'It was horror and fear on the part of the publishers which kept this work, first written as the opening section of Leduc's novel Ravages (1955), unpublished in its original form until 2000 – and in French, at that. Leduc, a friend of Simone de Beauvoir (who also had a crush on her), had spent three years writing Thérèse and Isabelle– and it shows, in a good way. So when Gallimard said, in effect, "no way" in 1954 ("impossible to publish openly," said Raymond Queneau, of all people), Leduc nearly had a breakdown. The publishers had, in De Beauvoir's words, "cut her tongue out," and although the work was reshaped and inserted, piecemeal, into subsequent books (and circulated in a private edition among friends), it hasn't appeared in English before this edition.
'It's a brave thing to do, and if there's one good side-effect of prurience, it's that in the pursuit of something rude, good art can be discovered. (I remember being steered to Les Biches as a teenager by someone who had heard it was full of dirty stuff; I ended up discovering the genius of Chabrol early.) And Thérèse and Isabelle is, unquestionably, great.
'And its interest in the sexual side of things is crucial. Such affairs as the book describes happen; they are part of what makes people the way they are; and so they have to be written about. In this country, we have a particularly immature attitude to this kind of thing: just look at the smirking adolescence betrayed by the inaugurators and keepers of the flame of the Bad Sex Awards, a prize whose point has always been unclear to me – is it for good writing about bad sex, bad writing about bad sex, or bad writing about good sex? (The main point of the prize, it seems, is that some things simply should not be written about.)
'So here we have extraordinary writing about sex; and, more importantly, about love, and the way it makes us feel. "Now is a night of obstacles. Her smell belongs to me. I have lost her smell. Give me back her smell." Who has not felt like that, as the odour of the beloved evaporates from the sheets? "'I wish you would look at me when I'm looking at you,' she said behind me." Who has not felt a similar kind of possessiveness? "It's too stupid. A moment ago we understood each other." Who hasn't sometimes been astonished at the vertiginous nature of love, the way it is an unstable equilibrium, a magical but precarious balancing act? And: "My eyebrows brushed her eyebrows. 'It's incredible the way I'm seeing you,' she says." I don't think I have ever read physical intimacy better described, or evoked. (One thing that comes across pretty quickly is that this is a damned fine translation, that can't have been easy to pull off; and dispels any misgivings that the translated quote in the press release, from Libération, inspires: "Violette's prose, hirsute and grasping as always, throws itself into faces more spiritedly than today's provocateurs ..." Eh?)
'So we are, in fact, a long way from pornography, although perhaps not too far from what pornography (written pornography, that is) tries to do: which is to make us believe in plausible minds behind the genitals, so that there is some agency behind the act. Anaïs Nin, obliged to write porn to make ends meet, had a natural instinct to make it more "artistic"; here, the art is the point. And it's funny how the people who do this kind of thing best are the French.' -- Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
___
Further
Violette Leduc @ Wikipedia
Violette Leduc Website
'Reading Violette Leduc'
'Violette: ‘Anything unattainable, she wanted’'
'Qui était Violette Leduc, l’amie de Simone de Beauvoir ?'
Violette Leduc @ goodreads
''Violette' Evokes Exasperating Self-Pity, A Trait The French Like'
'Foreword to Violette Leduc’s La Bâtarde'
'Violette Leduc, une écriture née du manque'
'HOMMAGE À VIOLETTE LEDUC : À LA RECHERCHE DE L'AMOUR IMPOSSIBLE'
'Exploring Violette Leduc'
'Strange Bedfellows'
'SEX, FEMINISM, AND THE LOST GENIUS OF VIOLETTE LEDUC'
'On Violette Leduc'
'Violette Leduc, la scandaleuse'
Buy 'Thérèse and Isabelle'
___
Extras
Violette Leduc 1970
Littérature - Brève rencontre avec Violette Leduc
Violette Leduc parle de Simone de Beauvoir
Violette Leduc "La Folie en tête"
____
Interview with Sophie Lewis, translator of Thérèse and Isabelle
from Asymptote
When did you first encounter Violette Leduc’s work?
