truepenny | displacement

Got through the Seneca chapter.

This chapter is the oldest section of the dissertation; I wrote it as a term-paper before I took prelims, and, although it's been revised and edited since then, the language still has a kind of hangover from four years ago: awkward circumlocutions, redundant words, an excess of qualifiers ("I think" or "it seems"). It was very hard to learn not to hedge my bets in my academic writing, not to leave myself a rhetorical escape-hatch. And I still do things like that, but I try to save them for when I'm really just offering an opinion or a wild-ass speculation, rather than applying them to every damn point I make.

No, it's not that bad. But it's depressingly hard work to fix. In another mood, I'd probably be enjoying this--there is a great deal of satisfaction to be had from streamlining a bad sentence--but I am so damn sick of this thing, so wearily familiar with every idea and interpretation, that I can't take any pleasure in it.

200+ pages to go.

I had roseate visions of finishing up the editing by tomorrow, so that I could take the ms to the copy shop at my leisure, and stroll into Monday morning with all my ducks in a row. Not happening, Gentle Readers. Not fucking happening. I'll have it done on time, but that sense of spaciousness and contentment is not going to be mine this weekend. Drudgery is the name of the game. Drudgery and obligation and