Friday, December 21, 2007

glums

As if my blogging of late hadn't become spotty enough, I suspect it's time for Culture Industry to take a week or two's hiatus. The holiday season's always been a dreary & desultory time of year for me, & I see little reason to inflict my own spleen on my 7 readers out there. Not to mention the fact that I seem to be headed into vacation with a full-fledged bug of some sort, which has me shuffling & sniffling & just generally grumpy.

I do hope to get some reading done. In addition to the bales of course texts that need to be read, reviewed, & set in order, I have new 2nd-hand copies of AS Byatt's Babel Tower & Angels & Insects (60 pages in, this one's absolutely engrossing), Michel Houellebecq's Platform, & Houellebecq's weird little HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. On the poetry side of the boardwalk, I've just finished Lisa Jarnot's Ring of Fire (fab) & Paul Muldoon's Quoof (not-quite-so-fab), & am in the midst of Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day & Stephen Rodefer's Mon Canard.

Alas, not many sightings of The Poem of a Life on the horizon, tho if you want a very brief preview, Al Filreis has posted a recording of himself reading a page or two on his 1960 blog.

Most pressingly, there are letters to write: several letters of recommendation (as usual), but as well stacks of long & thoughtful emails that deserve long & thoughtful replies. After all, one has no business pining over an empty In-box when one owes as many messages as I do.

So I hope everyone's having a pleasant Solstice & Saturnalia, & wish you all a peaceful & fulfilling Yule. You'll hear from me sooner or later, like it or not.

3 comments:

Bradley said...

Not to mention the fact that I seem to be headed into vacation with a full-fledged bug of some sort, which has me shuffling & sniffling & just generally grumpy.

You don't think you and I have been poisoned by our enemies, do you? I've got sort of a low-grade, constant misery thing going on with the cough and the head congestion and stuff. Not bad enough that I can justify staying in bed reading Incredible Hulk comics from the 70s and asking Emily to fetch me more soda and lozenges, but just bad enough that I don't feel up to doing, like, anything.

Anyway, hope you feel better. Happy Holidays. We'll be in touch after MLA to see about taking you guys out for a drink or a meal or something to celebrate the book and the new semester.

Amy said...

Io Saturnalia!

For religious reasons, all celebrators of the Saturnalia should be permitted offtime until the Kalends of Martius.

The denial of this right is what makes us grumpy.

Man those Christians are lucky I don't have an arena and some lions...

Ed Baker said...

all holidays are too divisive
and are cause of your current sicknesses/angst and they are
all about buying things and murdering "them infidels" or about celebrating some invented 'happenstance" (phantasy)

just drop celebrating them all!

last one left (here) was Thanksgiving.. after the meal "we" went out and murdered the Indians
so, dropped that one and dropped killing animals for food..

the secret of life consists in being always and never
serious ... Blyth