W. M. Thackeray – Jam and Idleness

Home

I feel too much the harmonious nearness of home to be able to brood over any sorrow. In the past I wept. I was so far away from my native country… (Robert Walser, Little Snow Landscape, trans. Tom Whalen) “Home” was a word that had no personal meaning for me for a very long time….

Insomnia reading redux

I spent a goodly portion of the latter half of my PhD staying up all night, every night storming through books fully unrelated to my dissertation. I’ve been dancing a weary turn with insomnia since 1986 or so, when TV ended every night at 1am and the internets were barely a gleam in William Gibson’s…

Love letters

About three years ago, one of my beloveds sent me this short email: I’m not sure if I’ve ever shared with you my creed, which was put into words for me by the considerate E.M. Forster. This is it: “I believe in aristocracy, though–if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it….

Belonging

There’s a man in my neighbourhood I see nearly every time I leave the house and travel south. I think he suffers from some sort of mental illness, though I have no idea what. I know he hurts and sometimes screams his pain. When I see him, he is usually walking; still in his 40s, I think,…

Alright fine

I submit, surrender, and beg forgiveness; at the rate things are going with getting ready to move and doing home renos, I have finally accepted that I am just never going to get caught up on my book posts unless I corral them. Well then, giddyup. Barry Lyndon, William Makepeace Thackeray. I wanted to love…

A recurring character in the novels of Anthony Trollope: Charles Dickens

Last year, I read Anthony Trollope’s Autobiography and almost broke up with him; as it was, just taking a break helped me to fall back in blissful love with him. In the last few months, I’ve read the first two novels in his most famous series, the Chronicles of Barsetshire: The Warden and Barchester Towers….