Writers Read

Today was less ambitious but almost as high-minded as yesterday: it was another library day. I’m going old school this week: early Stoppard and Beckett. And although I promised Aubrey I’d read Arcadia, it’s going to have to wait a little longer because it hadn’t been returned to the library I went to (somebody owes 15 cents) and I was feeling sick and didn’t want to shlep all the way uptown. I was at the Jefferson Market Branch which is very pretty in a story book kind of way, the staircase is in a clock tower, it has non-religious stained glass, and there’s no way for the space to be economically used for books. I have no idea what this building used to be but there’s probably a plaque. It doesn’t seem possible that it was a market. Anyway I picked up The Real Inspector Hound and other plays by Tom Stoppard and Samuel Beckett Volume III: Dramatic Works (it’s part of a very handsome set). By next week I intend to be more enlightened. They’re both linguistic masters, possible the greatest of their respective times and it’s about time I educated myself further, plus I’m watching too much TV and becoming too preoccupied with motion, I need to get back to talk or else I won’t write. (Plus I really like what I wrote after reading Krapp’s Last Tape, even if it is two pages long and requires the hanging of three actresses.)