Anne-Julie Aubry

I totally love Anne-Julie Aubry! I'm so sad I never knew about Anne-Julie Aubry until today! She is an illustrator and I totally love these prints. If I had any remaining wall space, I would buy these prints and put them up in my bedroom. Here are some of the ones I like the best:

Blackbird

Snow White

Portrait at the White Rat - she says she dreams to own this sort of friend, a little rat.

The Red Room

This one may be my most favorite. It has a pirate ship! Hunters Princess

I actually like a bunch of them, but I'll quit linking to them. Thoughts? Aren't they nice? I set one of them as my desktop background. Not one of those. A different one that works well with my desktop icons. I really like it! Hooray!

The part of my brain that peddles the Crazy

I had a $100 gift card to Amazon recently, and I used it all up buying books. It was an agonizing decision. There are a lot of books I don’t own or have readily available to me now that I’ve moved out of my parents’ house for good, and it was very, very hard to choose which books I wanted. And I think that the decision-making process was one of those things that really throws into sharp relief the perils of giving in to the Crazy.

Graphic novels: I thought of getting Death: The High Cost of Living but did not on account of Anna having left her copy at home when she moved away (plus I am holding out for The Compleat Death which I just discovered existed); and I wanted to get Blankets by Craig Thompson but could not remember if it was as good as all that and furthermore it was $20, far too large a chunk of my $100 for a book I couldn’t even remember that well. I do remember it being quite, quite good though. And I wanted to get it because I am trying to read more books by men so that I won't be a sexist reader. Because this one time I fussed at my friend Chris for only reading books by men, and then I remembered that virtually all my favorite books (Fire and Hemlock, The Color Purple, I Capture the Castle, The Time Traveler's Wife, To Kill a Mockingbird, Greensleeves, Jane Eyre) are by women. And this would be a guy author and a graphic novel and a grown-up book, so it would fulfill three affirmative action type quotas. But it was $20. None of the other books I got cost that much. I'd have had to sacrifice two big or three little books in order to get Blankets.

Bookshelf limitations: My bookshelf is quite large, but it has quite small shelves, tall enough for mass market paperbacks but not trade paperbacks. I have to stack trade paperbacks and hardbacks sideways on my bookshelf. This was a problem during the book-ordering process. I wanted to get Fire from Heaven but could not because my copies of The Charioteer and The Persian Boy are both mass market paperback, and Fire from Heaven was only available in trade paperback, and then they wouldn’t have matched so I would have had to shelve them separately.

Strategy: I didn’t get any still-in-print kids’ books (apart from Hilary McKay, who is unreliably available in America), any recent bestsellers, or any classics, because I think those are more likely to be discoverable at garage sales and library and university book sales. Hence I did not purchase The View from Saturday or Jennifer, Hecate, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth; I did not purchase Special Topics in Calamity Physics; and I did not – although I greatly wanted to – purchase Aurora Leigh or anything by G.K. Chesterton.

St. Ignatius and his theories about consolation and desolation: I almost didn’t get the three Martin Millar books. I thought, Oh, Jenny, hold off on those, you haven’t read them enough to be sure that you will always like them, and you haven’t read Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me at all. But when I thought of not getting the three Martin Millar books, I was filled with a soul-deep sadness, and I ended up getting them after all, because it was clear to me from this sadness that God wanted me to get them.

That’s right. My life is all about strategy. And yes, okay, I will acknowledge that my life is a little bit about serious control issues, and sometimes I should just chill out and get the books I want when I want them – but I HAVE A SYSTEM.

Here was the final tally:

Saffy's Angel
Indigo's Star
Permanent Rose (all by Hilary McKay; because I haven't got them)
Keturah and Lord Death
The Dollmage
Tom Finder (all by Martine Leavitt, my new this-year discovery)
The Blue Castle, L.M. Montgomery (because my old copy got all coffee-y)
Sunshine, Robin McKinley (I haven't got this either, and almost didn't get it because the other Robin McKinley book I own, Beauty, is in the not-grownups book section of my books, and buying Sunshine will necessitate a transfer of both to the grown-up section. But then I remembered that I also want to buy Deerskin so I would have had to have Robin McKinley books in the grown-up section of my bookshelf anyway. So I went ahead and got it.)
Getting the Girl, Markus Zusak (it is a sequel but the first one isn't in print here)
The Good Fairies of New York
Lonely Werewolf Girl
Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me (all by Martin Millar, my other new this-year discovery - or maybe last year? I can't remember when I read The Good Fairies of New York)

I also got two other books I can't mention here because I am getting copies of them for Anna for Christmas. Don't tell. I am most of all excited about the books by authors whose first names begin with M, three of which are new books to me. I am so excited about Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me that I lost patience waiting and went to Amazon and read the excerpt they offered me, and it was charming and made me feel even more impatient. I wanted to run searches on Amazon Reader for random words that would allow me to read large chunks of the book, but I forbear because I want to delay gratification. Here's the bit I read:

We go into a comic shop on Oxford Street and look at some comics and then Manx finds a large display of dolls from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There are figures of Buffy, Willow, Xander, Angel, Spike, and some others. We are entranced...

"I'd like to buy all these Buffy dolls and play with them. I'll have time on my hands soon, I've almost finished the Led Zeppelin book. I'm at the 'nice and big' stage."

"What's the 'nice and big' stage?"

"I go through the text making sure I haven't used any long words. If I find any fancy adjectives have crept in I replace them with small words like 'nice' and 'big'. I've liked these words ever since I was told not to use them in English class at school. And I make sure that the sentences are short so as people won't get confused and I shorten all the chapters so they won't get bored. I can't read anything complicated these days, my attention span is too short. Everyone else probably feels the same."

I love Martin Millar. I really do. I am only sad that Neil Gaiman didn't tell me about Martin Millar long ago. And I am glad that I had desolation in response to the notion of not getting his books, so that now instead of having no books by Martin Millar, which was not representative of my ever-growing fondness for his books, I will have three.

Edit to add: Shit. I've only just remembered that Good Fairies is mass market (because if I got it in mass market paperback I got Saffy's Angel for free), and the other two trade, paperback. And now it's too late to change. However, I have rationalized this into being okay because I have put some of my Neil Gaiman books (the hardbacks and graphic novels) on the top shelf of my bookshelf, and I have put the paperbacks on another shelf. And I will just do the same with Martin Millar, and Good Fairies can be sensibly shelved with Neil Gaiman as it has an introduction by him. Hurrah. Serious shelving crisis averted.

