friday routines and books.

[_fissures]

Every Friday this semester I have a midday tutorial for world politics on the Camperdown campus and a legal research seminar later in the afternoon at the Law School on Phillip St. Usually I catch a bus into the city, get off before King St and wonder around David Jones Food Hall for the hour. At lunch hour, it's all hustle and bustle and I'll buy

Comments

[eien_infinity]

so you finally bought the murakami.

lol at cell phone. so, mainland.

[_fissures]

yes, i finally gave in. actually, after that da in the store, i couldn't track it down again. stupidly elusive. damned dymocks as well.

pssht. so mainland? yes indeed, we're solidly grounded, not some stinky, polluted little island. pfft.

ah, i had the funniest (annoying?) moment at work. when expressing my music tastes, a girl i work with said: i thought you would be more mainstream. like r'n'b. or maybe ASIAN POP. i could only respond with laughter.

[estrangler]

Funny. I read Milan Kundera for the first time yesterday, and after I finished that (Slowness, picked up at "the local") I wandered to my bookshelf to find something familiar, and decided on Katherine Mansfield. I quite liked the start of Slowness, and it was entertaining enough for me to read it in one sitting (though that's probably more because it's so short), but ultimately I found it unsatisfying, and a bit kitsch in places. I remember really loving Mansfield when I first read her for school in Year Nine or so (that was the Garden Party collection), and I still liked her yesterday (reading Bliss and Other Stories) though in parts her characters are too simple, her voice outdated (and with a femininity that seems false now, exaggerated), and her plots predictably twisted. Other times though, I love her fantastically vivid vision, her thrill at beauty, the poignant silliness of her characters.

[_fissures]

I agree with you completely on that observation that Kundera, in almost all his novels, starts of with a linguisitc flourish, then struggles to realise the potential of the narrative/theme. There is something very self-conscious in his writing, which does sometimes grind on the nerves. I've never read Mansfield before this - or yet to. The yellow spine of the book sits on my shelf, glowering slightly at me now that it seems I will pulling another long night to finish off a tutorial paper (yet to be started, woe) rather than curling up early with it. I remembered her name however, from the breathless contralto enthusiasm of an older girl whom I all but idolised intellectually consecrating Mansfield as the writer of the finest prose, and since then have been pricked by literary guilt at intervals to read her writing. I am further encouraged by your praise of her.