Sophie Lewis: I was lucky to be let loose on Dalkey Archive Press’s backlist in 2007, when I started working for them as manager of their London office. They had published Leduc’s La Bâtarde with an afterword by Deborah Levy. As we were promoting Levy’s work in the UK just then, I started to read everything by her, including that piece—and then I was launched on Leduc.
What attracted you to Thérèse and Isabelle in particular?
SL: It’s all about Thérèse’s voice—her heartbreaking but fierce and rebarbative attempts to be true in every sense, to her feelings and perceptions, to what she understands of others, to what she doesn’t understand but is trying to reach. There is also the attraction of the underdog—I feel strongly that groundbreaking women’s writing like this should be more widely available, but also particularly that the voice of a schoolgirl in a convent school, that of a person systematically repressed from a young age, should be allowed to speak.
Would you talk about Leduc’s place in French literature? There’s a sense, to me at least, with this new film about her life out now (Violette, starring Emmanuelle Devos as Leduc) that she is becoming a bit more widely read.
SL: I don’t know about more widely read—I hope so! Leduc is in the difficult position of belatedly, posthumously indeed, coming out from the shadow of Simone de Beauvoir’s championing of her. De Beauvoir did what she could to help Leduc towards independence as a writer, but Leduc remains in the shadow of a hugely celebrated, dominant feminist icon. In her lifetime she also struggled with a mental breakdown, so as a writer appeared to be silent for several years at a time. And she was refused publication by some of the male editors at Gallimard who were equally celebrated as avant-garde writers, so her story as a writer is one of suppression and blocking at many points, including by an avant-garde that rapidly moved to exclude her in favour of establishment standards. If people are now returning to what Leduc actually wrote, then she may at last overcome this and it could even be turned to her advantage.
Was your experience translating Leduc, who has her own distinctive style, different from your previous translation work?
SL: I was translating much of Thérèse and Isabelle alongside Marcel Aymé’s short story collection The Man Who Walked Through Walls. While my translation of Aymé just bounced along, my work on Leduc was very slow. I felt that I needed to make decisions about tense, about tone, about degree of disclosure for almost every sentence. There seemed to me to be an oscillation between an almost forensic, dispassionate detailing of thought and feeling, and a lyricism that aimed to paint feeling more passionately—yet Leduc would never intentionally sacrifice clarity or exactness. So I somehow had to marry the two impulses all the way. It was tough work.
Did you do any research to understand the peculiar environment of the novel?
SL: Yes. I already mentioned my major concern: keeping an eye on plain accuracy; that is, being sure not to flinch myself, knowing that Leduc was determined not to, even in passages of great delicacy or intimacy, over which the English language is much better at flinching than being honest. I researched writing on sex between women from a range of different sources, just trying to gather resources to draw on.
More concretely, I had to understand and visualise the spaces the girls were living and studying in so that I grasped it fully for the needs of the translation. For example, their “boxes,” these curtained-off bedroom spaces that worked something like a hospital ward, essentially provided them with rooms that were private yet penetrable, excitingly permeable, but also inspectable at any time of day or night. Perfect for bed-hopping as well as for escape, for times of abandonment as well as for spying, guesswork, and tale-telling. I ended up calling a Canadian Catholic boarding school in order to discuss terminology!
Thérèse and Isabelle is a quite radical, even explicit, work. Do you think this is part of the reason for its obscurity until now, or is something else involved?
SL: This is precisely the primary reason. Gallimard retained rights yet did not publish the book in its complete, unbowdlerised form until 2000. The publisher claimed to be afraid of legal problems, with some justification. It was probably also simply wary of attracting brickbats over the publication of a text that spends some time describing lesbian sex between teenagers at a convent school—several taboos rolled into one. Also, other parts of the work that Leduc had intended Thérèse to be part of were published separately, so the impulse to publish Thérèse and Isabelle was effectively repressed or put off in various ways. Leduc was never able to advocate for her work very effectively.
Do you have a translation philosophy that guides your work?