Lally la, I am not cross at Martin Millar anymore

Because how can I be? He wrote Lonely Werewolf Girl out of sadness that Buffy was off the air. I so feel that. When I finish things that I love (Empire Records, good TV shows, Jane Eyre), I very frequently go off and write things myself – witness the way I am incredibly close to finishing a draft of my gardens story. So even though Martin Millar likes Amy the Rat, and I very greatly do not like Amy the Rat, I am not cross at him one bit for having an unusual spelling of his last name and making it difficult for me to acquire his books at the library.

And furthermore! One of his books! Is going back into print! So that I can purchase and read it! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! I enjoy to read new books!

Seriously, this is the year for good authors to write new books. It is all Salman Rushdie and Lynn Flewelling and Neil Gaiman and Martin Millar and Diana Wynne Jones and Elizabeth Peters and Robin McKinley this year. 2008, an excellent year for me and books. Not to mention that I have my very own bookshelf now, a massive tremendous bookshelf that reaches almost to the ceiling and contains virtually all my books except the really big ones like the dictionary and the Bartlett’s and the Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and so forth. The fact that it only takes one (albeit one very large) bookshelf to house all of my books makes me feel sad and empty. At home, we have something like sixteen bookshelves, bookshelves in every room except the bathrooms, and those bookshelves do not even come close to holding all our books. We stack them double. Whenever I look at my apartment bookshelf, I am simultaneously thrilled at the sight of all my books in one place, and dismayed that there are so few, and filled with a lust to purchase more, and more, and ever more!

And I really mustn’t. Even though I have that Amazon gift card. It is not sensible to purchase dozens of books from Amazon. Much more sensible to use that gift card to purchase textbooks. Sensible textbooks. Be sensible, Jenny. I don’t need Holes. I don’t need Lolita and The Doll-Mage and Keturah and Lord Death and Special Topics in Calamity Physics and The Yellow Wallpaper and my own copy of the Browning love letters and all the Casson books and a hardback copy of Fire and Hemlock and more copies of Greensleeves—

Yes. I don’t need any of these things. Not a bit.

I do, however, need Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me, partly because its title reminds me of a book by E.L. Konigsburg (oo, if I ever allow myself to carry out the book-buying orgy I yearn for, I will certainly have to acquire some things from the Konigsburg oeuvre – a nicer copy of the aforementioned (afore-referenced) Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The View from Saturday), and partly because I like Martin Millar’s delightful books yet own none of them. I am living in deprivation until this state of affairs can be rectified.

I know I know but I have to seriously I really have to!

Look what Elizabeth told him:

Almost you forced me to smile by thinking it worth while to say that you are 'not selfish.' Did Sir Percival say so to Sir Gawaine across the Round Table, in those times of chivalry to which you belong by the soul? Certainly you are not selfish! May God bless you.

They are SO DAMN CUTE.

Two things that pleased me today

Well, Robert Browning again. I can’t help it. He’s so sweet. I’m excerpting bits of his letter where he first proposes to Elizabeth Barrett (at least, the first surviving proposal letter – I theorize that he may have proposed in the Very Shocking Letter that she got so upset about). He says:

I have read your letter again and again. I will tell you—no, not you, but any imaginary other person, who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I never dreamed of winning your love. I can hardly write this word, so incongruous and impossible does it seem—

…In so many words, is it on my account that you bid me 'leave this subject' [of marriage]? I think if it were so, I would for once call my advantages round me. I am not what your generous self-forgetting appreciation would sometimes make me out—but it is not since yesterday, nor ten nor twenty years before, that I began to look into my own life, and study its end, and requirements, what would turn to its good or its loss—and I know, if one may know anything, that to make that life yours and increase it by union with yours, would render me supremely happy, as I said, and say, and feel. My whole suit to you is, in that sense, selfish—not that I am ignorant that your nature would most surely attain happiness in being conscious that it made another happy—but that best, best end of all, would, like the rest, come from yourself, be a reflection of your own gift.

Dearest, I will end here—words, persuasion, arguments, if they were at my service I would not use them—I believe in you, altogether have faith in you—in you.

… My whole scheme of life (with its wants, material wants at least, closely cut down) was long ago calculated—and it supposed you, the finding such an one as you, utterly impossible—because in calculating one goes upon chances, not on providence—how could I expect you?

How Elizabeth Barrett could resist this I have no idea. However, she writes back that she can’t marry him because she’s sickly and unworthy and couldn’t dream of burdening him, and furthermore her father wouldn’t hear of it (tyrant). She says, “The subject will not bear consideration—it breaks in our hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to you but a holy thought ... while He lets me, as much as I can be anyone's, be only yours.”

It gets Robert Browning all glum. He tells her this:

Well, I understand you to pronounce that at present you believe this gift impossible—and I acquiesce entirely—I submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am capable. Those obstacles are solely for you to see and to declare ... had I seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or myself by affecting to pass them over ... what were obstacles, I mean: but you do see them, I must think,—and perhaps they strike me the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they are,—not that I shall endeavour. After what you also apprise me of, I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what you now consider them, you who see now for me, whom I implicitly trust in to see for me; you will then, too, see and remember me, and how I trust, and shall then be still trusting.

Er. I actually was just going to summarize this whole exchange. But I couldn’t resist quoting. He’s such a dear. And did I mention he was born on my birthday? When I was a young lass I thought that my best advertisement for 7 May as a birthday was Brahms and Tchaikovsky, but I realize now, of course, that Robert Browning is the real coup. Though I am very envious of my mother’s star-studded birthday – Tennessee Williams, Diana Ross, Nancy Pelosi, Bob Woodward, Erica Jong, Alan Arkin, Robert Frost, A.E. Housman – I would not switch with her because I have so much love for Robert Browning.)

They are totally my favorite literary couple. I like them even better than I like Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. I’m getting all suspensey for when Elizabeth agrees to marry him. Also, I’m starting to feel a little guilty for reading their letters. Sort of. But not enough to quit reading them. I may even buy a great big book of their letters. Apparently the big book o’ letters from 1845-1846 (the only letters they ever exchanged, said their son, because after their marriage they were never separated) just got put back into print – though I’d prefer, of course, to get the old hardback ones.

Number two pleasing thing is: I learned a new word!

