(no subject)

[proximoception]

May explain the trouble I've been having with The Odyssey, which I found quite interesting in my early 20s for its foreign qualities. The few really good parts are just as good, but all the repetitive stuff, the poetic anthropology basically, is putting me but right to sleep. Fast as Ruth Hall last year, or Uncle Tom's Cabin before I got into it. I'm fearing the same problem with the looming Aurora Leigh, which I hope there's no mandatory paper on. I've come to expect far too much from books; I break the hearts of all book-givers.