Chloe Cullen's Blog, page 4

5. This project is ruining MIDDLEMARCH for me.

I have this semi-recurring nightmare where I get a butt-cheek tattoo. I never see the full tattoo, only lines of ink from the corner of my eye, but the assumption is it’s a leprechaun or kissy lips. Then a crack of sobriety rains over my consciousness, and I return to reality with an unwanted, permanent tattoo. In the dream, I scrub my bum until it’s red, and I wake up as dream-me signs away my meager savings at a laser removal clinic.

When I’m reading Middlemarch about a teenager who enthusiast...

Lesson 5: A beginner's guide to George Eliot & MIDDLEMARCH

In today’s lesson, we’ll cover the biography of Marian Evans, including:

An excessive amount of minor name changes

“Strauss-sickness” and its ability to change lives

The saucy radical bastards of G.H. Lewes

A final lap into Cougar town before she passes

And also, Middlemarch, we’ll talk about the context of Middlemarch

George Eliot is Mary Anne Evans, who changes her name to Marian Evans, then later takes on the nicknames of “Mrs. Lewes” and “Madonna” in her common law marriage. All of this before...

Lesson 5: George Eliot is a chick?!

In today’s lesson, we’ll cover the biography of Marian Evans, including:

An excessive amount of minor name changes

“Strauss-sickness” and its ability to change lives

The saucy radical bastards of G.H. Lewes

A final lap into Cougar town before she passes

And also, Middlemarch, we’ll talk about the context of Middlemarch

George Eliot is Mary Anne Evans, who changes her name to Marian Evans, then later takes on the nicknames of “Mrs. Lewes” and “Madonna” in her common law marriage. All of this before...

4.5: Skiing as CRIME & PUNISHMENT

In an irony stronger than sanitizer, I finished Crime and Punishment on a skiing vacation in Utah.

While reading about 19th century St. Petersburg, where nobles sweat their clothes yellow and peasants drink away their lives, I’m in a palatial house situated for sixteen with a shed sauna-gym and an outdoor hot tub.

My hate-appreciate relationship with skiing has taken five years and a decent amount of spite and tears. But at the end of the trip, when the group chat sends the Airbnb listing for nex...

4. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT & Water Park Panties: A Western prophecy

I was nine years old when I stole another girl’s underpants at Splash Water Park in Rockville, Maryland.

If I was a fictional character, this behavior suggests a deviant in the making, a loose foreshadowing of my ability to mend my ethical boundaries to whatever I needed. At the end of the film, before I drive my car off a cliff or cackle behind jail cell bars, I reach into my baggy pocket and release a fistful of wadded-up cotton. A pair of panties! Not my own! “How the hell did she get those?”...

Lesson 4: A beginner's guide to Fyodor Dostoevsky & CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

On December 22, 1849, after eight months of a solitary confinement for a mild participation in a revolutionary group, Fyodor Dostoevsky is led to his execution.

He’s blindfolded and standing above a grave alongside another prisoner. The firing squad lined up behind him. Seconds before they expect to be executed, the guards tell the prisoners the tsar has granted them mercy via an exile to Siberia. The man alongside him is permanently traumatized, diagnosed and treated for insanity in the wake of...

Lesson 4: Have you heard the rumor in St. Petersburg?

On December 22, 1849, after eight months of a solitary confinement for a mild participation in a revolutionary group, Fyodor Dostoevsky is led to his execution.

He’s blindfolded and standing above a grave alongside another prisoner. The firing squad lined up behind him. Seconds before they expect to be executed, the guards tell the prisoners the tsar has granted them mercy via an exile to Siberia. The man alongside him is permanently traumatized, diagnosed and treated for insanity in the wake of...

Lesson #4: Have you heard the rumor in St. Petersburg?

On December 22, 1849, after eight months of a solitary confinement for a mild participation in a revolutionary group, Fyodor Dostoevsky is led to his execution.

He’s blindfolded and standing above a grave alongside another prisoner. The firing squad lined up behind him. Seconds before they expect to be executed, the guards tell the prisoners the tsar has granted them mercy via an exile to Siberia. The man alongside him is permanently traumatized, diagnosed and treated for insanity in the wake of...

3. A TALE OF TWO CITIES: No one makes me cry like Sydney Carton

Of the 28 great novels I opted to read this year, I chose A Tale of Two Cities because, as a sophomore in high school spending my Friday night reading the assigned ending in my room, I wept. No book ever—and few since—have provoked that reaction from me.

In returning to this book, I thought I could open the machinery behind the novel and, hopefully, selfishly, find traces of my younger self in the margins.

What I found instead:

CARTON = PUNCH DRINKER

Within my high school copy, I looked past the gre...

Lesson 3: The Revolution Will Not Be Muppetized

You’re probably wondering why I’m about to yap about Fran Leibowitz.

Leibowitz—who at first glance I would not put in Austen’s camp, but Team Jane has a big tent—says in the documentary short, “The Divine Jane”:

Any artist who has that quality of timelessness has that quality because they tell the truth. Obviously, details change, but writers who date date not because the details date. All details date. Writers date because their ideas date, and that means their ideas are wrong. Her perceptions ...