I know this is geeky, but I love, love, love learning words for things for ideas I already have in my brain but I didn’t know there was a word for them. I always want to call up Helen Keller on the phone and be all, I totally know how you felt about the water, dude. (Sorry, Jenny, she’s dead.) Sometimes I have dreams about learning words of this kind, and they are not dissimilar to those dreams where I go to the library or the bookstore and discover that my favorite author has actually written an entire shelf of books I never read before (actually sort of true of Martin Millar who is not my favorite author but I am very fond of his books) and I get them ALL INSTANTLY because I have a library card or a whole bunch of money.

But I digress. I’m going to put my word in its own paragraph, because it deserves it.

Apophenia. Apophenia.

It means perceiving connections between random-ass things that happen even if actually there’s no pattern to the events. There’s a word for that! I have such a crush on this word. If I had had classes today instead of work, I’d’ve spent the whole time doodling on my notes, Apophenia + Jenny = <3 and Mrs. Jennifer Apophenia.

It’s most fortunate I had this word today. My brain keeps playing me snippets of songs from the musical episode of Buffy, which we watched last night, and from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. It’s helpful to have a shiny new word for distracting my brain with. It’s all, I hope she fries, I’m free if that bitch dies, and I’m all, Hey, brain, APOPHENIA and it’s all, Oo, pretty! for a few minutes before getting back to the important business of trying to remember what exactly Mal says about blowing in the breeze (teehee).

P.S. While writing this blog post, I got addicted to the Brownings’ letters and read farther down, and I swear to God, I wouldn’t keep posting these excerpts if it weren’t for how Robert Browning keeps on saying things that are so nice it does my head in. Behold a bit of his response to her story about how her mean, mean father won’t let her to go Italy for her health:

Now again the circumstances shift—and you are in what I should wonder at as the veriest slavery—and I who could free you from it, I am here scarcely daring to write ... though I know you must feel for me and forgive what forces itself from me ... what retires so mutely into my heart at your least word ... what shall not be again written or spoken, if you so will ... that I should be made happy beyond all hope of expression by. Now while I dream, let me once dream! I would marry you now and thus—I would come when you let me, and go when you bade me—I would be no more than one of your brothers—'no more'—that is, instead of getting to-morrow for Saturday, I should get Saturday as well—two hours for one—when your head ached I should be here. I deliberately choose the realization of that dream (—of sitting simply by you for an hour every day) rather than any other, excluding you, I am able to form for this world, or any world I know—And it will continue but a dream.

Bless him. She said this back to him, and I swear that after this I’m shutting up about the Brownings, but I have to quote this because it’s very touching:

But it will be the same thing—for you know as well as if you saw my answer, what it must be, what it cannot choose but be, on pain of sinking me so infinitely below not merely your level but my own, that the depth cannot bear a glance down. Yet, though I am not made of such clay as to admit of my taking a base advantage of certain noble extravagances, (and that I am not I thank God for your sake) I will say, I must say, that your words in this letter have done me good and made me happy, ... that I thank and bless you for them, ... and that to receive such a proof of attachment from you, not only overpowers every present evil, but seems to me a full and abundant amends for the merely personal sufferings of my whole life. When I had read that letter last night I did think so. I looked round and round for the small bitternesses which for several days had been bitter to me, and I could not find one of them. The tear-marks went away in the moisture of new, happy tears. Why, how else could I have felt? how else do you think I could? How would any woman have felt ... who could feel at all ... hearing such words said (though 'in a dream' indeed) by such a speaker?

And now listen to me in turn. You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me—my heart was full when you came here to-day. Henceforward I am yours for everything but to do you harm—and I am yours too much, in my heart, ever to consent to do you harm in that way. If I could consent to do it, not only should I be less loyal ... but in one sense, less yours. I say this to you without drawback and reserve, because it is all I am able to say, and perhaps all I shall be able to say. However this may be, a promise goes to you in it that none, except God and your will, shall interpose between you and me, ... I mean, that if He should free me within a moderate time from the trailing chain of this weakness, I will then be to you whatever at that hour you shall choose ... whether friend or more than friend ... a friend to the last in any case. So it rests with God and with you—only in the meanwhile you are most absolutely free ... 'unentangled' (as they call it) by the breadth of a thread—and if I did not know that you considered yourself so, I would not see you any more, let the effort cost me what it might. You may force me feel: ... but you cannot force me to think contrary to my first thought ... that it were better for you to forget me at once in one relation. And if better for you, can it be bad for me? which flings me down on the stone-pavement of the logicians.

In all seriousness, I really admire Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She totally shook free of her father's awful tyranny and nastiness even though she had been dealing with it her whole life and even though she was an invalid, and she went off and she had her own life. And you know what else? When she got pregnant, she got off morphine. She did! Straight off! They were like, Dude, I know you take morphine all the time for your sickness, but you can't be doing that while you're pregnant, so she just stopped. She was much more hardcore than lame old Mrs. Dubose, and she was also nicer and a good writer. So there. And I also think it's sweet how they think each other are so important that they're constantly italicizing you when they write to each other.

Okay. I'm stopping. Someone should chain my fingers together so I can't type any more of these blog posts.

Like I haven't said enough about the Brownings

If this goes on I’m going to have to make them their own category. The lovely wonderful Brownings. Lovely strong brave brilliant Elizabeth Barrett and lovely sweet dear nice Robert. Every time I think that I have maxed out my capacity for being fond of them, I learn something new that makes me love them still more.

Okay, so today I was reading about them and apparently Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she was all impatient, and she was forever reading the ends of books! Before she got to them! Like me! I was pleased, because people are always condemning my end-reading ways and telling me that I’m diminishing my enjoyment of my books (which I am definitely not).

And then I was thinking about the Brownings and how they had a beautiful love, so I went and found a book of their letters to each other on Project Gutenberg, and this is what Robert Browning wrote to her one time, early on in their acquaintance, at the beginning of one of his letters:

Will you grant me a great favour? Always when you write, though about your own works, not Greek plays merely, put me in, always, a little official bulletin-line that shall say 'I am better' or 'still better,' will you?

And then at the end of the letter he reminds her again:

Now, will you remember what I began my letter by saying—how you have promised to let me know if my wishing takes effect, and if you still continue better? And not even ... (since we are learned in magnanimity) don't even tell me that or anything else, if it teases you,—but wait your own good time, and know me for ... if these words were but my own, and fresh-minted for this moment's use!...


