Nigri Libri

You all get lots of quotes from work, which gives you a good idea of my daytime life. You get random bits from books on Victorian etiquette, Longaevi descriptions, etc., which don't even remotely reflect what I'm actually thinking about in any deep sense. I don't think I've written a really thoughtful post in weeks.

This won't be one either. I was just noticing the fact.

I'm reading weird books. They are the sort of thing that a Lit. major should probably read at some point, but that I don't expect myself to enjoy. The list is as follows:

Madame Bovary: sad book, but interesting with respect to form. It reminds me of the Sistine Chapel or a Dutch painting, in that each fold of cloth, each ripple of hair or turn of hand is illuminated with dazzling simplicity and precision. Well-worth studying, though it falls into my general category of "poison which must be read," and consequently I prescribe for myself large antidote doses, currently in the form of The Discipline of Grace, and the Gospel according to John.

Doctor Zhivago: I didn't actually read it. I skimmed it and determined that I wasn't interested enough to read it. That's sort of where I wound up when I tried The Plague a few years ago. There's too much really superb stuff out there to waste time with the less-than-superlative, unless for reasons of form innovations that ought to be studied, which is why I actually read Madame Bovary.

The Age of Innocence: Interesting. Painful, but interesting. I read something by Toni Morrison (forgot the title) about ex-slaves which was also interesting, though even more painful, and somewhat darker. Why, oh why, oh why, do modern authors feel that they have to wallow in interior wretchedness? All they ever write about is hurting and searching for salvation. Forgiveness. More often restitution for wrongs suffered. Oh my, this old world... if it stabs at me this much, who walks in sunlight, what must the cavedwellers feel? A terrifying thought--a thought that makes me long to touch them by whatever means are available. I keep thinking that I could wake them up somehow, cauterize their gangrenous souls with a brand of fire... but no, it is not thus. I am not the fire; I am the lamp.

Oh, consuming Fire, hurtle down thy splendor into that cavern, dear Comet, lovely Daystar, and devour Death that reigns down the doomstruck ones--doom, awful word!--and teach the Norns and Fates and Furies to homage thy sovereignty!