Progress!

[truepenny]

Dis. reading: Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580.
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Have finished editing Ch. 9. Assuming I can stay awake, will probably finish with Ch. 10 today, leaving only the unspeakable agonies of Chs. 11 and 12 before I can go through the whole damn thing on the computer one more time and put everything right. And then I can send it to my agent, and it can be his problem.

I am reminded of a passage from my favorite Edward Gorey, The Unstrung Harp:

Holding TUH not very neatly done up in pink butcher's paper, which was all he could find in a last-minute search before leaving to catch his train for London, Mr Earbrass arrives at the offices of his publishers to deliver it. The stairs look oddly menacing, as though he might break a leg on one of them. Suddenly the whole thing strikes him as very silly, and he thinks he will go and drop his parcel off the Embankment and thus save everyone concerned a good deal of fuss.

I tend to allude to The Unstrung Harp at random moments and in odd, devious, and oblique fashions. Because I love it, and it's all so true! *sobs* If you aren't familiar with it (or with the other works of the estimable and lamented Mr. Gorey), I highly recommend it.

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WORKS CITED
Gorey, Edward. The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr Earbrass Writes az Novel. 1953. Amphigorey. New York: Perigree-Berkley, 1972.

Comments

[renenet.livejournal.com]

I'm suddenly nervous that you live near so many bodies of water.

favorite lines

[jeviltwin.livejournal.com]

I'm always torn between

"It was one of Mr. Earbrass's better days; he wrote for so long and with such intensity that when he stopped he felt quite sick. Having leaned out a window into a strong wind for several minutes, he is now restoring himself in the kitchen and rereading TUH as far he has gotten. He cannot help but feel that Lirp's return and his immediate impalement on the bottle-tree was one of his better ideas. The jelly in his sandwich is about to get all over his fingers."

and

"Mr. Earbrass irritatedly wonders why anyone should
have had a fantod stuffed and put under a glass bell."

The first passage seems entirely telling of the strength of writing; on the other hand, stuffed fantods would irritate me, I think. ;-)

Re: favorite lines

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I actually can't pick a favorite line. I'd have to post the whole damn thing. My "favorite" tends to be whatever is most relevant to my personal situation at any given time. Frequently, it's "With pen, ink, scissors, paste, a decanter of sherry, and a vast reluctance ..." But I love The Unstrung Harp with impassioned partisanship from beginning to end.