19 July 2002, 07:49

Admissions committee

back & forth

I have time for a morning quickie here since I set my alarm early enough to make myself breakfast, but, the sun having risen, I went off my feed. So I'm lying here in bed, listening to Janequin's ode to a breast: "T�tin, qui nuict et jours criez, 'Mariez moy tost, mariez!'" -- the image of a single breast capable of language -- capable, indeed, of rhetoric, will probably haunt my day sickly. Yesterday's commute song was the opening ostinato from Blue Monday, over and over and over whilst I tried to drown it out with Vanity Fair.

Can I tell you how much I adore Thackeray? You have no choice, of course, except for the awful hanging-judge choice of closing the window and doing your dishes or whatever it is you're trying to avoid doing by reading my journal. Thackeray is marvelous. Becky Sharp, c'est moi! If Meredith makes Victorianism (and Victorian sex) worthwhile and George Eliot is (grudgingly I say it) "Great", then Thackeray is the best-informed about the craft of writing, and has the least illusions about what it is to be a social critic. I, too, am fascinated by the Regency and its curious social retrenchments. Specifically fascinating to me is the idea of prudery as a youth-culture in opposition to the more open sexuality and bon-vivantism of the previous generation. The locus classicus for this is of course Mr. Woodhouse and his naughty, embarrassing riddle, versus Emma herself.

Who am I? In short, somebody who like heroines not many people would stand in real life: Emma Woodhouse, Becky Sharp, Emma Bovary, Margaret Schlegel, Mlle de la Mole (as far as I can work out her shadowy form). No comment about how I live my readerly life.

The job continues to suck life from me. I come home, slough off the work skin and throw myself into under-entertaining irrelevance (movies, or T*xt Tw*st, beer, or staring off into space). I had probably ought to put some kind of limits on the amount of time I can be expected to owe John Company. Speaking of which, I have a bus to catch.