Jazz Day/Escape Day
2008-01-30 @ 8:54 p.m.

Didn't take any pictures at BooksActually today, but I'm going back again next month to get some books that I haven't been able to find elsewhere, so I'll snap some shots then. That said, I didn't go home empty-handed today either! Two collections of short stories by A.S. Byatt and Felix Cheong's Broken By The Rain. I bought the latter because I've just finished reading his earlier work, I Watch The Stars Go Out, and I really liked it. I've kind of realised that when I say I don't like local literature, what I really mean is that I don't like the way reviewers try to ascribe such incredible profundity to it. Granted, there are many pieces of writing that make me go, damn, I want to have written that (which is the kind of feeling I get when re-reading Alfian Sa'at's A History Of Amnesia), but most of the time, after reading a commentary written by some NUS professor, I find myself going, what the heck is he trying to say exactly? I mean, the words sound very nice when strung together, sometimes even more aesthetic than the writing being reviewed, but that's about it. Maybe it's me? Maybe I'm just too stupid, or untypically Singaporean, to understand what seems to be so bloody self-evident to the professors, who out-qualify me after all. Remind me to make up my mind on this matter once I'm out of this country, getting myself an education that will (hopefully) eventually put me on an equal academic footing with those reviewers whom I disdain.