Last Monday night, Kelly Link gave a wonderful reading at the Joynes Reading Room at UT. It was followed by one of the most interesting Q&As I’ve ever attended, pleasant chatting over food (provided by the Joynes Reading Room, hurrah), and then an even more delightful dinner at El Chile. Kelly read a story called “The Wrong Grave,” which will be published next year. I think it set the tone for the evening — when we weren’t talking about publishing, at dinner, we mostly told creepy stories (of ghosts and of brains, which can be just as scary). It was, in fact, a lovely night.

Tomorrow morning I present a paper on Charlotte Charke in my bibliography class, and then it’s grading, more paper-writing, and more grading until mid-December. I promise to post at least once more before Christmas.

WFC is happening in Austin this weekend! I’ll be there on Friday and Saturday. I have no idea what to expect, as this is my first con, but I’m looking forward to it (and to meeting lots of people I’ve only corresponded with before!). If you’re coming to town for WFC and haven’t yet checked out the unofficial guide to Austin that M. Thomas and I put together, do!

If you’re hanging around Austin after the con, or if you’re local, please also come to Kelly Link’s reading at the Joynes Reading Room (on the UT campus) on Monday, November 6, at 7:30 pm. Kelly will be reading from recent work and answering questions about writing and publishing — and I personally guarantee that it will be a fabulous event.

One thing to note: The Joynes Reading Room is located in room 007 of the Carothers building on the UT Campus, which is essentially in the basement of the building. Visitors must enter through the east (courtyard) entrance.

Hope to see some of you there!

I ended up seeing The Prestige last weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. (No spoilers here, just general comments.) It’s a big movie in some ways, grandiose, and still not quite as good as Memento — it’s not as sharp or strange or haunting, less disturbingly possible — but mean, tight, and clever. It mostly made up for the awfulness of Batman Begins.

I’ve seen some comments about the movie feeling hollow, or failing to earn its emotional resolution. If someone could point out to me what emotional resolution Nolan was trying to earn, I’d be intrigued. It’s a story about life-warping obsession; it’s hollow for a reason.

I wanted one more turn in the story, though. Or, rather, I wanted the movie itself to pull a final sly trick on me, something I’d only realize later. Did anybody else want that, too?

My life-warping obsession, these days, is the eighteenth century. Here’s what I’m working on now:

1. Charlotte Charke project.
2. Project for Lit. of Maritime Empire class — possibly Henry Neville, possibly Samuel Foote?
3. Teaching, as always. Lots of essays coming in tomorrow morning.
4. Label for small class-designed exhibit in the HRC: ellipses in Evelina.
5. Kelly Link’s upcoming reading! (November 6, 7:30 pm, the Joynes Reading Room at UT. More details very soon.) Wheee.
6. C18 interest group for the department? First idea: reading Clarissa in real time.

Someday, this blog will contain regularly-updated content. And by “someday” I meant “possibly in December, when I have a moment to think.” Right now, I have rather too much grading and reading to allow for original thought. So: here are a few lists. Some are hierarchical; some are not.

My favorite book-ogling experiences in the HRC thus far:

1. Chaucer, Cardigan manuscript of the Canterbury Tales.
2. Two of Oscar Wilde’s letters, which I transcribed for class earlier this week — both were just a sheet front and back, written from France, before his trial. In the first he asks a friend for a loan of ten pounds; in the second, to a different friend, he explains that he’s switched hotels because the previous one kept sending his bill up every morning with his coffee. Poor Oscar. He had lovely big messy handwriting, only a few words to a line.
3. Shakespeare, First Folio, Norton facsimile (as previously explained).
4. Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1891. Like a cracked whip on the page. One of the editions had a facsimile of a poem in the first few pages — and, shockingly, her dashes are just little dots! She had a big sprawly script, too — for some reason I’d always thought of her as someone who would’ve written in little cramped letters. I’m glad I was wrong.
5. Defoe, Colonel Jack: married FIVE TIMES to FOUR WHORES, says the long title, the capital letters rubricated. I think Defoe had some kind of rule for himself: the last phrase in a long title must contain a complete falsehood. (Crusoe does this, too — “rescued by pyrates,” my ass.)
6. Taylor’s Workes, with a triple dedication, and each dedicatee given his own delightfully obsequious epigram.
7. Hooke’s Micrographia — the illustrations!
8. Johnson’s Dictionary — the heft!

