The WreckIgnitions Read. Autobiographical "criticism"---mine

[Mark Kohut]

My freshman year of college was spent at the University of Toronto,
St. Michael's College. I was an earnest, eager ...boy....who had grown
up in a very parochial world....Only books had ever taken me anywhere
else....

I learned things there and, maybe, learned how and what I wanted to know/learn. 
One thing I
learned outside of class [drum roll; Pynchon allusion coming up].....
the popular song "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", which had never moved me,
would almost bring me to tears. Yet I was happy??? I was. (I stood up, amazed 
again, when TRP
shouted out this song in Vineland). From then, I knew there were unknown depths 
in the mind no matter all the nay-arguing
philosophers (I was reluctant to even read such as Freud, Jung then. Maybe a 
waste of time in understanding everything, I reasoned) 

There was this ...girl. She was not intimidatingly
beautiful, and even the word 'pretty' might not come to mind..too lame, too 
small...no one
could call her unpretty but.................she carried herself so confidently, 
those eyes
were anchored lanterns.....her face was so strong--with surety.....I cannot now 
remember any 'girl'
(or woman) from where I grew up that acted/looked as she did.........

She was a sophomore. 

There was an English course open to sophomores and higher taught by a 
Canadian-famous poet--priest. Eccentric was the word about him,
of course he was creative, "brilliant" and a unique teacher. (No, cannot 
remember his name) . It was a year-long read and discussion
of The Recognitions.  

When I learned something about her, I was told she was the 'star' of this course 
that year. Years later I came to recognize [sic] that, of course,
I was attracted to her because I wanted to BE that confident-----about 
everything I wasn't, esp. life,which books were about and for, right? 

 SHE would have NO problems in life, I projected. ..

I never talked to her. I did not go back to UT. I would love to know of her 
life.

I am finally taking that course.