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I ain't busy enough.
I've always had research/teaching schizophrenia. Well, not always, obviously, but since say 1993. I don't teach to my research, which is largely in the fields of sf and fantasy. For most of my time in teaching I've had no control over what I taught - and the thought of researching an article on, say, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce ... well, nah. For a while I thought there was mileage in Graham Greene and/or Wilkie Collins but then I stopped teaching literature (and I do love the article where Eliot says screw the modern novel, we ought to read Collins and his ilk - "If we cannot get this satisfaction [for melodrama] out of what the publishers present as 'literature', then we will read - with less and less pretense of concealment - what we call 'thrillers'.")
So now I teach cultural studies and media studies, and of course popular genre fiction doesn't fit in those categories. At least not to teach successfully. I could write on film, but again I end up teaching the Wrong Films. And I don't really like sf films.
Off and on for the last five years I've taught a course on comedy, and I've been struck by paucity of materials on it. And having met various people who have worked on, say, romantic comedy, I've had thoughts about, well, there ought to be something else published. But what? In fact the idea I've settled on is one that I've had before, but when I was stood at the photocopier on Wednesday (not making multiple copies) the perfect title sprung into my head. Bugger.
So yesterday evening and today I've emailed various people I know who write on comedy, and invited them to contribute, and there has been reasonable enthusiasm. I now need to contact a couple of people who I don't know but have written on comedy - someone who used to work at the Secret Campus, and someone who teaches On the Hill. At some point I'm going to put a proposal together. The odd thing is I'm contractually obliged to offer the book to Big Name Academic Publisher... dash it all.
Of course there is the little matter of The Big Stalled Project, overdue, the Big Scary Collection due by the end of the year and the Slightly Less Scary Collection due late next year. And the PhD which ought to be turned into a book. And the gaps on 1970s British sf that could be sutured to form a monograph.
(I can see this novel is going to get written instead...)
I've always had research/teaching schizophrenia. Well, not always, obviously, but since say 1993. I don't teach to my research, which is largely in the fields of sf and fantasy. For most of my time in teaching I've had no control over what I taught - and the thought of researching an article on, say, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce ... well, nah. For a while I thought there was mileage in Graham Greene and/or Wilkie Collins but then I stopped teaching literature (and I do love the article where Eliot says screw the modern novel, we ought to read Collins and his ilk - "If we cannot get this satisfaction [for melodrama] out of what the publishers present as 'literature', then we will read - with less and less pretense of concealment - what we call 'thrillers'.")
So now I teach cultural studies and media studies, and of course popular genre fiction doesn't fit in those categories. At least not to teach successfully. I could write on film, but again I end up teaching the Wrong Films. And I don't really like sf films.
Off and on for the last five years I've taught a course on comedy, and I've been struck by paucity of materials on it. And having met various people who have worked on, say, romantic comedy, I've had thoughts about, well, there ought to be something else published. But what? In fact the idea I've settled on is one that I've had before, but when I was stood at the photocopier on Wednesday (not making multiple copies) the perfect title sprung into my head. Bugger.
So yesterday evening and today I've emailed various people I know who write on comedy, and invited them to contribute, and there has been reasonable enthusiasm. I now need to contact a couple of people who I don't know but have written on comedy - someone who used to work at the Secret Campus, and someone who teaches On the Hill. At some point I'm going to put a proposal together. The odd thing is I'm contractually obliged to offer the book to Big Name Academic Publisher... dash it all.
Of course there is the little matter of The Big Stalled Project, overdue, the Big Scary Collection due by the end of the year and the Slightly Less Scary Collection due late next year. And the PhD which ought to be turned into a book. And the gaps on 1970s British sf that could be sutured to form a monograph.
(I can see this novel is going to get written instead...)
