March 30, 2006

That's all there is to the coastline craze…

The sun is pouring inside and the temperature is in the double digits (and I don’t mean minus). Meanwhile, Virginia Woolf and I sit on the very edge of World War Two and I need to finish her diary before her own neuroses are impressed upon me permanently. What a read though. I finished Grace Paley’s Collected Stories, and found them ever surprising, and gut-wrenching in the most imaginative ways. I am also reading Hologram by PK Page. Tonight we are going to see Michael Geist at the Hart House Lecture.

Here on pseudonyms. Great poetry persists and Ken Babstock is on the cover of Eye Weekly here. Russell Smith on how bloggers lower the tone. I think he makes a fair argument. There is nothing wrong with blogging per se, except when bloggers cloak their self-absorption in delusions of self-importance. Blogging can be but is usually not a part of any real discourse, and if you’re straight with that you’re probably not a blog-wanker and don’t care what Russell Smith thinks about you anyway. Hereon the wonderful M. Drabble’s honorary degree from Cambridge (and just six months till her new book is out! It will be my first Drabble in hardcover. I fell in love with her late in the game). Check out the pro-life Brit Spears birthing statue. Just when you thought “pro-life” couldn’t be made any more offensive!

Mmmmm. My husband is roasting eggplant!