Chrysanthemum Day
2005-07-18 @ 10:13 p.m.

Sigh. Didn't get to run today because of the rain. Claudia has kindly reminded me that our cohort has plenty of people smarter than me who want to read English, and who want to read it at Cambridge too. I have humbled myself, and yes, Warwick is looking quite attractive at the moment, especially its degrees for English and Creative Writing, and English and French. English and Latin Literature is a possibility if I successfully teach myself Latin and foster an interest in the classics. All this is mere wishful thinking at this point in time though, my grades are quite abysmal except for Mathematics. The irony's gone stale. On a brighter note, Hsien Min has approved my edit to Another Night On The Patio, so it's in the new issue of QLRS here. I've just counted, and I have written 49 poems, of which six have been published and another two have been showcased in some form. Not too shabby a tally, I guess, for something that I do fairly irregularly. Quality control is definitely a problem.

I have found the perfect book for my 'S' Paper needs. It complements both The Hours and Love, Etc., a veritable intersection of the two novels. It's Don Giovanna by Amanda Prantera. It has art imitating life like the parallel plots of The Hours, with a group of expatriates staging an amateur production of Don Giovanni. It employs an unusual narrative device like the unreliable cast of Love, Etc., with characters appearing as if in scenes from an opera. Starting to read it right now, and it's quite enjoyable. Can't believe this book was literally under my nose, and later, above my head all this time. If it turns out to lend itself to some sort of critical analysis, I'm pretty much set for my novels then. Perhaps I shall find out more about Don Giovanni, like how I'm reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway to understand The Hours better. Have decided not to bother about gender equality for my poets, so I'll do combinations of Gunn, Hardy and Larkin. It should be interesting to see the comparisons that get thrown up. As Eugene put it, suddenly everything's gone right. Well, not entirely everything, but you get the idea. Incidentally, Yi-Xun and I concur that today's English lecture was one of the most freaking boring ever. Nothing to do with Conrad, although I'm still none too fond of Heart Of Darkness.

This week:

Hug Week