The Raymond Roussel that most appeals to me is that of La Source, La Vue, and Le Concert, long descriptive poems written in perfect rhyming alexandrine couplets with alternating masculine and feminine rhymes. (Robbe-Grillet's novel Le Voyeur was originally going to be called La Vue in homage to Roussel.) I've read parts of these poems in French, and have the Antony Melville translation of La Vue. (Who is Antony Melville?) The flatness of the surface, the meticulous attention to imaginary details that have no real significance, the tour de force miniaturization, the suppression of emotion, the endless deployment of stereotypes, are endlessly fascinating to me. By ordinary literary standards these would be pointless or even mediocre poems. I'm reading Annie LeBrun's "Vingt mille lieues sous les mots, Raymond Roussel." There is also a pretty good book by Mark Ford on Roussel. I was disappointed in it because I didn't learn quite as much as I had hoped. It would be an excellent first book on Roussel for less fanatical readers, however.

***

I realize I'm blogging an awfully lot. It doesn't seem that much to me: I simply interrupt my reading, correcting papers, preparing class, etc... a few times a day. I'm actually quite reticent. For reasons I cannot wholly understand, this private diary of my thoughts is read by dozens of people every day.

***

For some reason I have not spoken yet of my opposition to the Iraq war. I don't really have great insight into this. While my opposition is visceral and knee-jerk on some level, it is not ONLY knee-jerk. I don't reject the pro-war arguments out of hand; they simply fail to convince me.