Sobriquet 46.17

The following post was originally published on 9/17/08.

Well, it looks like my internet problem will be solved some time Monday, which will be nice. I will try to post an entry every so often until then, but I can't promise to publish anything on a daily basis before I have that issue resolved.

On the dissertation front, I actually had a brief impromptu meeting with my supervisor yesterday afternoon. Among other things, we chatted a bit about some of the ideas I have been toying with for the chapter on Disgrace. I left feeling better about things; it's always nice to get a vote of confidence from someone when you've been toiling in isolation for as long as I have.

I also read some more of Inner Workings as well as another critical essay on Disgrace, which I will have to discuss later, when I have more reliable (i.e., not restricted to an hour of use) access to the internet. Inner Workings is a wonderful little book, by the way. Coetzee is an extremely insightful literary critic who does not write in an overtly academic voice. Rather than inundate readers with evidence of his own scholarly research as is common in smaller, explicitly academic publications, Coetzee directs his writing at a broader, though equally literate, readership (most of the essays in the collection were originally published as reviews in the New York Review of Books, for instance). In doing so, he combines the sort of critical attention to detail one associates with scholars writing for their colleagues with the enthusiasm of someone who writes a monthly column in a more accessible intellectual magazine. The end result, as is often the case with good criticism, makes the reader want to seek out the book in question and read it for him- or herself.

For tomorrow through Monday: Read an essay or a bit of The Rights of Desire each day.