Thesis and Booze

Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Coleridge...many poets and writers, perhaps Proust as well, have thought drunkeness, or other states of insobriety, a catalyst of creative endeavour. As I think literary criticism is little more than an attempt to tell a good story, I am hopeful that my current mild inebriation will produce thesis musings of great depth and grandeur. Though I'd settle for coherent and pointed. In fact, I aspire to coherent and pointed. The best literary criticism often tells the tale of the obvious. Reading it, we feel astounded to have missed what now seems so apparent. This is of course the sign of a good yarn, of a particular facility for weaving the threads together. Out of this comes a clear picture, no longer mere interwoven strands, but a set of relationships that jump forth into our imagination with a visual clarity that makes them self-evident. How we could have missed it we are no longer sure. The logic, the motivation and the ramifications are all now clear. The critic's tale has bowled us over like a monster truck over trycicles.