Noteworthy events of the last month or so:

• Having my first conference paper proposal — on the romance plot and Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote — accepted for the ASECS conference in March. There was much rejoicing.
• Finding an excellent space (the Joynes Reading Room) for Kelly Link’s upcoming reading at UT. More on this as it approaches.
• Having another dissertation idea pop into my head. Er, hello.
• Follett opening their first new flagship bookstore, Intellectual Property, right next to campus. They have literary criticism in their clearance section! And they gave me a free tote bag. I’m easily won.

The best things I’ve bought at the farmer’s market recently:

• squash blossoms (which I cooked this way, with the addition of a bit of cornmeal to the batter — they were excellent over rice with teriyaki sauce)
• banana and cinnamon empanada baked by a local Brazilian restaurant
• local spinach — I was in spinach withdrawal
• blueberry bran muffin

With T.’s encouragement, I bought okra today — at the co-op rather than the farmer’s market, but it’s local stuff. I’ve only eaten it twice in my life. This must mean something about my level of Texas acculturation, but I’m not quite sure what.

At flickr, I’ve posted the photos T. took at my graduation reading. Here you can see me from a T.’s-eye view, as I gesture toward my clip-on microphone to ask if it’s working. Doing two readings in two weeks reminds you just how weird your own voice sounds when projected to an audience. But doing the readings was more fun than I’d anticipated, and it makes me wish I had more stories suited in length and content to reading aloud. I’ll have to work on that.

***

Stories that do not read well aloud: documentary/epistolary stories.

Stories I am revising right now: “Selected letters …”

Things that are helpful: having a housemate who works as an intern at one of the best research libraries in the world. I had a question about how letters are catalogued at the HRC and all I had to do was pop down the hall to her room and ask. And now, if I can chase off the last bits of this headache, I’ll put the answer to good use.

I’m taking a quick break from the Boswell to read T.’s copy of Blood Meridian, so going back to work on my story of letters written by fairly genteel late-nineteenth-century American women will produce serious whiplash. If my blog entries suddenly feature lots of long, violent run-on sentences, you’ll know why.

Michener graduation dinner, 2006
Originally uploaded by Katharine B.

Marla, Michener administrator extraordinaire, took this photo at last night’s graduation dinner — I’m the one in pink, diving for the baked goods. I look pretty relaxed, yes? I was, and not only because of the tasty bread. Our graduation reading went well — I read a short-short and the novel prologue, and really enjoyed my classmates’ readings, since nearly all of us read different material this time. Adam Zaby, in particular, read a brilliant story about Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe. There were post-reading drinks at El Chile and then a trip to Carmen’s house to see the kitten she adopted from me months ago, now a sleek, scrappy, adorable teenager. After the obligatory cat visit we went to the dinner, which was, luckily, not rained out. ‘Twas a nice afternoon, though it didn’t feel much like graduation to me, as I’ll be back in class in August. But I’m tremendously glad I’m staying.

Today I turned in my last master’s form, and T. finished his grading, so summer has officially begun. I celebrated it in the dorktacular way I often do: by making a quick summer reading list, which you can find on the sidebar. I’ll update as I go. But now I’m off to re-read a short story that needs revision and to work on my novel synopsis, that joy of joys.

The practice reading was marvelous fun, even though we had no functioning lights for the outdoor stage and everybody after the first reader ended up reading by penlight. We had a good audience — maybe thirty, forty people, mostly friends and other writing students (who are also friends). I read “Daphne,” and it was easy and pleasant and fun; I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the act of reading aloud.

Our theses are due on Friday, but everyone was happy and relaxed, talking about parties planned for the next few weeks, looking forward to the official graduation reading next weekend and the excellent Michener-catered outdoor dinner that’ll follow it. It’s summer here already, but early summer, when the air still cools to the seventies at night and the evening breezes feel like cotton. I’ll be swearing at the heat and humidity soon, and then fleeing it for hot-but-dry southern Oregon, but for now I’m enjoying it, remembering how lovely last summer was, anticipating another.

But there are still a few things to accomplish before school ends — so tomorrow I figure out thesis formatting, and try to finish as much of my final revisions as possible. ‘Night, all.