It's the way the titles sound. They always sound so austere and erudite and beautiful -- the titles always have that academic-sounding rhythm. It makes me want to read things that are far from my little specialized corner of literature.

Elyot, Castiglione, and the problem of style / by Teresa Kennedy.

The elegiac mode in Milton and Rilke : reflections on death / by Dan Latimer.

The nation as invisible protagonist in Dickens and Dostoevsky : uncovering hidden social forces within the text / by Olga A. Stuchebrukhov.

I wanted to learn Italian because I read some crappy translation of The Inferno and saw the Italian printed beside it. And because I'd just returned from a vacation in Tuscany.

Then I read Madame Bovary and wanted to learn French so that I could read that (and Georges Bernanos) in the original language and watch my Rohmer movies.

But I'm an American Lit. scholar. I should stick with my Spanish.

I love Milton. I could do Milton and Melville together.

Working in the library gives me what I'm calling the Anxiety of Desire to Learn. Right now I'm having to change every single subject heading "Literature, Comparative" to "Comparative literature." Oh, yes. That's my job. Database management we call it. So as I'm clicking through thousands of records and pasting over the old heading (we don't yet have a program that replaces the headings that are subdivided), I am drooling over titles and growing anxious because there's so much I want to read and can't.

Like: Romantic moods : paranoia, trauma, and melancholy, 1790-1840 / by Thomas Pfau.

Or: The reception of English literature in Germany / by Lawrence Marsden Price

Fairly broad topics, but as I'm beginning to learn what being a scholar is about, I don't think I'll have the reason or the chance to know what the reception of English literature in Germany was in the late 1800's!

I mean, how cool is this?: The influence of Old Norse literature upon English literature, / by Conrad Hjalmar Nordby.

This isn't even considering my new fascination with reading Science magazines online and listening to Radio Lab's science podcasts. There's simply too much to know and I'm too aware of it.

http://www.cbs.com/classics/the_twilight_zone/video/?pid=00Z8PCQ1pUR7YaOGokJTblQn3_ZsEUq1&vs=Default&play=true

Watch this episode of the Twilight Zone. The speech he gives about his role as an educator is sad and startling even more relevant today.