SL: Not really. I’m wary of translations that are guided more by the translator’s personal approach than by their feel for the text. I do occasionally turn down books for which I don’t think I have much sympathy—that’s a principle. I don’t have the flexibility (yet?) or the command of English or simply the ear to translate anything and everything. I’m much surer with some voices than with others. I think translators should have a commitment of sympathy to the texts they work on and be open about this. Of course I’m ready to work hard to capture and recreate a new or challenging voice. But there’s no gain in working against one’s personal linguistic grain.
In addition to Leduc, who are some other French authors you’d love to translate or would love to see translated into English?
SL: I’ve long been a fan of Pascal Quignard. I think his Petits traités should be translated and also his La Leçon de musique. I’ve also been reading quite a few Haitian writers recently. It’s impressive how many good writers seem to emerge from that particular small, troubled country. Kettly Mars is one who I think deserves translation and wider reading, but there are quite a few.
How would you characterize the general reception of works that have been translated into English from French?
SL: I suspect it’s not a very considered reception. I don’t think French writing is cool as such. People don’t go looking for it (though the existentialists are eternally very cool—so perhaps that’s enough for most readers). But they can get into it. Michel Houellebecq remains something of a bête noire for publishers of French writing in English—why do these oddly chosen giants dominate foreign scenes so? It’s hard to know. On the other hand, people do keep on reading French writing, steadily—and perhaps it’s healthy that they don’t think about its origins too much.
___
Book
The Feminist Press
'Thérèse and Isabelle is the tale of two boarding school girls in love. In 1966 when it was originally published in France, the text was censored because of its explicit depiction of young homosexuality. With this publication, the original, unexpurgated text--a stunning literary portrayal of female desire and sexuality--is available to a US audience for the first time. Included is an afterword by Michael Lucey, professor of French and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley.'-- TFP
'This is all the raw urgency of female adolescent sexuality: its energy and intensity, the push-pull of excitement, its dangers and glories, building to a coming explosion.'-- Kate Millett
'Read it in one sitting... Literally breathless. This first-person torch song for 'the pink brute' reminds us why French schoolgirls are the emblem for naughty passions as literary classics.'-- Sarah Schulman
'School-aged, yet sage in their desires, Thérèse and Isabelle called forth an endless night--a dark and delicate space for them to explore the complexity of their love. I have waited a very long time to slip back into the unexpurgated, delicious darkness with these iconic lesbian lovers.'-- Amber Dawn
____
Excerpt
We began the week every Sunday evening in the shoe room. We polished our shoes, which had been brushed at home that morning in our kitchens or gardens. We came in from the town; we were not hungry. Keeping away from the refectory until Monday morning, we would make a few rounds of the schoolyard, then go two by two into the shoe room accompanied by our bored supervisor. The shoe room at our school was nothing like those street stands where all the nailing, the shaping, the hammering send your feet hurrying back to the pavement outside. We polished in a poorly lit, windowless chapel of monotony; we daydreamed with our shoes on our knees, those evenings that we came back to school. The virtuous scent of polish that revives us in pharmacies here made us melancholy. We were languishing over our cloths, we were awkward, our grace had abandoned us. The new monitor sat with us on the bench, reading aloud and lost in her tale, gazing far beyond the town, beyond the school, while we carried on stroking leather with wool in the half-light. That evening we were ten pallid returnees in the waiting-room gloom, ten returnees who said not a word to each other, ten sullen girls all alike and avoiding each other.
My future will be nothing like theirs. I have no future at the school. My mother said so. If I miss you too much I’ll take you home again. School is not a boat for the other boarders. She might take me back home at any moment. I am only temporarily on board. She could take me out of school on a first day of term, she could take me back this evening. Thirty days. Thirty days I’ve been a passenger at the school. I want to live here, I want to polish my shoes in the shoe room. Marthe will not be called back home . . . Julienne will not be called home . . . Isabelle will not be called home . . . They are certain of their futures, although I’m willing to bet that Isabelle spits on the school each time she spits on her shoe. My polish would be softer if I spat as she does. I could spread it further. She is lucky. Her parents are teachers. Who is going to snatch her away from school? She spits. Perhaps she is angry, the school’s best student . . . I am spitting like her, I moisten my polish but where will I be a month from now? I am the bad student, the worst student in the big dormitory. I don’t care in the least. I detest the headmistress, spit my girl, spit on your polish, I hate sewing, gymnastics, chemistry, I hate everything and I avoid my companions. It’s sad but I don’t want to leave this place. My mother has married someone, my mother has betrayed me.
