March 2010
20 posts
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I avoided giving this blog a name for a while because I wasn’t sure how seriously I was going to take it. But it seems to be quite serious, so it has a name now: None But Eagles Could Look Him in the Face. It’s taken from “Jack and Alice,” one of many hilarious stories Jane Austen wrote when she was young:Charles Adams was an amiable, accomplished and bewitching young Man;...
February 2010
28 posts
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At first he was like:
And then he was like:
erasing.org - Roses
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Interiors (dir. Woody Allen)
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“The film is a real pressure cooker. It’s Bergman-esque, theatrical, austere,...”
– a bright wall in a dark room.: Woody Allen Week: Interiors (1978) Another favourite Woody Allen film.
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“ It’s an impossible task to write about a successful Woody Allen comedy,...”
– a bright wall in a dark room.: Woody Allen Week: Love and Death (1975) This is one of my favourite Woody Allen films, and I like Woody Allen films a lot more than most people seem to these days. I have a few people in my life who like to describe in detail and/or quote endlessly and/or act out...
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I went to school tonight but campus was relatively deserted and the coffee shop in the building where my class is held was closed, which led me to suspect that the Reading Week that the course schedule said was next week was actually this week. Never take your professor’s word for things like that, friends, and keep up with what is going on at your school even if you only have one class a...
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False teeth gripping a cigar
So I started Anthony Powell’s The Valley of Bones as predicted and was bored out of my skull with all the military yawn-balls in the first 30 pages, but then, hurrah, along came Bithel. Lieutenant Bithel takes a sleeping pill after drinking heavily his first night at the whatsit and won’t wake up in the morning with everyone else. Nick Jenkins describes the sleeping Bithel curled up...
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“The pub, like pubs all over the world, was a place for debate and discussion,...”
– From “A Walk in the Night” by Alex la Guma, a story set in a gut-wrenchingly poor neighbourhood in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1960s, which is the only reason I let that bit about dutch courage slip through. I am reading this book of stories for a course in postcolonialism, and it is...
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Sixteen boxes of Ikea furniture requiring assembly are hanging out in the dining room, waiting to be opened. We’ve been collecting these boxes over the past week and a half — a total of four trips. That would be enough Ikea to last the rest of the year, except that we’re still missing six pieces and need to go to an entirely other Ikea for them. A behemoth of frames and shelves...
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“Bracey certainly had a high regard for my father. Verbal description of...”
– Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones
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A poem for Monday mornings
Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend —
Bed awaits me at the end.
Though I go in pride and strength,
I’ll come back to bed at length.
Though...