Yours ever faithfully,

R. Browning.

I know I’ve said this before, but Robert Browning was such a dear. He was such a sweet dear. And aw, one time he sent her a letter that totally horrified her, and then they were both really embarrassed for like the next seven letters they wrote to each other. They kept taking it in turns to apologize for the last thing they said and insist that they were never going to mention the shocking letter again. And then they spent a lot of time having the “I admire you more”, “No, I admire you more” argument. Bless their hearts.

You know why I like Benedick?

I will tell you. It’s not because his name is Benedick – why is his name Benedick? – and it’s not because he’s BFF with dopey Claudio. It’s not even because he’s friends with Don Pedro, and I like Don Pedro, partly because Denzel Washington is so handsome and upright and nice in the role. It’s because he totally listens to Beatrice and trusts that her instincts are right.

I mean, the situation’s not really conducive. Everyone in town’s just been witness to the knock-down-drag-out-looks-not-like-a-nuptial fight that Claudio decided to pick AT THE ALTAR (he’s such a dope, no wonder I hated Robert Sean Leonard for so long), Beatrice is all upset and screamy, Leonato may actually have lost his mind, Hero’s off to go play dead, and Benedick has, rather graciously I think, stuck around through all this screamy fighting when any normal person who was not actually a blood relation would have slunk off long ago and gone home to gossip about that wacky governor’s family. And like, Beatrice is pretty great when he’s all dude I totally love you and she’s like So do something about it (I actually really like it when she says, Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it). But she’s asking him to challenge Claudio to a duel. A duel to defend the honor of a girl that not one but both of his BFFs swear they saw having sex with another guy. And yes, okay, Benedick has mentioned that their wisdoms could have been misled by John the Bastard, but a lot of people don’t seem convinced by that argument.

Anyway, the point is, he says, “Okay, look. Think you in your soul that Claudio hath wronged Hero?” and she says, “Seriously, yes,” and then he’s like, “Okay. I’m on it.” And hey. Wow. That’s some serious trust for her judgment he’s got there.

On the other hand, if she’d been wrong, he’d have killed his best friend just cause his new girlfriend said to. So there’s that to consider.

Last night we finished Angel

I really don’t know what to do now. Robyn and I watched the last episode – we kept pausing to remind each other how momentous this all was, the last episode of Angel ever, so it took longer than usual – and when we were done we just felt so empty. So very, very empty. We sat there looking at the blank TV screen, and we just didn’t know where our lives could possibly go from this point. We thought about it and realized that we’ve been watching Angel since February, which I know isn’t an incredibly long time in the grand scheme of things, but in terms of devotion to a single item of media, that’s a solid three and a half months right there. I’d say a good three months in which Robyn and I were constantly scheming ways that we could avoid doing other stuff and instead get together and watch Angel. And it’s not like The Office, because that took less time to watch through, and furthermore when we had watched all the episodes that there were, we still knew there would be more episodes forthcoming.

Whereas now we are just sad, and it’s all over, and no more Angel. Ever.

Over the past three months, if Robyn and I have been in the same place at the same time, and if we have had access to a TV and a DVD player, it has been pretty much a foregone conclusion that we have been watching Angel. Things have changed as time has gone on – we missed Doyle, we loved Wesley, we knew we could never get behind an Angel-Cordelia relationship because he loves Buffy best, we felt uncomfortable with Gunn, we reserved judgment on Fred, we loved Gunn, we loved Fred, we strongly supported the Angel-Cordelia relationship even though he loves Buffy best, we hated Wesley – but you know, in a general overall sense, it’s been pretty much the same. There’s been a lot of this exchange: “I should go”; “Yeah, I guess so”; “Maybe I could stay for one more episode”; “Yeah, you probably better should, just because it doesn’t make any sense to stop with one more episode left to go on this disc”; “What can we do? Our hands are tied”. A lot of speculation about Pylea and the Groosalugg and why, why, why. A lot of evil hand jokes. And now it’s all over. All, all, all over. (I mean, not the evil hand jokes, of course. That will never be over.)

When the episode ended, we lay on the bed complaining about the end of an era, and then I was all “Well, I guess we could watch a movie” and then we were both like “Oh yeah. Movies. Huh.”

If it weren’t for the fact that I just started reading The Ground Beneath Her Feet again, I would be lying in a corner weeping right now. But I can’t possibly do that when The Ground Beneath Her Feet is around. Seriously? I love that book. Wow. Salman Rushdie. So many good things I am reremembering – the tragedy story that has much to do with goats, and the mens sana in bally corpora sano, and “Disorientation: loss of the East. And of Ormus Cama, her sun”, I really liked that line. Oh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet. I loved it so much that after I read it, I never read another Salman Rushdie book. I know there are still The Satanic Verses and Shalimar the Clown and The Moor’s Last Sigh (that’s the order, from least to most, of the extent of my desire to read them), but I just haven’t read them. I’m just afraid to. The Moor’s Last Sigh I am saving as a special treat for myself, but the other two, I know I won’t love them as much as I do The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and I’ll be so sad if it turns out I don’t love them at all.

Aside: Salman Rushdie, why did you get U2 to write “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” song? Why U2? Why not someone cooler, like the Decemberists or the Shins? Seriously, why not the Decemberists, Salman Rushdie? The Decemberists are much more like your books than U2. Shit, the Decemberists pretty much are you, in musical, American form.

(Hm. The Decemberists and Salman Rushdie. Really frighteningly similar. tim, am I right about this? I think that I am. Interesting.)

Oh my God! I just looked up – oh my God, I’m totally going to hyperventilate – Salman Rushdie has a new book out, like in the past, oh my God, really recently he released it, and there it is, a new book by Salman Rushdie, oh my God, and I didn’t know, and now I can read it, and there it is, a brand new book by Salman Rushdie and and and Italy and India Enchantress there’s book is Florence new love and May

(I had to slap myself in the face just then to keep from being hysterical.)

(Ouch.)

I don’t know how I missed this. Did Bongs & Noodles, a store I visit with relative frequency, just not bother putting Salman Rushdie’s new book out on display when it came out? Bongs & Noodles, what’s up? It’s Salman Rushdie. He had a fatwa! Put his damn book on display!

Seriously, though, 2008 is a happy year for me and books. When I was talking about favorite living authors I forgot all about my good buddy Salman Rushdie. So that makes one, two, three, four, five very exciting new books coming out this year, and I can only conclude that all of these lovely people are releasing their books this year as a graduation gift to me. Yes, I deserve it. I worked very hard and got good grades. I now graciously accept your tributes. Thank you, Mr. Rushdie. Ms. Flewelling, Ms. Peters. Mr. Gaiman. Ms. Jones. Thank you one and all for your kindness and generosity.

