Coming soon!

And here I am again, trying to set up a project that is way too big for me.

I like to dream big, do a lot of exhausting pre-production, and then give up because I realise that I don’t have a staff of 300, a million dollar budget, and a building on Melrose Avenue or West 44th Street. Of course, I proved myself wrong when I successfully produced Heaven forfend!, and showed the world that I actually do have some skills (I know, shocker, right?). So, here I am again, with big dreams. Read More »

STOP STARING AT ME!

For nine months now, the Autobiography of Mark Twain has been staring at me from that place on my desk, day in, day out, continuously. The thing is creeping me out, to be honest; especially the Volume 1 part. It’s the longest, and most troubled, relationship I’ve ever had.

Ah, well. I’ll start reading it soon.

Well, here I am, starting sentences with “Well,” and flooding them with commas.

I don’t even know how to continue that paragraph. Honestly, I need a purpose. After two years of business school, one incredibly wasted year of cultural studies, and three years of English literature, I am finally finishing one long chapter of moving from things to things, and starting another chapter of God-knows-what. After I have finished writing my last essay (on the representation of city life in Madame Bovary, L’Éducation sentimentale, and Bouvard et Pécuchet), I will be officially done.

What’s next? (Didn’t I just answer that question already?) I don’t know. Read More »

For some reason, the WordPress RSS feed has always been a huge pain, so I switched back (for the umpteenth time, or so) to FeedBurner. You can find it here.

Siri Hustvedt, in this year’s issue of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art (No. 49), has written an excellent piece on reading and, most importantly, remembering literature. From her observation that “[v]arious texts call for different [reading] strategies” (122), to the fact that we as readers often unconsciously imagine things in literary works that are not even to be found in the text itself (124), Hustvedt is spot-on.

I especially liked her example of a literary text coming to life in the reader’s mind (and, if it’s a good work, staying there):

I have vivid memories of some books that last in my consciousness. Novels often take pictorial form in my recollection; I see Emma Bovary running down a grassy hill on her way to the chemist’s shop, her cheeks flushed, her hair loosened by the wind. The grass, the cheeks, the hair, the wind are not in the text. I provided them. (122)