Web page visitors, and WH Auden
January 23, 2002 (2:35 AM) ( link )

Very interesting: it turns out that most of the people who visit this web page are not from Harvard at all. In fact, for most of them I have no idea where they come from. And, miraculously, I have passed the double-digit mark (in fact, I did so a while ago).

Reading continues apace. The Ark Sakura is all right: quirky, cleanly written, and very, very weird. The book is not really gripping, but it is interesting in the same way as an unusual toy: you don't know quite what it is, but for some reason your eyes keep straying back to it. I should have a review up in a day or so.

I've also begun pushing my way through Alan Moore's From Hell, which I began a while ago but never finished. Moore's prose in From Hell (which is a graphic novel about Jack the Ripper) is luscious but at times difficult to swallow. In particular, I find Gull's lengthy traversals of London to be stultifying stuff. But the artwork is a scratchy but somehow eloquent black and white (not quite as gorgeous as Frank Miller's work in Sin City, though), and the storyline is wonderfully byzantine. It should be good.

Finally, here's a really great quotation by WH Auden (from A Certain World): "For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don't like it." I will certainly try to keep this in mind while reviewing my books, since these five categories really do seem to encompass the whole of my judgments.