I had the sheer luck to have been asked about two formative events in Philip Pirrip's life, so despite having read only the first nine or so chapters of Great Expectations I was able to write an essay which contributed to me getting an A on the English Lit O' Level. But the panic I had going into that exam knowing how crappily I was prepared has been the fodder of just about every academic anxiety dream I've had since then.

Bullshitting is an important life skill.

There's a reason I write fiction.

I wrote a decent paper on it, too, that was about 99% pure bullshitting.

HA! I'm sort of queen of using literary criticism as my line of first defense. It reminds me of that line in either Metropolitan or Barcelona "I prefer literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking." or something like that.

So my DQ paper was on it's portrayals of women relative to actual historical women of that time period. In other words, scholarly bullshit.

My mantra in college was "You need to be able to do two things as an English major--bullshit effectively and plagarize just enough of someone else's idea to come up with the idea for your paper but not enough to be unethical."

My modern lit class's final was to memorize 30 lines of Yeats, punctuation and all, and then to spend the rest of the two hours writing a paper, preapproved by the prof and using handwritten quotes I brought with me, but no other notes. The paper had to connect any of our books from the semester to Ulysses, which I hated and skipped through, so I decided to just concentrate on the final chapter, Molly's monologue, and compare her to Leonora in The Good Soldier. It actually came out pretty good, and I didn't have to reread the whole damn book.

I'm trying to remember the name of a book/author. And also the cover artist. The books were sci fi, one of those where the advanced race took a contemporary Earthling, for some reason. The advanced race were living out a sci fi version of the Arthurian legend, battles and all.

The covers featured fiery redheads, something about a feather maybe, and LOTS of translucent pleats. It's sort of the artist's trademark. He's done a lot of other stuff, none of which I can remember right now.

Wassname Kenneally. The woman who called herself Jim Morrison's wife, even though they never married legally.

t hits Wikipedia

Aha, The Keltiad, by Patricia Kenneally-Morrison.

I read a few of them, and then got very very bored and annoyed, and stopped.

Cover art was by Tom Canty.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, I ended up getting irritated too, both by the author and the series.

And Thomas Canty. I was obsessed with his art when I was a teenager, and then blanked on him entirely.

I'm still very fond of Thomas Canty, to the point where I'd probably buy a print or two if I could find them. I don't think I ever read any of The Keltiad, though. They probably came out when I was going through my "why does all fantasy have to be Celt-based, damnit!?!?" phase. Which I've since gotten over, but still.

My problem with Thomas Canty is that his work ends up looking so very the same. But unless you own most of his work, not really a problem for your personal collection.

He has a really great handle on pleats and light through fabric. I did stumble on this Tori Amos calendar site while looking for examples of his work, and his is one of the most disappointing since it doesn't look like her at all. I wonder if he doesn't do likenesses. On the other hand--I don't even like Tori much, but there's some brilliant stuff there. The Sienkiewicz is gorgeous. Can you imagine him having done a portrait of you?

I think I was all caught up in both Celtic mythology and The Doors at the time I stumbled onto the Keltiad. The pretentiousness didn't occur to me until later.

Hey, Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!!

Literary portraits by comic book artists.