I am hot! hot! hot!

That title is meant to be truthful and sarcastic. Truthful because it is still very hot today. I think I'll be heading on to the library this afternoon so that I don't end up in whatever-the-state-I-was-in-last-evening this evening. Notice how yesterday I swore for the first time in my blog? :) Yes, it was done in French just because the religious aspect of Québécois-French swearing just makes it feel all the more sacred.

Onwards. Sarcastically because as I write my exercise for Lianne (that's really rather starting to look like the skeleton of my thesis), I realize the somewhat pretension of mine to write on an author who's yet to be explored by a bunch of other people who already have their PhDs. Man oh man! With Barnes I can just pluck quotations and "serious" names just like that, out of serious journals. I can write 'so-and-so thinks..." and "this-and-that mentions" and "so it can be concluded that..." But no, not with Stone. I must make everything up all by myself. And you cynical ones out there might be thinking, "Duh, isn't that what writing an MA's all about?" But I tell you "No! It isn't!" Actually, I'll confess something... I am a real good student. Always have been. A nerd, if you will. Well, I admit that the very first time I ever presented a book to class without having read it first was during my MA. And I got an A in the class! After this fake presentation I went down to the pub to have a beer and was explaining this to a few fellow students, feeling rather sucky and guilty. Then this one guy looks at me surprised and says, "It was the first time? I never read whole books! What's the use? You just scan over the titles, read a few interesting bits, maybe the beginning and end of a few paragraphs and that's all. Seriously, do you think anybody could finish grad school if we were all reading the entirety of all the books we're supposed to read? No way!" So there you go. There are techniques to writing a grad essay that you pick up along the way and I being the "I'm so hot I will write on writterly novels one of which I'll be the first to explore" have just realized that I've stabbed my foot with a fork. It's a beautiful novel, it really is. But my job is all the more difficult for it. And, seriously, which grad student (and prof for that matter) actually has the luxury to take time to actually think...