I was having an imaginary conversation the other day, and I was slightly thunderstruck to discover something disquieting about me. Not that I spend a lot of time alone, and I run through a number of imaginary conversations in my head–I have known that about myself for some time. But something more sinister. Well, maybe not sinister, but certainly some adjective that needs to be italicized.
I was talking about classic British literature, and I was naming some my favorite books from various authors, and none of the books were widely known or collegiately studied classics.
Charles Dickens?
Cricket on the Hearth.Thomas Hardy?
Under a Greenwood Tree.Rudyard Kipling?
Puck of Pook’s Hill.
And suddenly, in my head, I’ve got horn-rimmed glasses on (with plain glass, natch), a striped sweater, maybe a scarf, and some ironic headgear (maybe a “contemporary” fedora (::spit::)), and I’m talking about how everyone loves A Tale of Two Cities or Kim.
I’m a literary hipster. Which is almost as bad as an academic.
I was having an imaginary conversation the other day, and I was slightly thunderstruck to discover something disquieting about me. Not that I spend a lot of time alone, and I run through a number of imaginary conversations in my head–I have known that about myself for some time. But something more sinister. Well, maybe not sinister, but certainly some adjective that needs to be italicized.
Paragraphs like this are why you should be writing in someplace big, like the NRO’s The Corner.