…I just reread this post. I sound not quite sane in this blog post; plus it ended up in a totally different place to where it started. Try to bear in mind that you’re witnessing a recovery process. Recovering. Gradually. From the end of an Angel era.

I really love Shakespeare

Like, hey. William Shakespeare. What a cool guy. I like him for very many reasons, like because he writes good. And because I read this book that said he was probably Catholic. Catholic! Woohoo! And I am Catholic! UP WITH PAPISTRY!!! And because, okay, he was this random-ass Stratford kid who came to London to make his fortune and he wound up being the greatest writer ever. And because he was total actor scum and he was all writing plays just to pull in the groundlings; and because SUCK IT ROBERT GREENE.

And because this is from a play of his that is supposed to be a crap one (Troilus and Cressida):

Margarelon: Turn, slave, and fight!
Thersites: What art thou?
Margarelon: A bastard son of Priam's.
Thersites: I am a bastard too; I love bastards; I am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in every thing illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel's most ominous to us: if the son of a whore fights for a whore, he tempts judgment: farewell, bastard.

And also this is too:

Thersites: Agamemnon is a fool to command Achilles; Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool; and Patroclus is a fool positive.
Patroclus: Why am I a fool?
Thersites: Make that demand to the Creator. It suffices me thou art.

And because, hello? Mercutio? How much does Mercutio rock? I know everyone loves it when he tells Tybalt "Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives", but I seriously love it when he tells Tybalt that.

Sidebar: Tybalt's such a ridiculous person. Do you get the feeling that Tybalt was the loser Capulet cousin when he was younger? Like at Capulet family reunions Tybalt was the one who got teased for sucking his thumb and wasn't allowed to play on the swing set with all the other little Capulets even though he really wanted to because they thought it was funny when his face turned all red and he started pulling up grass and throwing it all around and trying to hit everyone with sticks? And then when he grew up he started to be all like NOBODY MESSES WITH THE TYBALT but everyone still kinda made fun of him behind his back? I know Juliet's officially upset when Romeo kills him and she's all "who else is living if those two are gone?" but she gets over it pretty fast once she figures out Romeo's alive; and I'm thinking her initial reaction is a little overdone on account of she secretly feels guilty for that time at the last Capulet crawfish boil when Tybalt caught her laughing helplessly at Sampson's Little Tybalt in a Tantrum impression.

And don't get me started on Malvolio, or Sir Andrew Aguecheek. I can't even remotely read or watch Twelfth Night with a straight face.

Oh my God, and that scene in The Tempest where Miranda sees all the people for the first time? I love that scene. Actually I love The Tempest generally. One time I saw a glorious production of it at the Globe, and Ferdinand shook my hand because I was a groundling and it was for sure the best play I have ever seen ever.

Well, whatever. I won't go on. I love me some William Shakespeare. I sometimes have anxiety about what I will say when I run into him accidentally-on-purpose in heaven. Because, you know, I don't want to be like DUDE I AM YOUR BIGGEST FAN because a, I don't think that's true, and b, I bet he gets that all the time, and c, I want to say something much cooler than that. I'm just afraid that in the moment I'll forget the cool thing that I have prepared to say (I'm sure I'll think of something before I die, but if not I'll just avoid Shakespeare until I've got something good), and end up looking like a dumbass. In front of William Shakespeare! Nobody wants that.

However, if there is any justice, my pal Will will know about all the times I got really upset when other people made fun of him. Like today we were discussing Herman Melville's thing about Hawthorne's short stories, and Melville gets persnickety about how everyone admires Shakespeare so much, when there are other writers that are just as good if everyone would just admit it. I know this isn't making fun of Shakespeare in any way, but it still kind of pissed me off. I was feeling belligerent, and if Melville had been right there, I would have probably made a rude noise at him and flicked him in the face.

All through class I kept thinking angry thoughts about the mean things I would say to Melville if I ever got the chance, and then I started thinking about other people who have had some nasty things to say about Shakespeare, like Robert Greene and Samuel Johnson. And you know, that's all fine because I can write them off. Robert Greene, does it make you sad that the only reason anyone knows who you are anymore is that they think it's hilarious that you got all snarky about The Greatest Playwright of All Time. This is like that time that Alfred Douglas renounced homosexuality forever and converted to (I'm sorry to admit) Catholicism, and then got remembered only because of having lots of gay sex in his youth. Teehee.

And as for Samuel Johnson, you know, WHATEVER, Samuel Johnson, your dictionary was NOT THAT GOOD.

But here's something sad. Neil Gaiman – you know Neil Gaiman that I love? – had several bits about William Shakespeare in his Sandman that made me feel really, really sad. In Sandman, William Shakespeare is just a nothing writer until he makes a deal with Dream, and Dream gives him the power to write super duper good, in exchange for which he has to write two plays just for Dream (A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest). I feel torn about this. On one hand, I love the scene where Dream goes to get The Tempest from Shakespeare. It's a poignant coda, and I love Dream to shreds. But mainly I am just upset that Neil Gaiman's effectively talking trash about Shakespeare.

I know! It's fiction! Obviously Shakespeare did not really make a deal with Dream! Nevertheless I find it upsetting how Neil Gaiman that I love is making unpleasant insinuations about William Shakespeare that I also love. If I meet Neil Gaiman I won't mention it, but whenever I read these bits of Sandman I feel like Neil Gaiman is a big bully using his Writerly Awesomeness to make people think unpleasant things about Shakespeare. Inside my head I'm definitely being Tybalty and going, "Quit it, Neil! Cut it OUT! I didn't do anything to you! You're being REALLY IMMATURE! LEAVE ME ALONE!" while Neil Gaiman continues, relentlessly, to have written unpleasant things about my boy Shakespeare.

Ever so inspirational

Oh, I get all chills watching this. Watch this, everyone; it's the fall of evil in America. It's like -- it's like, you know when Harry's at the ministry in the fifth book, and everything's so awful and miserable and hopeless, and then Dumbledore shows up at the Ministry to have his big duel with Voldemort? And you know how Voldemort's all screamy and snarly and Dumbledore's being all classy and gentlemanly and making Voldemort look like an even bigger jerk? It's like that. Or, I don't know, it's like when River takes on the reavers. But not really. Really more like Dumbledore. Or V in the film in that excellent scene at the end. My point is, one of those completely satisfying good-triumphs-over-evil moments that you rarely get to see in books or movies, let alone life. But here is one.

