The brief wondrous life of MF Doom

The fact that an Ivy-League honors thesis has anything to do with the above video is a testament to any number of things. The first may be that I'm a fool. The second, that I have little respect for the traditional (read: White, male and deceased) American canon and have a desire to put cats like Doom in conversation with Herman Melville (both have fascinating takes on the boundaries of male identity, particularly when it comes to disfigurement. Think here of Captain Ahab's peg leg as metaphor smashed against any Doom record where he talks about about his own non-normative body, about the need for the mask). The next few posts may deal indirectly with my thought process as grad school apps and a draft of my honors thesis approach.

I'm thinking Paul Beatty, Doom and Junot Diaz. What do they have in common? Ask me in about 2 months. I'll have a rather fly answer by then. Promise.