The brush has fallen from my knees, Isabelle has kicked my polish brush away while I was thinking.
“My brush, my brush!”
Isabelle lowers her head, she spits harder on the box calf. The brush rolls up to the monitor’s foot. You’ll pay for that kick of yours. I collect the object, I wrench Isabelle’s face around, I dig my fingers in, I stuff the rag blotched with wax, dust, and red polish into her eyes, into her mouth; I look at her milky skin inside the collar of her uniform, I lift my hand from her face, I return to my place. Silent and furious, Isabelle cleans her eyes and lips, she spits a sixth time on the shoe, she hunches her shoulders, the monitor closes her book, claps her hands, the light flickers. Isabelle goes back to shining her shoe.
We were waiting for her. She had her legs crossed, rubbing hard. “You must come now,” said the new monitor timidly. We had come into the shoe room with clattering heels but we left muted by our black slippers like phoney orphans. Close cousins to the espadrille, our slippers, our Silent Sisters, stifle wherever they step: stone; wood; earth. Angels would lend us their heels as we left the shoe room with cozy melancholy flowing from our souls down into our slippers. Every Sunday we went up to the dormitory with the monitor; all the way there we would breathe in the rose-scented disinfectant. Isabelle had caught up with us on the stairs. I hate her, I want to hate her. I would feel better if I hated her more. Tomorrow I’ll have her at my table in the refectory again. She’s in charge of it. She’s in charge of the table I eat at in the refectory. I cannot change my table. Her sidelong little smile when I sit down late. I’ve put that sly little smile straight. That natural insouciance . . . I’ll straighten out that natural insouciance of hers too. I’ll go to the headmistress if necessary but I shall change my table in the refectory.
We entered a dormitory in which the dim sheen of the linoleum foretold the solitude of walking there at midnight. We drew aside our percale curtains and found ourselves in our unlockable, wall-less bedrooms. Isabelle’s curtain rings shunted along their rail just after the others’. The night monitor paced along the passage. We opened our cases, took out our underwear, folded it away on the shelves in our wardrobes, keeping out the sheets for our narrow beds, we threw the key into the case which we now closed for the week, we put that away in the wardrobe too, and made our beds. Under the institutional lighting our things were no longer ours. We stepped out of our uniforms, hung them up ready for Thursday’s walk, folded our underpants, laid them on the chair, and took out our nightgowns.
Isabelle left the dormitory with her pitcher.
I listen to the tassel of her gown rustling over the linoleum. I hear her fingers’ drumming on the enamel. Her box opposite mine. That’s what I have in front of me. Her coming and going. I watch for them, her comings and goings. Were you tight? Got good and tight? This is what she says when I come in late to the refectory. I’ll flatten that sarcastic smile of hers. I didn’t get tight. I was practicing diminished minor arpeggios. She is scornful because I hide away in the music room. She says that I make a din, that she can hear me from the prep room. It is true: I do practice but all I make is noise. Her again, always her, again her on the stairs. I run into her. I would have undressed slowly if I had known she was at the tap fetching water. Shall I run away? Come back later when she is gone? I won’t go. I am not afraid of her: I hate her. She has her back to me. What nonchalance . . . She knows there is someone right behind her but she will not hurry. I would say she was provoking me if she knew that it was I but she doesn’t know. She is not curious enough even to check who is behind her. I would not have come if I’d known she would be dawdling here. I thought she was far away—she is right here. Soon her pitcher will be full. At last. I know that long, loose hair of hers, there’s nothing new about her hair for she walks about like that in the passage. Excuse me. She said excuse me. She brushed my face with her hair while I was thinking about it. It is beyond belief. She has tossed her hair back so as to send it into my face. Her mass of hair was on my lips. She didn’t know I was behind her and she flicked her hair in my face! She didn’t know I was behind her and she has said excuse me. It is unbelievable. She would not say I’m keeping you, I’m being slow, the tap isn’t working. She tosses her hair at you while asking you to excuse her. The water flows more slowly. She has touched the tap. I will not speak to her, the water has almost stopped, you will not prize a word out of me. You ignore me, I shall ignore you. Why did you want me to wait? Is that what you wanted? I shall not speak to you. If you have time to spare, I have time too.
