Where Have All the Wednesdays Gone?

[evelyn_b]

Regular posting has not resumed! I didn't finish anything this week but Catullus (Frank O. Copley's hip-and-with-it translation style couldn't cope with the Roman marriage song; Peter Green fared a little better) and I've begun The Making of a Saint, a historical romance by the young W. Somerset Maugham that Maugham later pretended not to have published. My feeling so far is that Maugham was right to be embarrassed. It isn't lurid or cheesy, just a little boring. Some Renaissance Italians have ill-advised intrigues and affairs, in what is supposed to be a memoir but doesn't read like one at all. Maybe it'll pick up!

I'm also reading A Girl of the Limberlost, which is still wonderfully weird, and about which I owe osprey_archer another post. A young man friend has been produced for Elnora, along with his straw fiancee. The fiancee's deficiencies are so heavy-handedly foregrounded every time she's mentioned that she has become my second favorite character out of pure spite. My favorite is still Kate Comstock, who could have instantly become less awful at any time, as it turns out, if not for one thing. . .but there will be more about that soon.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

OH THE STRAW FIANCEE, that poor girl, what a thankless role in any book. How do young men become engaged to these girls in the first place? Perhaps they realize that the only way to attract a suitable heroine is to have a rival for her to vanquish.