Wednesday, June 22, 2005 7:20 pm

Well, I can see that my pen is fading. I have already lost one pen, and one has gone dry completely, so the end of this one will put me on my last.

Today was usual. I again dined in the foul cafeteria. McKenna wanted to do something today, but I declined--perhaps I shouldn't have. I am short of money, and I had lots of homework, which, I am proud to say, I have finished altogether. Plus, I do so love to lie about reading.

Today I've finished Mr. Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree and Mr. James's The Turn of the Screw. I believe that Mr. Hardy would be an interesting friend--he seems sensible and clever. But oh! he is a cynic. He seems as well to have a very low opinion of women in general; he seems rather to expect from them pettiness and vanity and vascillation than the earnest, hard-working honesty displayed by his male characters. Mr. Hardy is definitely not a feminist. What must his wife have thought?

Mr. James I find to be childish and dishonest--his book is nothing but a ghost story, designed to terrify weak minds with its gothic setting and endless foreshadowing of doom. If it were a film, it would make a gross amount of money. The inherent theological issues of ghosts and demons, I suppose, could prove interesting, but it seems likely that Mr. James does not intend for matters of such weight to intrude upon his dark tableau. The book was not dull or unamusing; I suppose it's only that I look at Mr. James's work the way Herr J. S. Bach must view that of Mr. Elton John, for example: the work is formidable, no doubt, to those uneducated in its devices, but to those who recognize each slight of hand, it can have no power.

I am quite sure that, in spite of all this, I shall have dreadful nightmares about demonic children tonight.

At any rate, nothing is remarkable today, except that I have finished my homework, and will therefore (I hope) have none to take with me to Petersburg this weekend.

Oh, and also that my left heel has not ceased bleeding. I have had to rinse blood out of my socks for the last two days; I find a great gouge in the skin there.

And... there has been, as yet, no rain today!