At long last, sir, have you left no sense of decency?

Mm. Lovely.

Also, as long as I'm linking to things, here is the BBC radio adaptation of Anansi Boys, with Spider and Fat Charlie voiced most beautifully by Lenny Henry and a very irritating Graham Coates by someone with a very irritating upper-class voice. It's only an hour long, so a lot of things have been condensed, but still I enjoyed it much. Radio is a good medium for Neil Gaiman, I always feel. We should bring back radio plays cause they are so grand.

It begins with a song.

Wish me luck on the GRE tomorrow!

Thus spake the dermatologist

Today my dermatologist, who is totally my favorite doctor of all because she is nice and helpful and also explained one time after I had my head operated on that I was not being an insane aggravating pansy person but simply having a postoperative vasovagal reaction, which completely helped calm me down because I am the kind of person who really needs to have names for things, today she said that we didn't need to get rid of James Marsden and if we just carried on watching him passively, he would dispose of his own self. Nobly. As he always does. And also (yay!) the epsom salts are unnecessary. My day is brighter than I was expecting it to be at this point.

This is like that time I remembered Prussia.

Prussia!

Kind of like that, I just got the word "litotes" on freerice, and I can't bring myself to move on.

(I just read that old blog post and God fucking damn it, Lupin did die. I hate myself. I killed him. I'm a murderess. I was so happy when he came over and was all insane with happiness because the baby had been born and then, GOD DAMN EVERYONE, he died.)

Anyway, back to litotes. I was just thinking about litotes today because I was writing a paper for Queer Theory and I wrote "not infrequent", and then I paused and thought about litotes, my absolute favorite figure of speech that I learned from Latin class. Seriously, where do other people learn about litotes and shit? I don't think I ever learned about litotes in any other class. Well, I love litotes. Cicero used them to grand effect. Biting sarcasm. Cicero was very cool because that speech was largely extemporized because he didn't know Cataline was going to be there that day, and man, Cicero took him to pieces. Using litotes and a variety of either charming figures of speech including asyndeton and synechdoche and the ever-popular praeteritio.

Good old litotes. It's so nice to have litotes on freerice that I can't bring myself to answer it and carry on. It'll be so irrevocable.

Litotes! Litotes! Litotes! Today can be the Official Litotes Celebration Day! 7 November! This is good because I always feel like 7 November is a holiday. 7 November rolls around and I think, Hey, it's funny how we have two holidays so close together, the fifth of November and now; but actually November 7 isn't anything.

Oh no! It is! My half-birthday! OH YEAH! That's what that is! My half-birthday! And now Official Litotes Celebration Day!

Delaying gratification, and those dreams you sometimes have that are so fantastic and then you wake up and you're like, Oh. And now for real life.

That post title is only three characters (four characters?) shy of being too long for a post title.

I went to the library today to get, I swear, two books, just two, no more than two, a mere two. All I wanted was The Mysteries of Udolpho, which I've been meaning to read for untold ages, and The Monk, which sounds hilarious. The thing was (this was the thing) that as I was turning down the R aisle to fetch Udolpho, my eye was caught by The Persian Boy, which is an excellent book and one that I haven't read for absolutely untold ages – like, seriously, a year and a half – so I paused to eye it affectionately, and then I also spotted The Praise Singer, which is a book by Mary Renault that I have not read.

This is something I do quite frequently with authors I like. Basically if I read two books by an author that I like quite a lot, or one book that I adore and one book that I quite enjoy (not in that order though. It has to be I read one that I quite enjoy and then one that I adore, or otherwise I will think that the author didn't live up to his or her potential in the second book of theirs I read), the Rule of Delayed Author Gratification comes into play. This is the rule whereby I choose one book by a given author of whom I am fond, and I just don't read it. For instance, I am not reading The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. I am not reading Persuasion by Jane Austen (I have read it before, but not for ages, even longer than I haven't read The Persian Boy). I am not reading The Praise Singer by Mary Renault. For the longest time I didn't read Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones, or Beau Ideal by P.C. Wren, or Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card (that one was SO not worth it), or Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers (ditto. shut UP, Peter Wimsey, ya pussy. The guy was a MURDERER. Quit CRYING.)

I have other delaying gratification tactics too, with authors I actually can't bear not to read. When Diana Wynne Jones wrote Conrad's Fate, I read it to my little sister, and I didn't read ahead. As I read it aloud chapter by chapter, I was reading it for the very first time. When I first got all of the Sandman (I got ALL of them, because my lovely godmother gave me a big gift card to Bongs & Noodles for my birthday), after I decided they were pretty much the best thing ever, I only read one issue a day. And appreciate: I did that for Season of Mists and A Game of You and Brief Lives, not just like Fables and Reflections and World's End, where it wouldn't have made any difference. I began to fail at this when I got to The Kindly Ones, though. I gave in and read them all in one gobble. I had to! Lyta was a CRAZY PERSON!

I know that you are probably thinking this is an insane Rule, but you are totally wrong. Sometimes it's a let-down, but sometimes it's very very worth it. Archer's Goon? Beau Ideal? Can't even express how worth it. And just think if I'd had the luck to save The Ground Beneath Her Feet instead of The Moor's Last Sigh (I almost did this! The only only reason I didn't was that The Moor's Last Sigh was checked out!). And just think how brilliant it would be if I'd reserved Fire and Hemlock for last, or Neverwhere. It is just a question of guessing the right book to read.

Anyway, so I stopped to look at The Praise Singer, to decide if the Time Was Ripe for ending the delaying of my gratification, and what do you think? There were all these books by Mary Renault I'd never heard of before! Like four of them! And one about after Alexander died (poor Bagoas), which I'm assuming isn't very good or else my mum would have recommended it to me and owned it, but still! Hey!

This is like those dreams that everyone who likes books a lot seems to have, where you go to the library and there is a whole shelf of hitherto unknown books by an author you really like, or you go to a book sale and they have all the books you like, or you discover a new wondrous author who has written ten thousand books.

But this is real. Indeed Mary Renault does have a whole bunch of books I haven't read before. Eeee! I'm trying not to get my hopes up though, because I know that many times an author does not reach his or her writing peak right away, and there are consequently a vast number of books by them that are not very good at all, even though their later books are excellent, and other times an author is just all over the place and sometimes her books are very, very good and sometimes they are boring shite (I'm looking at you, Rumer Godden).

