Who Actually Like Crime and Punishment?

The first day of Modern American Literature, we went around the room and introduced ourselves to the professor. She's an older woman who looks like Professor Trelawney. I honestly cannot remember her name. It's my senior year. This class isn't very important.

Modern American Literature is a sophomore level class; freshman can take it if they declare English, so most students are younger than I. Each person had to give their favorite authors. Walt Whitman. John Milton. Albert Camus. Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

You are all liars, and I am extremely embarrassed because you are not wearing pants since you took them off when they caught fire on account of your great deceptions. These are not your favorite authors. These are no one's favorite authors. Hard human truths and favorite authors have never held hands. And who gives Dostoyevsky's first name when they talk about Crime and Punishment? It's like your trying to pretend you knew him; it's impossible that you would know him, because he would never hang out with anyone who looks like you do. I know him. We play Settlers of Cataan every other Wednesday.

The skinny acne farm who said Albert Camus was his favorite author also said that it was because of the dichotomy which Camus creates between a presumed life and a true life. That's when you pokes a hole in someone's throat, right?

Last summer when I was in Galway, I paid 50 euros to attend a "Master Screenwriting Class" hosted by Christopher Hampton, who adapted Atonement and Dangerous Liaisons and such (see clay face, above). A good writer. A terrible class. The advertisement didn't say this, but it was actually a pump up the jam party for the audience's egos. Hampton, who said less than nothing that you can't read in Syd Field's Screenplay (which is the go to book, if you're interesting in screenwriting), fielded questions from "students."

Sample question: "I was a writer on a major motion picture, and the director kept asking me to rewrite this one scene for the big name actor in the major motion picture, and he was never satisfied. What should I have major motion picture?"

That's not a question; that's a high five. You might as well give yourself your own nickname. Like Major Motion Picture Lips, or Very Poor Self Esteem Face.

My favorite quotation, besides some really arrogant things Hampton said, came from one student who tossed Hampton an abstract softball that began with the statement, "Film is a very esoteric medium." That's where the salt water and the freshwater meet, right?

On the first day of class, the guy who introduced himself right before me said his favorite works were Eastern spiritual tomes and egalitarian love texts. Egalitarian? That's with horses, right? You're sick, greasy eighteen year old on my left.

When it came to me, I said currently my favorite author was Richard K. Morgan. What has he written? A trilogy of novels, with this same character Takeshi Kovacs. And what are they about? Five hundred years in the future, this ex-Navy Seal of the Universe who has a really bad attitude solves mysteries. He always gets his man. And he sleeps with a lot of women.