Three entries

from Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book. If Barthes and Perec were both reading this, it would explain certain similarities between their writing that I've always been curious about (probably not very deep delving into the question would get me a satisfactory answer - I will follow up on this when I am back in New York).

Refined and elegant things - A girl’s over-robe of white on white over pale violet-grey. The eggs of the spot-billed duck. Shaved ice with a sweet syrup, served in a shiny new metal bowl. A crystal rosary. Wisteria flowers. Snow on plum blossoms. An adorable little child eating strawberries.
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Cats – Cats should be completely black except for the belly, which should be very white.
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Endearingly lovely things . . . Things children use in doll play. A tiny lotus leaf that’s been picked froma pond. A tiny aoi leaf. In fact, absolutely anything that’s tiny is endearing.

Another thing

The aesthetics of love and hate in cultural criticism.

"I cannot use that microphone"

When I was in college, there was a sort of craze for the novels of Milan Kundera. I could never see the point of them myself - it is partly, I am sure, my natural contrarianism, but the philosophizing always seemed to me not distinctive enough to make up for the self-involved sensibility and the to-me-antipathetic argument about life and art: there is a sort of smug preciousness to Kundera's tone that rubs me the wrong way on a level more physiological than intellectual.

I am reminded of the mild antipathy those novels used to generate in me by this week's reading of Kundera's The Art of the Novel. It is a worthwhile book, but Kundera's authorial persona remains odious! Anyway, a few bits I especially liked:

Joyce set a microphone within Bloom's head. Thanks to the fantastic espionage of interior monologue, we have learned an enormous amount about what we are. But, myself, I cannot use that microphone.

And, preciously but pricelessly: "I once left a publisher for the sole reason that he tried to change my semicolons to periods." So dandyish, so self-absorbed: and yet I cannot help but sympathize...