Waugh

I have desisted from writing about the immense pleasure Evelyn Waugh’s writing has always provided me with for various reasons that need not be recounted here. However, a recent re-perusal of Brideshead Revisited seemed to agree with the prevailing mood of hesitant anticipation of the year I shall spend in Waugh’s alma mater. So much so that I think it’s only right I share my new found state of warm waiting with the four (?) people who read this blog. Infact it even brought about strong bouts of giddy whoops when I successfully pulled out it’s tableau. I have one for every book and it is with some amount of pride that I say I could recall quite a few minute details. For example the strange turn of fancy that made me model Sebastian in the image of a young man whose picture I’d found in a book; Delinquent Chacha, I think it was. I also remember how I’d decided to name an ugly neck-less stuffed toy “Adrienne” much in the same vein of Sebastian’s “Aloysius.” I suppose this will disappoint some but my reckless christening of all objects dear is to be credited to Waugh and not Murakami. Yes, myths do edify quickly, do they not? And Stephen Fry hovers in the horizon for some strange reason. Awful isn’t it?
Any which way I shall promise some other time a fuller account of my Waugh-picaresque when I am settled in a ground floor room in the front quad - happy coincidence permitting . At present a very short snippet from Brideshead ought to do:

It was not until I was within a fortnight of going up that he mentioned the subject at all; then he said, shyly and rather slyly: “I’ve been talking about you. I met your future Warden at the Athenaeum. I wanted to talk about Etruscan notions of immortality; he wanted to talk about extension lectures for the working-class; so we compromised and talked about you. I asked him what your allowance should be…”

A good friend tells me that I should leave out the last line. But I insisted that it be included.

In a failed defense of the text and other four letter words

I’ve had to dive deep and long into that long forgotten, itinerant form called memory to be able to continue with my study of literature. For months I’ve been abandoning, little by little, plucking and casting away tools that I have been handed with purposes of dismantling; and reconstructing on the other hand the idyll, memories of which result in whimsical and ill advised (academically speaking) papers entitled “Bringing Lit back into the Crit.” What was supposed to have been a defense of the text has metamorphosed into a wobbly articulation of the bewilderment, resentment and loss that stabs incessantly, the intensity of which increases when having to write analytic papers longer than 7 pages. Negotiations and attempts at reconciliation have been numerous. A recent one being slicing the work into 1) the text and 2) the eminent progeny of the author - each existing independently of the other. I undertake this splintering in as non-Barthean an approach as possible. I encountered some resistance in putting forth the last stipulation and so am prepared to encounter some more from you. Although I do believe that some of you misunderstand me. I acknowledge the inescapability from the Barthean approach when I limit it to the realm of possibility. Oh, the joy that we are taught to feel for the endless possibilities within the chalked lines. This last half-hearted reconciliatory effort will not see further elucidation because I fear it borders on the plain ridiculous. Yea, I’ve always been aware that I did not possess the peasant-variety bullishness required of an academic.
I have decided (and perhaps the most important of my decisions stemming from my reconstructive phase is) not to deny having read the various pieces of literature that I had lovingly perused in days where I referred to everything as “stories.” You see after my first year in college I had determined to sift through all works familiar and then conclude if I had indeed read it. If I could not tease the work into a satisfactory state of having-been-read-ness I refused familiarity. I hadn’t the epistemic access then to comment on the amorphous nature of meaning (or the ability to toss about other such terms in the same way I did the Nepali-fied bong I interspered my discourses with back in school). Had I access to it I would have atleast written a humorous “Autobiography of a Word - Read” much like Pamuk’s little tidbits about coins and horses and colours. Epistemic access - I’ve been chided by several for using this phrase so flagrantly. So, it is only right that I leave you with a defense of sorts (how fitting to end it like this, no?). I use the word just as Monsieur Foucault is wont to use it; with all of its breaks and warts and moles.
Thereby I absolve myself of all guilt.

On a totally unrelated note I ask that you listen to Steve Reich’s music and read this. I have fallen in love with Reich’s music. "Check it out."