Articles in “Random Photographs”

I’ve been trying desperately to clear some ongoing projects off my desk, because while this past six or seven months has been frantic, they’ve mostly been frantic because of things like Legionnaire’s Disease and the occasional tumble down half a flight of stairs. With the exception of the Mockingbird MS, I haven’t been doing much critical writing and the Mockingbird MS—while I’m very proud of it and worked extremely hard on it—isn’t in my usual field of research.

So I’m trying frantically to close off a couple of projects that have been neglected for far too long before the new semester’s teaching starts (which, admittedly, is next week, but I won’t be teaching much myself until week four).

The blog isn’t the only thing that’s being neglected, but it’s the area of neglect that makes me feels guiltiest (hence this, the latest in my ongoing series of “I shall begin blogging again soon, I promise!” posts).

Still, as you can see by the light radiating off that draft, the current article’s actually falling into place quite nicely, thanks to some reading on “Victorian thing culture” and a particularly fruitful metaphor. But don’t tell my students that last bit: not after how often I tell them to avoid metaphors in academic writing.

Sometimes, you see, I just have these brilliant ideas.

Like last night, when I had the brilliant idea of reading until past midnight and then setting my alarm for 3:45 am so I could watch the World Cup final.

And then, some three hours later, when I realised that I’d been awake for longer than I’d actually been asleep, I had the brilliant idea of shaking my phone (which randomises the Hipstamatic settings) and then taking some photos of the dawn, since this is at least the fourth dawn I’ve seen from well the other side in the last ten days.

So now, because I’m so generous and, frankly, exhausted, you get to share in this brilliant idea.

(If you’d like to share in my other brilliant idea and get up at 3:45 am tomorrow, feel free.)

Before deadline:

After deadline:

Yes, the Mockingbird manuscript is in. And it’s in, I might add, without the following embarrassing typos, which I spotted while editing:

• that the break to his arm left Jem’s “thumb parallel to his thing.” True (since it was also parallel to his thigh) but perhaps a little indelicate.

• that lawyers’ analyses of the novel have to be “sued carefully.” Curse you, inappropriately apt verb.

• that the lives of African Americans in the Deep South were marked by “sheet terror.” That, I’ll go out on a limb to say, may be the most tasteless typo ever committed to a document.