From: SDAYAL-AT-bentley.edu
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 11:08:14 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: biography & autobiography


Alpana:

You're quite right about Alexander's book--I have an essay coming out on 
her in a collection forthcoming this year--but for some reason it's precisely
this lyrical self-absorption that turns away my undergraduate students, perhaps
because I am not as effective a teacher as I could be.  But in any event, I
hesitate to teach Suleri and Ondaatje's work for the same reason, buckling
to the pressure to offer instead some sexdrugsandrock'n'roll instead.  I don't
mean to be disrespectful of my students at all.  I am simply not sure that 
I can in a semester get them to engage with something like Alexander or Suleri
given their distance from this kind of prose.  With graduate students I would
have no hesitation at all.  Am I being dense?

SD


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