I've been bogged down all evening in Rorem's agonizingly long (40 pages!), self-indulgent woe-is-me letter to his lover, who, it seems, broke up with him unexpectedly and left him in considerable pain. But the moaning of the recently dumped, though inspiring sometimes poetic fulminations, quickly grows tiresome. Christ, Ned, pull it together and move on. Rorem's a first-rate writer, even a great writer, but in this case he could have used an editor.

I had a few things to write about tonight, but that was before I picked through much of the contents of my bedroom closet, which hasn't been touched in the nine years since I moved in. It's like opening Tutankhamen's tomb, breaking the seal that holds back a thousand years—well, in Tut's case, much more even than that. I haven't gone through some of this stuff in decades. I brought some of it from my mother’s attic, a few years ago, when by chance I was visiting her and happened to be in the attic where I stumbled upon familiar boxes. Before it was lost forever, I quickly grabbed some of it and put it into my car. But I never really went through it.

Well, first, I found many of my old undergraduate papers! Very exciting. I wrote some interesting things, I think—philosophy papers for Paul Guyer, who's become one of the world's top Kantian scholars (check out the section on Kant in the philosophy section of any good bookstore and you'll find his books), papers for Deidre Bair, who wrote biographies of Samuel Beckett, Anais Nin, and Simone de Beauvoir, and some decent papers on Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and others. Well, I won't really go back and read them, except for the comments. It's quite an impressive stack. Here's a sampling:

About my paper on King Lear, the professor wrote, "Interesting reading of the play's 'philosophy.' It reveals original thinking. At times your writing is 'unfocused' but your points are always [??? can't read her writing here] well." Yes, I was always unfocused in my writing because I was reasoning it out as I wrote. It's the only way I can think even now. In the same class, on a different paper on Coriolanus, the teaching assistant wrote this: "Although the points you make in this paper are very intelligent and perceptive, your writing continually obtrudes and gets in the way of your argument." In a paper on Wittgenstein the professor writes, "Very interesting piece of work. Your conclusion is highly suggestive. Understanding your argumentation is rather rough going." Hehe

In the course I took with Guyer on Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," we were assigned to read Guyer's own book on the Kant classic— Guyer was in the final stages of writing the book, so we were reading a version before it was printed, which was cool. I read almost none of it, however. Very lazy as an undergrad. His comment on my paper is funny: "It is certainly bold to depart from the dogma I've been asserting [I didn't know his dogma because I hadn't read it nor listened in class! hahah], and I have no objection to that, but you don't provide textual evidence of the key to your argument??? [can’t read his writing].... You are clearly itching for originality, which is laudable, but also need to constrain your imagination more ??? by the text. Nevertheless, as the most ambition undergraduate paper: A-." This was a graduate-level course. The most interesting part about the comment is that in pencil, which he erased, though not completely, he gave me an A—"A ...as the most ambitious undergraduate paper." I guess upon second thought, it was less than an A.

Deidre Bair wrote of my paper on Forster's "Howard's End:" "A very thorough treatment of a difficult topic. You are right to acknowledge a certain audience and proceed with your analysis from that angle. You are also right to not try to cover up the polemical nature of the argument in the book. Nice job. A" Of my paper on Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter" she agrees with the teaching assistant's comment that it was an ambitious paper but looks like a first draft to get ideas sorted out. [No doubt it was.] She says, "Too bad you were not able to give it the extra attention this good paper deserves. B." She scratched out the minus from the B- that the teaching assistant had given me.

I also found a cigar box with treasures from my very early years. There are a few cool match box cars, ones that I especially valued. There is a bag of arrow heads, none too exciting. There is a bracelet with my name on it which I made in metal shop. It's tiny. There are also some cheap necklace chains, a few cassette tapes, lots of Planet of the Apes trading cards, and a few stacks of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cards (notable among them are a Roberto Clemente card, Willie Stargell, a Bill Mazeroski, and a few others). Tucked away at the bottom of the box was a carefully folded piece of paper with some writing on it, not in my hand. I couldn't figure out whose handwriting it was until I read the contents. It was folded several times, and on the top was written "Mom, Read this I wanted to tell you this in a letter."

The contents read: "Dear mom, I wasn't going to tell you this but I think I should. Ok, when you're working on Tues. & Thurs Ed [our stepfather at the time] comes home at about 4:00. The reason why I'm always saying I don't want him around is because when nobody is around he feels me out. He gets in my pants and inside my shirt. And I say don't he says come here. Even when he's tickling me on your bed on Saturdays like we did sometimes when you leave the room he starts. I just wanted to tell you I didn't want it to be a secret to you. Love, Bub [my sister's nickname at the time] Please don't tell Ed I said this to you. Don't say anything to the boys so they will think Ed’s ??? [can't read her writing here] I thought the best time to tell you is when Ed's not around."

I remember the event vividly. My mother came home, read this, and became hysterical. I couldn't imagine what had happened. Somehow I finally got the letter and read it. The actual artifact of the letter became incidental in the ensuing chaos of the household. Everyone forgot about it. Something possessed me to keep it, though. I remember this now, though I’d forgotten about keeping it until finding it tonight. Yikes. It hits you like a bolt of lightning, still.