I'm going through one of those periods in which I find myself deeply interested in whatever crosses my path, especially in relation to various writers and musicians, and greedily want to read (or reread) everything and listen to everything. The state has a slightly manic quality about it, and very enjoyable it is.
Today, for example, in fairly rapid succession I felt a compulsion to read Dickens's David Copperfield again (and it's not even a novel I have a particular fondness for within the oeuvre); get hold of all the Faulkner novels in the Library of America editions and read the ones I haven't read - about two-thirds of the total; and reread Robertson Davies's Salterton Trilogy, mainly for the sake of the first novel therein which is about a staging of The Tempest. To be honest, I've got a feeling if I pondered hard enough I'll be able to recall a number of other minor compulsions felt on the literary front in the course of the day, but it's a bit tiring to even think of going there.
So the challenge is to just get on with the reading I've got going in the here and now without being unduly distracted - but since it's all gripping stuff that isn't proving too much of a problem at all. (One thing that's been in my mind, though, since I was triggered over the Faulkner: what was it Jack Connoly, my beloved 'A' level Lit teacher, had against the novelist? I mean, he utterly detested him for some reason. I'm pretty sure he called him sordid and disgusting - yet Jack hadn't he slightest problem with any other of the moderns and was something of a Beckett fanatic. Go figure, as they say.)
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