Chrysanthemum Day/Wiener Day
2007-07-18 @ 11:26 p.m.

A Tranquil Star was an interesting collection, although since I've never read any of Primo Levi's Holocaust writings, the impact of the short stories is somewhat lost on me. (They're supposed to be quite different from his Holocaust material.) Have now started reading The Wave Theory Of Angels by Alison MacLeod, which is proving to be an interesting read. Quantum entanglement underpins the plot, and is another of those things that I know bits and pieces about. I swear I'm a repository of fragmented knowledge, useless factoids and trivia. Anyway, the plot consists of a fictional correlation between the collapse in 1284 of the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais and the collapse in 2001 of the World Trade Center in New York, complete with parallelled characters and story arcs. Will have to get around to reading the Andrew Marvell poems and the Jean Racine plays I've also borrowed at some point. Am trying to get more in touch with classic literature, but it's hard for me to sustain my attention long enough. These days, I usually only manage to do it if I'm reading Hardy. Yeah, I'm still reading The Mayor Of Casterbridge, which is actually interesting. Of the six texts I did in JC, my favourites were Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Hardy's The Return Of The Native.