Really, they're easy pickings at this time of year - this one was somewhere above the Silver Lake reservoir, when we decided to take a hiller route than usual this morning.
Because the arrival of The Furniture from England is imminent, I've been trying to clear out space in the garage - the story of my year so far, one garage or another - which has largely meant Sorting Books - many ghosts of my past, including the ghosts of Books of my Own, not, mostly, written, but encouraged/solicited by others ... one on Flaubert and Women (I'd forgotten about that!); an edition of Antony and Cleopatra from the point of view of its staging (really? - but I did do a fair bit of archival work on very over-the-top late Victorian and Edwardian productions, and then gave my notes to someone who did the real, responsible edition); an article on C18th art patronage (I didn't have a clue, at the time, where to start, so didn't, really); a Longman's annotated edition of Jude the Obscure (that never got off the ground at all, though I did do a NHC week-long seminar on it), and of course Italian Art 1890-1939, which I actually wrote, and which was due to be published by Oresko Books, around 1979-80 - and then they went bust. Do all academics have a graveyard of unwritten opuses rattling around like this??
That's an impressive graveyard of unwritten MS! Of course, you also have an impressive shelf of written and published MS! After you publish something, do you recycle your notes? I recently just threw out all my dissertation and 90% of my first book-related notes and drafts.
ReplyDeleteUmmmm - I have problems throwing out my undergraduate notes on, say, Fielding. Or - two large ring binders of notes on Marlowe (before arriving at my first job, I was told I'd be giving lectures on Marlowe. Of course). Or my O-level History of Art, notebook, from 1969-70, which reminds me, all too vividly, that I still seem to be spouting the same ideas about C18th landscape paintings. Notes for actual *books*??? I think I have attachment anxieties.
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