The monitor has called us from out in the passage, as if we were in league together. Isabelle went out to her.
I heard her lying, explaining to the new monitor that the tap had gone dry.
The monitor is talking to her through the percale curtain: are you eighteen? We are almost the same age, says the monitor. Their conversation is cut short by the whistle of a train escaping from the station that we left at seven. Isabelle soaps her skin. Tight . . . Did you get good and tight? Who can say what she is thinking? This is a girl with something on her mind. She’s dreaming or else she spits; she dreams and works harder than the rest.
“And you, how old are you?” the new monitor asked me.
Isabelle will find out my age. “Seventeen,” I mutter. “Are you in the same class?” asks the monitor. “Yes, in the same class,” replies Isabelle, energetically rinsing out her wash glove. “She’s lying to you,” I shout. “You don’t see she’s making fun of you. I am not in her class and I don’t care.”
“Remember your manners,” says the monitor to me.
I opened my curtain a crack: the supervisor was moving away, returning to his reading in the passage, Isabelle was giggling in her box, another girl was up to something with her sweet wrappers.
“I have strict orders,” whispered the new monitor. “No visitors in the boxes. Each girl in her own.”
We were always under threat of an evening inspection by the headmistress. We would tidy our comb, our nailbrush, our washbowl, and lie down in our anonymous beds as if on a small medical ward. As soon as we had finished washing and tidying, we would present ourselves for the monitor’s inspection, neat and tidy and in bed. Some students offered her pastries, detained her with flattering sweet talk, while Isabelle withdrew into her tomb. As soon as I had recreated my nest in the cold bed, I forgot about Isabelle, but if I woke, I thought of her again, to hate her. She did not dream aloud, her bedstead did not creak. One night, at two o’clock, I got up, crossed the passage, held my breath, and listened to her sleeping. She was not there. She even mocked me in her sleep. I had gripped her curtain. I had stayed there listening. She was gone; she had the last word. I hated her between sleeping and waking: in the morning bell at half past six, in the low tone of her voice, in the splashing and draining sounds as she washed, her hand snapping closed the box of dental paste. All one can hear is her, I told myself stubbornly. I hated the dust from her room, when she let the duster poke under my curtain, when she tapped her fingers on our partitions, when she thrust her fist into her percale curtain. She spoke rarely, she made the movements required of her, in the dormitory, the refectory, in the rows of girls; she cut herself off, brooding in the schoolyard. I wondered what gave her cause for such aloofness. She was studious but without either self-importance or zeal. Often Isabelle would slip my tunic belt undone; she played cool if I grew angry. She would start the day with this childish tease and straight away retie the belt at my back, humiliating me twice over instead of once.
I got up, wary as a smuggler. The new monitor stopped cleaning her nails. I waited. Isabelle, who never coughed, coughed: tonight she had stayed awake. I blocked her out and plunged my arm up to the shoulder into the drab cloth bag hanging in my wardrobe. Hidden inside this bag of dirty laundry were some books and my flashlight. I used to read at night. That evening I got back into bed without any appetite for reading, with the book, with the flashlight. I turned on the flashlight, I gazed lovingly at my Silent Sisters under the chair. The artificial moonlight coming from the monitor’s room sucked the color from the contents of my cell.
I turned out the light; a girl crumpled some paper, I pushed away my book with a disappointed hand. Deader than a corpse, I thought to myself, picturing Isabelle lying stiff as a poker in her nightgown. The book was closed, the flashlight buried in the bedcovers. I put my hands together and prayed wordlessly; I asked for a world unknown to me, I listened, near my stomach, to the haze inside the seashell. The monitor also turned her light out. That lucky girl is asleep, lucky thing, she has a tomb to be lost in. The lucid ticking of my watch on the bedside table made my decision for me. I took up my book again and read beneath the covers.
