JOURNAL ENTRY #1

This semester I am taking the course "Literature and Madness." I expect to learn how literature and madness connect. However, I have my own original thoughts on this topic from my own experiences. (hence the interest this class) I just want to read. I have absolutely no idea what on earth I am supposed to write. After all, this is about READING - not WRITING. Why the heck do you have me writing journal entries? Huh?? What the heck is your freaking problem? MADNESS in writing? Is that what you are looking for? Unstable writing styles? Relentless pointless questions??? A general insult to you as an instructor? What do you expect! You are asking me, some dumb girl getting a great wonderful guy to type this for me instead, to write a JOURNAL ENTRY. How can I write a journal entry? I can't even give a good massage to this great guy typing this. How am I supposed to give YOU, a mere SHELL of a man compared to this guy, a JOURNAL entry??? I mean, this guy came into a room of girls and I talked him into typing this, and he's not getting what HE wants. All you do is stand in front of a classroom and tell me to WRITE things. WRITE. I'd rather have my hands caressing this young man's strong back than punching out letters on some keyboard. I'm not even punching out these letters. Some great, wonderful, sexy man is doing this for me. SEXY. You are some ugly oaf giving me assignments. ASSIGNMENTS. That means at night I'm staying up late writing this and that and wasting my time with something as inconsequential as a journal. Where will THAT get me in life? I'd rather spend my time with a guy! For crying out loud its an honors dorm! Think where I could go if I wound up with some sexy guy I can talk into typing papers for me! See my point? You're just telling ME to write things. And you're ugly. This is the other way around. All he asks of me is a massage, and he does things for me anyway. I ask NOTHING of you, and you demand EVERYTHING of me. Its insulting!!! How am I supposed to get somewhere in life if I can't spend my nights gaining valuable experience I'll need on the dating scene!! You can take this assignment and shove it!!!! Now excuse me while I go get a USEFUL education. Good night.

By Matt September 6, 1999

JOURNAL #2

Hi. My name is Mariya Vladimir Levin. I am 18 years old. I am just beginning my freshman year at the University of Maryland. Seeing that we have not yet completed any readings, discussed any seminars, nor have anything to relate experiences to, I cannot write on any of the above. Therefore, I will not; rather, I will let you know what I expect out of this class. Madness = cuckoo. Literature = books. So, basically, I wish to study cuckoo books. Not only should the books, in themselves, be cuckoo, but also the authors which write them. I expect these guys (and girls) to be psychos. After all, who wants to read about ordinary people. Whenever I pick up the newspaper, I do not expect to read about Jim Jones arising at 6 a.m., eating a bagel lathered in cream cheese, spending eight hours at a job that provides him no happiness, coming home to a tired wife and ungrateful children, watching identical news coverage at 5,6, and 10 before falling asleep. I want to read about the unordinary, the weird, the psycho.

Tom September 6, 1999

JOURNAL ENTRY #3

Literature and madness . . . in essence all literature is madness when you consider the fact that writers try to grasp in their own world the life of another. We as a people have only the knowledge of the experiences that we have ourselves and the opinions of others experiences. This is the basis on which all of literature is founded. We revel in the worlds which have never existed and could never happened all for the thrill of getting out of the world we have known. To think that we could leave this world for another just by reading a book, now that's madness. But yet that is the madness on which most of education is based. The abstract thinking to make a mountain out of a mole hill of experience and there is only one interpretation unless there is another. It is all up to people who know about literature or a formula or experience, which is as limited as one's own life. In reality, it's all a mad circle of thinking that someone has an idea what is real and what is not, what is good and what is trash. All down to the point of experience or lack there of and how much time a person has on there hands to think of these things, while still having a life. But whether a life is worth living is all based on past experience and madness reigns. If we all resign to the fact that life is all one big experience and none of us is in control. Then literature is just as random as life and just as probable to happen. Blah blah blah. Such is life and literature.

Lauren September 6,1999