Was taken aback today to find out that I have to take an enforced Leave of Absence from work due to our Malaysian jaunt. I can only go in to teach again on 1 April and have to socially isolate myself until then. I suppose at one time I might have found this a bit irritating, but in the light of the unfolding crisis it's easy to see the logic of such an order and, therefore, easy enough to comply. Also there are platforms to keep in touch with classes and so the ill effects in terms of the on-going progress of students are somewhat mitigated.
I suppose it'll also give me time to read when I'm not dealing with work-related stuff since there'll be not much else to do. I'm more than happy to spend plenty of time in the world of Sansom's Matthew Shardlake, and Dark Fire continues to grip, but I must say I was happy to get away from Antoine Roquentin, having finished Sartre's earliest full length fiction yesterday. Nausea is a brilliant novel, I have no doubt of that, but Sartre's protagonist is such a misery-guts that you wouldn't want to spend too long in his company. And that sort of ex-girlfriend of his - Anny - surely she must be the least fatale of all the femmes in French lit? When I first read the novel several decades ago I suppose I thought of their dialogue in the one meeting they have in the novel as sophisticated. Now it seems painfully pretentious.
In contrast, the segments with the Autodidact have a genuine sense of humanity which I think I missed all those years ago when it was the ideas I was trying to wrap my head around. The bit where he is humiliated in the library for making advances to the young boys is powerfully sad and shows Sartre can write with genuine feeling when he chooses to and you don't need to be overly worried about the meaning of it all, all the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment