hav as his contribution to the EF-debates of 1972, but it doesn't indicate exactly where he stood. I need to read the text more closely!
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: I don't know, maybe 50?
Monday, January 3, 2011
New Years Update
I actually did a little work between Christmas and New Years, but it hardly seemed enough to report. I wrote a draft of the cover letter I'll be sending to my first choice in publisher, along with a draft of the book prospectus.
Today was my first day back at work after the holidays, and I actually got a lot done.
Today was my first day back at work after the holidays, and I actually got a lot done.
- Got started on the bibliography, which has been nagging at me.
- Revised chapter 3, cutting a lot of material (forgot to check how much) and adding a new section on Skagestad's Det stig av hav for an increase of 366 words
- Revised the section on Peer Gynt, Inc. in chapter 4 for an increase of 144 words
- Added a new section to the conclusion on Peer Gynt-koden and "Peer, astroversjon" for an increase of 658 words
- Read Peter T. Newby's "Literature and the Fashioning of Tourist Taste," which finally arrived by ILL
I'm pretty happy with today's productivity, and feel pretty confident I'll be able to tie up all the loose ends over the next two weeks or so. It will be a great feeling to get the manuscript out and under consideration with a publisher.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 1,168 words
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