Satire, She Wrote

Three Literary Tidbits.

1. I love Evelyn Waugh. And I love how there are so many women writers that I love, that they are not a sub-category of writers, the best among the inferior blend, but that for centuries, women have been writing sharply and well. For every work of Ian McEwan I marvel (by the way, the librarian didn't know who Ian McEwan was? What kind of uppity, well-read character is she pretending to be? I'm not saying that everyone has to know him. I hardly know him. But I'm not a librarian), every Raymond Carver, Oliver Sacks, there are Alice Munro, Flannery O'Connor, and Joan Didion. I think it's because of Walty that I know so many women writers. I know so. Without Walty and the PuMan, I wouldn't be as good at pretending to be well-read. But back to Waugh. She lets her characters say such absurd things, and teaches me so much about the UK:

"The Welsh," said the Doctor, "are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing," he said with disgust, "sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver." From Waugh's Decline and Fall.

2. I have received overdue notices from every library I have been a member of since 1997. Before then, I think I may have had a clean slate.

3. I confuse Great Expectations for The Great Gatsby all the time, but never the other way around.