Sobriquet 37.14

The following post was originally published on 12/24/07.

Today has been a long day and I am too exhausted to write much of substance, so I am going to try to keep this entry short.

I am happy to report that I finished the article I have been working on the past couple of days, sent it off to my editor, and received a nice return email suggesting a few minor revisions. After spending as much time as I did on the essay, it is a tremendous relief to have some positive feedback so soon after finishing the first draft. I hope to have the revision completed soon and will provide publication information if and when the article appears.

I also read the one article I assigned myself for the day. Ian Duncan's "Narrative Authority in J. M. Coetzee's Age of Iron" is another study of Mrs. Curren's ability to comment on the political landscape of South Africa in the last years of apartheid. Like many similarly-themed essays, Duncan's study considers the ways in which the elderly narrator's social position impacts her ability to speak of the atrocities she witnesses throughout the novel. Well-written and comparatively brief, Duncan's essay provides an accessible , if not wholly original, look into the some of the most discussed aspects of Age of Iron.

On a light note, I'd just like to share a rather amusing (to me, at least) anecdote before signing off for the evening:

So, I'm driving the four hours to my parents' house to spend a few days with my family and I decide to listen to an audiobook of Don DeLillo's Mao II. As I am driving, I notice that my cat's plaintive meowing has somehow morphed into a rather abrupt "mao! mao!" as he tries to escape from the "Pet Taxi" in which he is interred for the duration of the trip, transforming the drive into something I imagine Negativland might want to record.

Well, Merry Christmas to those of you for whom the holiday is an important day. Since I would like to focus on my family for the next couple of days, I make no promises to post an entry until after the holiday, but I will set the goal of reading at least one article each day.

Work Cited

Duncan, Ian. "Narrative Authority in J. M. Coetzee's Age of Iron." Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde. 43.2 (2006): 174-85.