Sustained Criticism

Auster's The Brooklyn Follies is very vry, and a delight. A man who is depressed about not dying any more, moves to Brooklyn to do nothing. How much more Auster does anything get? Nathan Glass is no longer dying, and finds unexpected raison d'être in companionship with two equally depressed men. I, predictably, loved it. There is something about depressed, middle-aged men and novels I cannot resist.

On a more serious note, this felt very much like Auster light. It is depressing in its own sense, but not as depressing as he can be. It even ends cheerfully!

Exams (or finals to Americans) are hitting home, again, as usual. Everyone else panicking eventually gets to me and I'm already sick of hunching over theory (most notably Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Foucault). In a futile attempt to cheer up I threw on a dress, had champagne, and tottered around in the YSL's. It did not work out. But Saturday was fun. Anette and I had a pre-party ('vors', I really ought to introduce the idea of 'vors' once and for all, and just refer back) here, and attended a house-warming party fashionably late. We plotted how to grab titled, beautiful British men over red wine. Someone compared me to Susan in the Disney version of Narnia, a second person picked up on it, people agreed. Riiight. I blame the wine and the make-up. Another party full of students, which mean you introduce yourself to people by 'Alexandra, English language and literature, more or less. You?'

I sat behind the most wonderfully refined man on the buss today, he had such style. He was in his seventies, at the very least, wore an ascot, tweed suit, hair slicked back, dark glasses, and had an air (he even sparked me into using italics, for goodness' sake).

"Travels in the Scriptorium", by Paul Auster, was devoured today - the last 50 pages or so, that is - and it was peculiar, but impressive. I won't say much, for fear of spoiling potential readers, but it was intriguing, and a very light read. Particularly relieving between pages of "War and Peace", and trying to finish Murdoch's "The Sea, the Sea". He writes economically, and pointedly. Not a style I am usually ensnared by, except in the case of Hemmingway and the occasional other, but this was very well done.

I got the answer to my complaint on the written English exam, and the 5 still stands. It is not that I had expected a 6 - they very rarely give in to complaints like mine, there was never more than a rather faint hope -, but the, alleged, reasoning was a repetition of what Vigdis has been telling me these past two years: clarity of phrase and content. It went something like this: "Reflected and mature answers to both tasks. Due to imprecise phrasing occasionally, the entirety comes off as somewhat confusing. The grade should (crossed out) therefor be left standing." (Excuse the awkward phrasing, it was bad in the original Norwegian, and my translation is no better.)

If everything goes according to plan, I will return to London for the duration of a weekend in mid-January. London, or, us, rather, will never be the same again. I can't wait!