Addendum: I looked up Mary Renault on Wikipedia to make sure that these were indeed her books, and do you know what I discovered? I discovered that she and her partner that she was with her whole life moved to South Africa where there was apparently a lovely and accepting expatriate gay community, and they joined the anti-apartheid movement. In the 1950s. And hardly any white people were in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1950s. Yay for Mary Renault. It is pleasant to discover that one's favorite authors were also nice people. Usually I look people up on the internet and discover unpleasant things about them, like Sean Connery thinking women needed to be smacked and kept in their places, and Nabokov being all, you know, snobby and uppity, and, ugh, Rumer Godden refused to give medicine to a little dying girl who then died, and things like that. But Mary Renault was a righteous lady, and The Persian Boy particularly is an extremely well-written and touching book; and I think more people should know about her, because she was a good writer and it sounds to me like a good person.

Kingsley Shacklebolt

I am just in the process of reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows out loud for my darling and beloved aunty, who I hope isn't reading this because I'm probably going to say something about who dies in the seventh book. I have been doing this for many a year, along with my darling mum, but this time it's very high-tech and new-millennium. We used to read onto tapes, and now, now I am reading it onto CDs. I have music-recording software for my computer, and I use my headphones with the microphone attachment. It's all a lot easier: I don't have to use one hand to hold a microphone, so I have two hands for holding the book, and furthermore I can create track splits in the software with just the click of a button and burn the CD straight from the software, and CDs are more space-efficient, and, gosh, it's just a lot easier.

Okay, so raptures about my new improved method aside, here's the pathetic thing about the reading I am doing right now. It's to do with Kingsley Shacklebolt, and I am now about to reveal who dies in the seventh book, so don't look, anyone who doesn't want to know.

I love Kingsley Shacklebolt. I wish we could have seen more of him, cause I think he's swell. He has a deep soothing voice; he's so swell that even the Dursleys like him; he's insanely competent and clever and thinks on his feet; he delivers what is definitely the most effective line in the seventh book and probably in the whole series (though I have a sentimental attachment to "Quite the double act, Sirius Black and James Potter!" because every time I read it my heart stops and I forget that I know perfectly well that this is not a bad thing because Sirius is a GOOD GUY); and he becomes the Minister of Magic and just sorts everything out, I bet. In fact, in the seventh book, I love him rather more than Lupin, who kind of acts like a bit of a dick in a lot of this book, and I appreciate your inner turmoil, guy, but proposing to abandon your wife and baby makes me VERY CROSS, though I am really, really sorry you had to die, and that fuckhead Dolohov, if I ever get my hands on him, I will, I will, I will STOMP ON HIS FACE, because you had just had a baby, a dear sweet little baby, and it was very uncool for you to have to perish so that the baby could grow up in a better world, which he does do, so well done you, I guess.

Anyway, I love Kingsley Shacklebolt, and I don't want to do his voice wrong. My mum and I decided as soon as we met darling Kingsley that he probably had a bit of a Caribbean accent, which actually now that I'm thinking about it must be because his name is Kingsley, and the capital of Jamaica (which is in the Caribbean) is Kingston, and that must be why we thought of it. But Kingsley has a number of lines in this book, and I turn out to be not wholly and horrifically unsuccessful at doing a Caribbean accent (though it isn't one for the books or anything). The only thing is, and believe me when I say that I recognize how absurd this is, that I can only do it with reference to Sebastian the crab.

So here's me, cruising along, reading, and I espy a line by Kingsley Shacklebolt somewhere up ahead. I read right up to the sentence before Kingsley speaks, and then I stop recording and sing quietly, "Under the sea, under the sea, dahling it's better down where it's wetter, take it from me!" and then, only then, am I good to go. I really need to take a class and learn how to do all kinds of accents, so that I wouldn't have to resort to silly tricks like this.

I love reading out loud. I'm going back to it now.

Jenny dreamed of trains, and when she awakened hotness triumphed, and damn it, Billy Crudup should just be Henry.

My sister said recently that she'd been writing down her dreams for a while and had noticed some recurring themes; and then I got really jealous because I had never noticed any recurring themes in my dreams, which obviously proved that my dreams were not as good as my sister's dreams, and then I would LOSE the DREAM CONTEST.

Which we weren't having one of.

But then we decided that for a month we'd each write down all the dreams we remembered having, and then at the end of a month we would trade and make fun of each other's uncreative subconscious. So I guess now we are sort of a little bit having a dream contest. Kinda.

And it turns out that I do not have several recurring themes, but I do have one, and it is trains, and this pleases me for three reasons.

1. Bonnie does NOT win the dream contest. Ha, ha, HA. I have recurring themes TOO. SO.
2. There's a song called this! Jenny dreamed of trains! I actually don't know what kind of a song this is, but it's on my computer, all prophetic, like it knew all along I had recurring dreams of trains. And I don't remember where I got it, but I guess I just got it because my name was in it (I love songs with my name in), and anyway it is so right. I do indeed dream of trains.
3. I love trains. So much. So very much. If I could have a house on a train with wireless access and electricity and everything, I'd do it in a second. I actually spent most of my trip home from England trying to think of a way that would be viable.

Furthermore, I know I've said that Billy Crudup should be Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife, and I absolutely hold to that, but additionally I just watched Charlotte Gray which is a movie that contains Cate Blanchett and Billy Crudup, and damn, he is an attractive man.

I read the book of that film (I mean, the book of which the film, er, is) when I was in Norwich, and in the book, you know, Charlotte ends up with the guy she was in love with all along - well, at the end they are walking together and sort of holding hands, and no one gives Julien a second thought because he's off in France and they're together in England. But in the movie, you see, in the movie she sees the guy she was in love with all along, and he's like, "Hi, I'm shallower than you might have remembered", and she's like, "Um, we can't be together" and goes off to France to marry Billy Crudup instead. Because hotness always wins in Hollywood. The happy ending might be lost, and the wee children and the old father might get dragged off to the concentration camp and the father might die thinking that Billy Crudup sold him down the river for no reason (which was actually not the case), but Hollywood pulled through for us with the marrying-the-hot-people-to-each-other thing.

And Billy Crudup should just be Henry. My mother previously disagreed with me but now she has observed him in action and spotted that he is good at being intense and charming both at once, so she now realizes that I am right.