Someone was spying behind my curtain. Hidden under the cover, I could still hear the inexorable ticktock. A night train left the station, left it to follow the monstrous whistle that was piercing the school’s alien shadows. I threw back the bedcover; I was afraid of the comatose dormitory.
Someone was calling from behind the percale curtain.
I played dead. I pulled the cover back over my head and relit the flashlight.
“,” someone called into my box.
I turned it off.
“What are you doing under your covers?” asked the voice, which I didn’t recognize.
“I’m reading.”
They tore off my sheet and pulled my hair.
“I told you I’m reading!”
“Quietly,” said Isabelle.
Another girl coughed.
“You can tell on me if you like.”
She will not tell on me. I am unfair to her and I know it is unfair to say that to her.
“You weren’t asleep? I thought you were the best sleeper in the dormitory.”
“Softer,” she said.
I whispered too loudly, I wanted to be done with this joy: I was elated to the point of pride.
Visiting me, Isabelle came no further than my percale curtain. I was suspicious of her shyness, suspicious of her long, loose hair in my cell.
“I’m afraid you’re going to say no. Say you’ll say yes,” gasped Isabelle.
I had lit my flashlight; in spite of myself I had some consideration for my visitor.
“Say yes!” whispered Isabelle.
She was pressing a finger down on my dressing table.
She gripped her gown cord, pulling the gown tight around her. Her hair tumbled down over her orchards, her face grew older.
“What are you reading?”
She lifted her finger off the dressing table.
“I was beginning it when you came in.”
I turned out the light because she was looking at my book.
“The name . . . tell me the name of the book.”
“A Happy Man.”
“That’s a title? Is it good?”
“I don’t know. I just began.”
Isabelle turned on her heel; a curtain ring slid along the rail. I thought she might be disappearing back into her tomb. She stopped.
“Come and read in my room.”
She was leaving again, creating a distance between her request and my reply.
“Will you come? Say yes?”
“I don’t know.”
She left my box.
I could not regain my breath or my routine. She went back to her bed, her refuge. I wanted her immobile, lying still while I left my bed, my refuge. Isabelle had seen me with the sheets up to my neck. She did not know that I was wearing a special nightgown, a nightgown all stitched in honeycomb panels. I used to believe that personality came from outside us, from clothes that were different from those of other people. My visitor had crumpled my nightclothes without touching them, without knowing of them. The silk muslin nightgown slipped around my hips with the softness of a cobweb. I put my boarder’s tunic on; I left my box with my wrists held tight in the elasticated cuffs of my regulation smock. The monitor was sleeping. I paused before the percale curtain. I entered.
p.s. Hey. ** Armando, Hi. Right now is not a good time for me, but maybe sometime in the near future. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi Dóra. I read some of your pieces yesterday, and I'm very impressed! It's interesting that the tumblr page has the 'My mind is a crowded place' subtitle since the pieces themselves have this great 'crowded' quality, and that combined with their kind of pell-mell, intense build/tempo is exciting, and is a very hard combo to pull off artfully, I think, which you have done really well. Yeah, a real pleasure, and I look forward to reading new pieces as they appear. And to getting to hang out with you too. Awesome. Have a swell Tuesday. ** Pascal, Hi, P-man. Wow, the online element of your collaborative zine is super interesting and excitingly configured. How do you work together, if you want to say? The meld between you guys is really good. Cool. Thanks a lot for letting us see it. Everyone, very fine writer and longtime d.l. Pascal is ... well, here he is to explain: 'I've been doing a collaboration with an artist over here - his name is erkembode - and we're about to bring out a ziney type pamphlet thing. There's an online element here.' You guys should hop over and look at the work they've done. It's very, very sharp.. Oh, thanks about that film. Is that the one that Dazed & Confused commissioned? Take care, man. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. She's still making films regularly, but I don't think they're getting much movement outside of France or making big waves here. Her very worked-on current face is very, very not a pleasant thing to look at. I think the AIDS rumors about her had also to do with her appearance/character in Guibert's novel/roman a clef 'To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life'. Your Greenaway piece is out! Great! Excited! Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein has written a piece (including interview) on/with Peter Greenaway regarding his super-anticipated new film EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO, which many are declaring to be this once singular and important filmmaker's comeback film, and reading David's piece seems like an awfully, awfully good thing to do, and I'm about to, and please join me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Herzog's 'Nosferatu' is really wonderful. You'll have true fun with it, I think. ** James, Hi, James. 8 or 9 days in Tokyo will be enough for you to fall in love with the place if you do, for sure. And I envy your getting to do Halloween there. That's something I very much want to do sometime. If you can find donutPony, and not that I have any say in the matter, but you're more than welcome to take him home as far as I'm concerned. ** Statictick, Thanks about the post, man. Hi, N. It's moderately chilly and gray and I don't have much to say either. High five. Sad you had to miss KK and Koestenbaum. I'm really glad the seizures have slunk back into their ... wherever. I hope that holds. Love, me. ** Sypha, Hey. Hong Kong ... interesting, but not hugely so. We mostly just walked around and looked at the buildings, which are either extremely new and tall and skinny or oldish (60s era maybe) and eccentric and colorful and very dirty. I'm glad the editing phase doesn't seem like it's going to be any great shakes then. Exciting. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Adjani in 'Possession' is one of the most bonkers film performances ever. I've never seen 'Cosmos'. I'll be interested to hear how that is. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Thanks! Is Hong Kong like Shanghai? One of the strange or unexpected things to me about HK was that large parts of it felt and looked like they could be anywhere in the world and had nothing overtly 'Chinese' about them, and then other parts were like being plunked down in an old Chinese movie or something. Very jumbled city, I thought. Thanks about the image stack. I know that sluggish, foggy thing very well. Let's race back into our novels. But I think you'll win. ** Liquoredgoat, Hi, D! Oh, yeah, I missed the comment. That happens. I need to remember to recheck for comments after I proofread the p.s. pre-posting. Cool slave responses, man, thanks. As for Adjani, 'Nosferatu' is great. 'Possession' is very worth seeing. Oh, sure, I'll email you, or email me if I space out, and let's do it. I saw on FB about the Arizona acceptance! Awesome news! Big congrats! One down and however many to go? ** Jeremy McFarland, Hi, Jeremy. That lodge was amazing. Almost worth flying all the way to Australia to stay there. Well, that's an extremely long flight, so maybe not, but you know what I mean. Touristy stuff? Hm. Not too much, actually. We did this, which involves walking on this long, raised walkway through the treetops of a forest, which I guess is touristy, but it was great to do. And we did this, which was this very long, kind of scary, mostly transparent cable car ride that ended up in a faux-historical tourist trap village. I think that's all. Cool that you like your classes. It's great that you're learning Chinese. And Theory and Practice of Rhetoric has an intriguing vibe. Being a Teacher's Pet status is a very underrated modus operandi, I think. Oh, there's not a ton to tell about the Leif Garrett hang out. Let's see. It was in the 70s, and I/he/my friend were pretty high, so ... We met up with him at some club, I forget which. We went back to my friend's place, hung out, played records, got high, talked. He was very into himself, kind of smart, good music tastes, .... My friend had had this dream-idea of getting him inebriated enough to have a three-way with us, but that didn't come close to happening. I don't know if he knows about my work. It's possible, I guess. I have no idea. I've never heard anything. My week looks like it'll be pretty busy, yeah. Lots to catch up on post-trip. But it's all good. You'll be busy this week, I bet. Love, me. ** S., Thanks for the welcome. I feel welcomed. I can imagine that you might be able to find strange boys in Bucharest based only on how strange some of the Bucharest-based escorts seem. It does seem like everyone I know who's gotten in Lacan is transformed into a different person by him. It's weird. An Emo story is always a good idea. ** Right. Today I try to turn your attention to a book by the marvelous French author Violette Leduc, and, of course, I hope I succeed. See you tomorrow.