I haven’t written in what seems like ages, and I don’t have time right now. I’m presenting at a conference in a few minutes, my first professional work since Peanut was born and I abandoned graduate work to raise him.
My questions for you are as follows:
When did reader response come back as a valid form of literary criticism? Why do film studies dudes get away with that?
When you’re in the movie theater, the sound of shoes suction cupping their way across the floor raises my hackles because it makes me think of the sticky, nasty, sugary spill through which they are walking. So why, at the end of naptime as I’m drawing my paper to a lovely conclusion, is that same sound, this time of little feet in grippy-soled socks walking across the hardwood floors to my room, the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard?
NaptimeWriting 
Oooh, I know this one! It’s because you love the latter pair of tiny feet. :)
And as far as reader response, I wonder if Louise Rosenblatt is responsible for the resurge? ;)
Because you know who is making that noise and that it isn’t on concrete painted with soda. (if it is, um, um, do you need some help cleaning it because I’m not judging.)
faemom, you make me laugh. Thanks for not judging. And at our house the spills tend to be ceiling and walls, because cleaning up the frequent little-boy assertions of bladder-based nonverbal reactions to our “rules” about where pee is and is not allowed means I’m mopping almost daily now. So if you want to come clean soda off the walls…(what can I say, he doesn’t get any, but it shoots out my nose at least a couple of times a day when I witness the insanity that is cat-on-cat-on-preschooler wrestlemania).
Cat-on-cat-on-preschooler wrestlemania? Let me grab a few of my favorite cleaning sprays and I’ll be right over.