Jumping the Gun

I thought it would be cute, since my title is rather cliche, to write about the origin of the phrase 'jump/ing the gun.'  In my zeal to put off my homework by engaging in completely useless research I went to work, but my finger slipped and I typed in 'humping' instead of jumping.  I thought about correcting it but figured that Google, in its infinite wisdom would respond with 'do you mean jumping the gun?'  To my surprise, humping the gun was a legit search yielding a game glitch called 'The Humping Gun XD' on YouTube, the lyrics to Machine Gun Fellatio's "(Let Me Be Your) Dirty Fucking Whore," and the Urban Dictionary's results for big fucking gun, to name a few.  Consequently, "Dirty Fucking Whore" is a very cute little song, presented with a vaudevillian style and chock full of lyrics that would make the Marquis de Sade sigh in contentment.

Moving on.  Jumping the gun, as it turns out, relates to sporting events wherein a gun is used to signify the start.  The obvious example is track and field and the starter pistol.  Jumping the gun then is when a participant moves before the gun goes off and has come to mean, of course, a movement or conclusion drawn before its time.  And that brings me to this list.  I have compiled a list for next semester's reading.  This is a list of possibilities and is in no way final, but so far these are the books that I am interested in having a go at.  A few of them are carry overs from this semester.  We are supposed to read approximately twenty books a semester and my first list contained over twenty-five.  There will definitely be carry overs.

Second Semester Possibilities:

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• The Executioner Always Chops Twice by Geoffrey Abbott
• The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges
• Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint
• The Child Theif by Brom
• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer by Sandra Scofield
• The Deep Dark by Greg Olson
• On Directing by Harold Clurman
• Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
• The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
• The Blood Girls by Meira Cook
• A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
• Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul by Ariel Glucklich
• Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Carry Overs:

• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• The Confidence Man by Herman Melville
• The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
• Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Conner

First Semester List:

• The Plague by Albert Camus (read)
• The Trial by Franz Kafka (read)
• The Lord of the Flies by William Golding (read)
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (read)
• I am Legend by Richard Matheson (read)

• Collected Fictions (Anthology) by Jorge Luis Borges (currently reading)
• Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (currently reading)
• Slaughterhouse-Five/Cat's Cradle/Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut (currently reading)
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (currently reading)
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (currently reading)
• Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• All the Names by Jose Saramago
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A.Heinlein
• The Spire by William Golding
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
• The Coal Tattoo by Silas House
• Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
• Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
• The Art of Fiction by John Gardner

1st Packet Due: Thursday, February 7, 2013
2nd Packet Due: Wednesday, March 6, 2013
3rd Packet Due: Wednesday, April 3, 2013
4th Packet Due: Wednesday, May 1, 2013
5th Packet Due: Wednesday, May 29, 2013

The above dates are pretty self explanatory.  I've marked off the third packet because it's due in about three days.  I still have some work to do on it.  The cover letter is almost there and I have a vague outline for my craft analysis completed.  I'm going to try and do one longer one comparing the Matheson and McCormack novels.  I need to add in a secondary source if possible and for that I am looking to literary magazines.  I am reading an interesting article in "The Writer's Chronicle" that draws a very strict line between homo sapiens and homo fictus.  While I disagree with most of what the article says, I think it would be a fabulous secondary source for characterization sometime.  Since I am looking at narrative structure and the presentation of thought and memory (speculatively at this point since I haven't settled on a concrete idea as of yet) that article won't provide much help.  Other than that I have a little more polishing and writing to do on my creative work.  Honestly, this packet has been very hard for me.  I received wonderful feedback after the last packet and yet I just ran out of steam.  This month held a great many social and work responsibilities that other months hadn't.  Next month should be pretty quiet and hopefully I'll be able to really crank out some work on my novel.