Inauguration day in London

I have been awful about posting regularly--I suppose I should have thought that would happen at some point, with all the books I need to read for my master's program. I thought I would start again by telling how I spent yesterday, inauguration day, in London.

Oddly enough, Madame Tussaud's offered free admission to all Americans yesterday in honor of President Obama's inauguration--they were unveiling their new Obama wax figure. I went with Jen, a friend of mine from university. Normally, tickets are £25 per person. Does that seem like a fair price for a few rooms of wax figures, a tiny haunted house, and a short animated film about aliens obsessed with celebrities? One would think that with all the money they make from selling over-priced pictures, candy and souvenirs, the admission price at least could be under 10 pounds. I was glad to get in for free!

Some highlights:

Audrey and I have breakfast at Tiffany's.

One of my favorite Shakespearean actors.

Having a chat with Steven Spielberg.

Being spooky with Alfred Hitchcock.

Practicing my regal pose with Henry VIII.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Albert.

The Bard himself, back from the dead.

Speaking of back from the dead...

And, finally, the man of the hour himself.

After all this excitement, I went home and sat in bed to watch the inauguration over the internet. But yesterday wasn't just inauguration day, it was also a friend's birthday, so as soon as the ceremonies were over and I had watched George W. officially leave Washington, I left too, to head to Covent Garden. We went to a restaurant called Belgo, a Belgian restaurant and bar. It was down in a basement, and the waiters were all dressed like monks. I tried both Belgian beer (raspberry beer? who knew?) and mussels for the first time (so good) and, of course, had a waffle for dessert. What a night.

A picture of the inside of Belgo. The man in the middle wearing all black is one of the waiters, dressed as a monk.

Trip to Oxford with some fellow Shakespeareans

On Saturday, some girls in my Shakespeare course convinced me to travel to Oxford with them for the day. Even though more than one of us was worried about finishing essays on time for this week, I think we enjoyed ourselves...

We ate lunch at a pie restaurant in a covered market in Oxford. I think it will be my goal for the rest of my time here to learn how to make these: in case you can't tell in the picture, that's mashed potatoes with a meat pie on top (mine was cider pork and apple, yum) and minted smashed peas on top of the pie, all drenched in gravy. True British fare. From left to right: Jen, Ashley, Amanda.

This is the largest room in Blackwell, supposed to be the largest bookstore anywhere. Three miles of bookshelves. Three miles! I bought a Shakespeare magazine.

Somewhere near the Bodleian library, Oxford University's famous and ancient copyright library.


A close-up of one of the heads.

The Divinity School, where our tour of the Bodleian started. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the rest, which was a shame.

The outside of the old part of the Bodleian.

St. Mary's church, just opposite the Bodleian.

Me outside the Eagle and Child pub, where the Inklings (including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien) used to meet every Tuesday morning for over twenty years (from 1939-62) to drink beer and read and discuss the books each were currently writing. They referred to the pub as the Bird and Baby.

The 'Rabbit Room' inside where the Inklings would sit every week. You can see a picture of Lewis on the far right.

Me and Jen in the Rabbit Room with our mulled cider. Worth going back to Oxford for.

Shakespeare tours London with a boy from Wales

An old friend (and ex-coworker) of mine--Robby, an Atlanta native now earning an IB in Wales--came to spend the weekend with me. We spent his first day here doing a walking tour of London.

Shakespeare at platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross train station.

Shakespeare at the British Library. It used to be part of the collection of the British Museum: to use the books, you would get to sit in the beautiful Reading Room in the middle of the museum. While the reading rooms in the new location (which opened in 1997) are still very comfortable and impressive, I don't think the Chinese feel of the exterior matches what the library stands for.

Shakespeare with Jeremy Bentham, the eighteenth century political philosopher who left his body to University College London to be displayed inside the university.

Robby outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, looking worried.

Shakespeare outside the Royal Courts of Justice, looking considerably more poised than Robby. (The hand is Robby's: don't worry, I didn't break any of my fingers.)

No matter your job, it's still who you know

Jane Austen is my sixth cousin eight times removed. I’m also related to John Steinbeck, Hans Christian Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Agatha Christie, George Orwell, Robert Graves and Elizabeth Browning. My mother is into genealogy, you see. And one of the features of Ancestry.com is that if you enter in your family tree, they can tell you which famous people you’re related to. Our list has an impressive number of writers; Mom wondered if talent can be inherited. I’ll admit, I feeling almost like coming from this long line of writers must legitimate me somehow. Almost.

Last summer I read Old School by Tobias Wolff. The first chapter talks about his anticipation as a schoolboy of a visit by Robert Frost to his school. He said that, as an aspiring writer, he wanted to have a "great" take him under their wing. Lay their hands on him. Give them their blessing.

It’s who you know, right? A lot of times now it’s not where you studied, it’s who you studied with. As an undergraduate, I wrote a thesis and asked Lee K. Abbott to direct it. When asked by a fellow student who was directing my thesis, I sometimes got this response: “Oooh, Lee K. Impressive.”

That undergraduate thesis was a collection of short stories that attempted to mimic Shakespeare’s writing process by using the sources he used for his plays to create my own work. I explained: if trying to learn how to write by studying a specific writer, why not go to the best? But maybe, just maybe, I was also hoping that some of his—what shall I call it? mastery? magic? mojo?—would rub off on me.

Harold Bloom calls this the “anxiety of influence.” Strong poets, he says (although this applies to other writers), will creatively (and/or purposefully) misread a previous author. That’s exactly what I was doing, and I’ll be the first to admit that I did not get anywhere close to Shakespeare’s level of genius. But I did pick up a few tricks.

I don’t know if I have it in me to be a “strong” writer. And even though I’ve been reading a lot lately about the theory of writing and about canonical works and what the next major novel is going to look like, I still have no idea. What precisely, for example, does Bloom mean when he says that we’re about to usher in a new theological age of literature?

I am reminded of reading recently on the back cover of A Dash of Style by Noah Lukeman one of the marketing quotes, calling the book a “pageturner.” It’s a grammar manual. Normally, seeing a quote like this, I'd assume that at least one person was really enthralled, no matter how bad I thought the book was, this was not the kind of book you would read straight through, much less not be able to put down. I would hope that this is an extreme example, but my gut is telling me that it's not.

These quotes on book jackets seem to have dropped a long way from their original purpose: they’ve always been used as tools to help sell the book, but now no care is taken by those who are expected to give them. (I wish I could ask that these readers would take the time to think intelligently about the books they’re commenting on instead of churning out the clichés of the book reviewing industry, but this might be too much to ask.)

Isn’t this just an exercise in proving who you know? An extension of Bloom’s theory even into the vast body of writers whom he would not class as “strong.” But it seems to me that they also want this laying-hands-on.

And really, if I were the focal character in Old School, I’d want Robert Frost’s blessing too.