Also, if I were in charge of casting movies and I got lazy, I would just tell my minions that they could go ahead and cast Billy Crudup as all the male leads that don't suck because I think Billy Crudup is capable of playing virtually any part in the world. Like Howl, now that stupid Jonathan Rhys-Meyers got rid of his cheekbones. And the odious Marquis from Sorcery and Cecelia. And, you know, everything. Ever.

*goes to sleep because her work is done*

Stephen Colbert

I love Stephen Colbert. He is a funny, funny man; and if I'd thought of it, I'd have thrown him in the teeth of the silly British person who was trying to tell me that Americans didn't know about irony. (He offered as an example, I must add, a song by Alanis Morisette, who is Canadian.) He is so cool that he has had both a Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor (Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream) and a leatherback turtle who is in a great turtle race (Stephanie Colbertle the Turtle) named after him.

AND FURTHERMORE, he stole a microwave from the Fox News studio when he went on Bill O'Reilly's show.

AND he is Catholic! He gave up sweets for Lent and thus could not sample his ice cream until after Easter because he is Catholic! In my opinion there are not nearly enough cool Catholics out there representing the faith! I am Catholic and he is too! Yayyyyy for Catholicism! When I am famous I will go on the Colbert Report and Stephen Colbert and I will have a good old talk about how swell it is to be a Catholic!

(The "Every Sperm is Sacred" song is playing in my head as I type this.)

Me = Pioneer; or, I never knew John Donne could be so sexy

I was at the National Portrait Gallery today, and my mum and I were going through the Elizabethan-times room, walking down one side of the room looking at all these people we sort of knew (like Nicholas Bacon. I mean, surely I’ve heard of him before and everything, but my brain totally blanked out and I had no idea where), and I glanced over at the opposite wall and saw this picture that looked very cool, all shadowy and mysterious. And I was like, Oo, a picture I don’t remember that looks very spiffy! Can’t wait to see!

And do you know, it was John Donne, and it was a brand new picture. By which I mean that everyone already knew about it and it was even inside of Anna’s Norton Anthology of English Literature, but I had never seen it before. The last time I was at the National Portrait Gallery, they TOTALLY didn’t have that picture! Theoretically I suppose I was aware that the National Portrait Gallery must acquire more things from time to time, but I guess I assumed that all the Famous Pictures in the world had already settled, and the National Portrait Gallery wouldn’t get anything old but only new things like pictures of Christian Bale and Prince William’s girlfriend and such.

I totally felt like a tremendous literary-portraity-ground-breaking pioneer person! I discovered a brand new painting of John Donne, everyone! And it is weirdly attractive. I don’t know how much of this is due to the fact that I know it’s John Donne and I admire his writing a lot, but I’m already drafting an email to the National Portrait Gallery to get them to start making prints of it so I can buy one and hang it up on my wall. This is what I have so far:

Darling darling National Portrait Gallery,

Please make a print of that sexy new picture of John Donne that you have so I can buy one and hang it up on my wall. I really deserve it because I am a lovely person and furthermore I donated five pounds to you when I visted last July, and I also purchased several items from your gift shop. Thank you.

I think that they cannot fail to see the rectitude of my arguments and immediately begin making prints of various sizes for my viewing pleasure (and, she said righteously, that of the nation. of all nations!). They could make profit! People never knew how alluring John Donne could be when set in a black background and given a caption about girls and such.

And a Muppet kissed me!

My dad’s better than your dad

So wait. Here’s how totally good my father is. (You’re going to be so envious.)

He was teaching this graduate course, right? It was like program and practice evaluation (yeah, I totally don’t know what that means), and my father was the teacher of it. That’s my father because he is a Mighty Teacher of Graduate Courses in Social Work. And he taught the course with such incredible skill and talent, that not only did people come up to him afterwards and tell him it was the best and most useful course they’d taken that semester, but also in the final class everyone applauded for his excellent teaching abilities.

Which is very unusual indeed, especially (I expect) in a course called Programs and Practice Evaluation. And they did that before he told them they weren’t going to have a final exam. I wish I’d been there–it sounds like the most Dead Poets’ Society thing ever. They probably all saluted him as he walked out because of his excessive awesomeness.

You might think your father’s cool, but, as I believe I have amply demonstrated, my father is cooler.

If you have QuickTime and you want to see Jon Stewart in an army helmet and mocking Rumsfeld

then I have good news for you.

Because here he is.

As usual, the best bits of this clip are at the end, but it’s really very well worth it. I love Jon Stewart. I love him. Love, love, love.

The reason I would like to be a theatre reviewer

Dorothy Parker.

It appears that his boyhood sweetheart, Sally - called, by Mr. Louis Calhern, who has gone British or something, “Selly,” just as he says, and as yearningly, “heppy” - had used to occupy the adjoining room, and he had had a nasty habit of tapping on the wall between, to communicate with her. The code was not essentially difficult. There was one tap for “a”, two for “b”, and so on. I ask you, kind reader, but to bear this in mind for rougher times…

The cabinet minister talks softly and embarrassingly to Sally - ”Ah, Selly, Selly, Selly” - but this is not enough. He must tap out to her, on the garden wall, his message, though she is right beside him. First he taps, and at the length it would take, the letter “I”. Then he goes on to “l”, and, though surely everyone in the audience has caught the idea, he carries through to “o”. “Oh, he’s not going on into ‘v’,” I told myself. “Even Milne wouldn’t do that to you.” But he did. He tapped on through “v”, and then did an “e”. “If he does ‘y’,” I thought, “I’m through.” And he did. So I shot myself.

It was, unhappily, a nothing - oh, a mere scratch - and I was able to sit up and watch that dream go on through all the expected stages.

Etc, etc. Dorothy Parker is so cool.

Update: Dorothy Parker continues to be cool and I love reading her reviews. She says this in her review of a novel by Mussolini:

If only I had a private income, I would drop everything right now, and devote the scant remainder of my days to teasing the Dictator of All Italy…Indeed, my dream-life is largely made up of scenes in which I say to him, "Oh, Il Duce yourself, you big stiff," and thus leave him crushed to a pulp…

Weak though the ordeal has left me, I shall never be the one to grudge the time and effort I put into my attempts at reading The Cardinal’s Mistress. The book has considerably enlarged that dream-life I was telling you about a few minutes ago. It has broadened now to admit that scene in which I tell Mussolini, "And what’s more, you can’t even write a book that anyone could read. You old Duce, you." You can see for yourself how flat that would leave him.