Palladius to the max

Wilson Rare Books Library, Chapel Hill, NC. Click to enlarge.

I'm not going to say this was the sole reason for my choice, but look at it, folks.

Brushes with fame

Long ago at Princeton, Allen Ginsberg stepped on my professor's head.

"How did this happen?" I asked the friend who told me.

"He was lying on the floor, apparently, and Ginsberg just stepped on his head. Ginsberg was like, 'I'm so sorry!' and he was like, 'No, really, don't worry about it.'"

I'd write more, but how could I?

Good or bad 'tis all one, I never heard you commend anything

One of the drawbacks to talking to yourself as you leave your room: The repairman hears you say, "There's no point in writing something if it isn't a fucking act of catharsis."

I don't even think that's true. For that matter, I'm not sure that writers are entitled to any of the catharsis they provide their audience--not according to Aristotle, at least. But my thesis is rather cathartic, despite its dusty topic. And I was talking about my thesis. I just shouldn't have been talking out loud.

March 9 is International Fop Day

SIR FOPLING. An Intrigue now would be but a Temptation to me, to throw away that Vigour on one, which I mean shall shortly make my Court to the whole Sex in a Ballet.
--The Man of Mode

I may ride the elephant if I please, sir

From a friend who studies gangster films:

"There have been very successful types of art in the past which developed such specific and detailed conventions as almost to make individual examples of the type interchangeable. This is true, for example, of Elizabethan revenge tragedy and Restoration comedy."
--Robert Warshow, "The Gangster as Tragic Hero," 1948.

Then we discussed whether the cinematic gangster could be compared to the rake. Perhaps! Think about it: the desire for singularity, the lust for power, the scorn for social mores...

I'm now trying to write about Etherege's The Man of Mode, one of my two favorite plays in the world (tied with Stoppard's The Invention of Love). Oh, God, it's so good. Not good by the standards of Restoration comedy, but good by the standards of Great Literature. So good I can scarcely bring myself to analyze it. (Last night at dinner, my friend cackled at my announcement that "The Man of Mode is the Übermensch of Restoration comedies.")

Take this exchange between Dorimant, the cynical rake-aesthete, and his friend Young Bellair, the callow romantic. The subject of their gossip is Mrs. Loveit, Dorimant's longtime mistress, whom he is anxious to shake off:

YOUNG BELLAIR. I am confident she loves no man but you.

DORIMANT. The good fortune were enough to make me vain, but that I am in my nature modest.

On hiatus until my ship comes in.

Only in academe

Professor: What's your middle name again? Hope? Joy?

Me: Hope.

Professor: You're getting me used to the idea that hippies should be allowed to procreate.