Statements of Impurposiveness; or, as Gordon Gano Sings: "Lies Lies Lies Lies, Lies Lies Lies, Lies"

Digging through "My Documents" for some notes which have mysteriously vanished into the very bowels of my computer, I stumbled across my "Statement of Purpose."  You know, the thing undergraduates send to graduate schools to convince them that they (the students) are worthy of their (the graduate programs) attention.  Needless to say, it's terrible.  What it lacks in intellectual engagement it more than makes up for with its dour descriptiveness of my pretensions.  I've included it in its entirety below the fold, and I've even corrected the typos, misspellings and factual errors. 

You heard correctly: I somehow managed to get accepted despite typos, misspellings and factual errors.  Anyhow, "highlights" include:

I am currently writing an Honors thesis on Thomas Pynchon’s criticism of colonialism and its concomitant domination of language in his earlier novels, V. and Gravity’s Rainbow. In writing this I have had my first experience of what graduate work will be like, and to be truthful, I thoroughly enjoyed the nights I spent in the library reading, among others, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

We all remember how well that turned out.

This is not to say that I plan on reading theory to the exclusion of other works.

I should say not.  If now-me could travel back and inform then-me of where he'd end up, I'm sure then-me (a buffer if denser version of now-me) would challenge me to step outside. 

[I] have started reading the complete works of George Eliot, a task I hope to have accomplished in full by the time the Fall of 1999 rolls around.

I cannot be sure, but I think this may have been an outright lie.  Sure, I read Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, but that's far from the complete works.  (As Jonathan likes to remind me, I'm still prone to such exaggerations.  They're well-intentioned whites lies, however, as they're meant to inspire me to transform them into big colorful truths.)

Those goals can and most certainly will evolve as I learn more and discover new literatures and theories, which is what excites me the most about continuing my education into and beyond the graduate level.

Something excites him about graduate school?  Obviously someone has yet to spend a couple years toiling over a dissertation.

My word processor has become a graveyard for needlessly informative or woefully inadequate “statements of purpose”. Some contain my life story in full, some limit themselves to my intellectual history, while others are narrative attempts at explaining “how I got to where I am now,” but their imposed narratives rendered all of them little more than wistful fictions. So instead of making more stillborn contributions to “the story of who I was and how that man became this one,” I will tell you who I am and who I wish to become while attaining my doctorate.

“Who I am” is a student interested in the more covertly political statements made by literary works. For instance, I am currently writing an Honors thesis on Thomas Pynchon’s criticism of colonialism and its concomitant domination of language in his earlier novels, V. and Gravity’s Rainbow. In writing this I have had my first experience of what graduate work will be like, and to be truthful, I thoroughly enjoyed the nights I spent in the library reading, among others, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Over the course of my graduate work I intend to further the study of literary and cultural theory I have begun with this thesis (and in a modern criticism class I took this semester). My theoretical interests are all over the map, ranging from Jameson and the long Marxist tradition he represents to Lacan and the better part of the Freudian canon, as well as where those traditions collide, such as in the work of Althusser. To be honest though, right now I am doing little more than dropping names. I read Jameson’s Political Unconscious and am in the process of wrestling with Lacan’s Ecrits, and my knowledge of Althusser is limited to what I gleaned from William Dowling’s introduction to The Political Unconscious. In other words, what I have read pales in comparison to what I will read, and I am well aware that my knowledge base is in desperate need of expansion.

This is not to say that I plan on reading theory to the exclusion of other works, as I have a voracious appetite for fiction that theory cannot begin to sate. As you could probably guess from the subject of my Honors thesis, one of the people I am most interested in studying is Thomas Pynchon, who also happens to be one of my favorite authors. I also have a keen interest in James Joyce, stemming from a class I took on Ulysses from Patrick McGee last spring. Sometime during my graduate work I intend on studying in depth the one book of Joyce’s I have yet to read, Finnegans Wake. But my interests are not limited to so-called “modern” works of literature. For instance, I have already spent a semester reading Dante’s Commedia and, with a little help from a friend who has promised to teach me medieval Italian, I will someday soon read it again in its native Italian. I also plan on studying more of what is considered “canonical” literature, for if my forays into theory have taught me anything, it is that there are strains of thought running through even the most canonical works that demand they be re-read and re-evaluated. To this end I have already re-read Moby Dick and have started reading the complete works of George Eliot, a task I hope to have accomplished in full by the time the Fall of 1999 rolls around.

My interests are not even limited to what are considered “literary” works, as a penchant for science fiction and other more “pulpy” strains of literature has transformed itself into a desire to critically re-read much of what I had previously read purely for entertainment. For instance, I have written papers on Philip K. Dick, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Bruce Sterling, a group of authors I might not even have acknowledged having read in a statement of purpose a couple of years ago. What theory has enabled me to do is to see the value in what I otherwise would have overlooked, such as science fiction, film, and pop culture, and to examine these things with the same tenacity I once reserved for “literature.” What that basically means, for me, is that even if I find five rejection letters in the mail in five months time, the course of my studies will not be altered. I fully intend on continuing my studies for the rest of my life, in the directions that I have indicated above, as those represent my current interests and long-term goals. Those goals can and most certainly will evolve as I learn more and discover new literatures and theories, which is what excites me the most about continuing my education into and beyond the graduate level.

Comments

[Stephen Schryer]

Thanks Scott - very funny. I love the "meta" opening about the previous drafts you discarded because they imposed a false narrative upon your life and reading interests.

[Rich Crew]

It can't possibly be a lie that you started reading the works of George Eliot, given that you read two of the lengthier novels, or that you hoped to finish this task by whatever date. Now if you had said intended....

You've spoken about your "five-year rule." Here's my twenty-year rule: if you bought it at least twenty years ago, and you still haven't gotten around to reading it, then either read it, or recycle it.

[Mike S]

Scott, I had no idea that a statement of purpose with such a flippant, aw-shucks tone could win over the hearts of an English dept's admissions board. Either you know something I don't (ie: that levity triumphs over no-nonsense studiousness), or your S.O.P. was not the most convincing aspect of your application materials.

Oh, and to read a UCI ABD's S.O.P on the very night I've sat down to compose my own, and to find in your S.O.P. something radically dissimilar to my (possibly) misguided notion of what an S.O.P. should look, read, and smell like, I am now mired in a state of (probably unnecessary) confusion, apprehension, and grief over the proper form/tone my S.O.P should take.