Oct 15, 2003

A long time since I did this, mainly because I have been crazy busy but also I guess because I dont much like the writing I do as a blogger...it reminds me of the diary I wrote years ago (whatever happened to it?) when I was in prison....I couldnt believe that this priggish, self-conscious person had anything to do with me, but even so could never change the tone...it's funny I dont do this with emailing or even I think with letters (not that I ever write any anymore)...then I know who I'm talking to, now I am mainly talking to myself which is silly because it's unnecessary and affected and so I lose touch with myself....but really I am writing to a future self who might be interested in what I was doing in the past but that doesnt seem to help me with these problems of address unfortunately...T.S. Eliot said of writing if you only you get the tone right then everything else follows...
Reading: Stefan Collini's English Pasts (nicely written, I like his resistance to populisms, but why doesnt he get it at all about what drives cultural studies which he thinks is all down to a bunch of louche individuals' 'dissatisfaction'.
Also (for my paper in Otago) Thomas Arnold's Letters, which I'm getting into.