I'm finally done with homework. Not work, mind you — I still have to write a little bit of autobiography for my grad school applications and study for the GRE English test on Saturday. Which I'm assuming I'll be able to take.

My essay for satire took forever for two reasons. First, the computer carrels in the library are just the right size where you can put the keyboard in your lap and lean back comfortably against the wall. And second, George McKay, whose critical framework I was applying to the satires we read, writes in an academic jargon that has to be translated:

Fictively, she is caught in diasynchronic space-time.

I picture Goldgar throwing my essay back at me and shouting "Gibberish! All gibberish!"

But despite McKay's overly academic style and poorly chosen examples, 'Time back way back': 'motivation' and speculative fiction was actually interesting, even profound. He redefines the term "speculative fiction" — popular among writers like Margaret Atwood, who don't want their satires to be dismissed as mere science fiction — as any literature which forces an overt comparison with the real world. At the other end of the spectrum are works which McKay classifies as "fantasy" but which could really be just about anything overly escapist or emotive. I'm thinking thrillers, romances, most classic novels…

This system is actually pretty good, because if we reconsider literature in terms of speculative fiction versus fantasy, some talented writers working in genres critics usually dismiss seem worthy of reevaluation, even inclusion in the canon. I'm not claiming that works of fantasy are inherently inferior to speculative fiction, just that it's a better mindset for critics than the usual labeling-and-dismissal.

Writing the essay, I thought of three excellent (and, as it happens, relatively satiric) works that have been confined to genre hell: H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (sci-fi), Terry Pratchett's Small Gods (comedic fantasy), and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (cyberpunk).

And speaking of useful terms, I noticed that Noel Murray's Onion A.V. Club review describes Jonathan Lethem as a "neo-fantasist," the first instance I can find of that concept in English.

Germans have two useful literary classifications that we seem to lack. Prof. Ternes has been talking about them this term, filtering information he got from some weird German book.

First there's the phantastisch, works by authors like Kafka and Poe, in which an otherworldly element is placed in otherwise ordinary circumstances to shock or creep out the reader.

Then there's the neo-phantastisch, as seen in Patrick Süskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and Günter Grass's The Tin Drum. In these works the fantastic elements aren't there to shock or frighten, they're just, for whatever reason, there.

So now I'm translating neo-phantastisch to neo-fantasist in my essays. I mentioned Grass in my satire essay, so I translated the word this morning.

And there you have it, a longish tribute to book-geekdom. I expect the slight twinge of guilt I get while writing something of such limited interest will disappear by the time I'm in grad school, so consider yourself forewarned.