Month in Review: June

We've eclipsed the summer solstice. The year and all our plans for it have reached their crux, or so it seems to me. After a few months of lying fallow, I'm ready to begin again in earnest to plow up the fields of my mind and preparing again to sow and reap a new harvest. The ideas I've been quietly tending are coming together and I think I will still be able to hold to my earlier promise to have a complete story by November. The current form of this story is radically different than the story I shared earlier this year. The overall design is still the same, it is to be a story in images (perhaps wordless). The length has been substantially circumscribed, now limited to a mere 12 two-sided pages. The story I've come up with though is short and simple enough to work well in this limited scope. I've already sketched out the first three pages and am happy with them. I plan to post some progress pics in July.

I haven't done much reading this month, besides some skimming. I did manage to finish Joanna Russ' We who are about to, my first Russ novel. I wanted to like this one more than I did. I also read Michel Bernanos, The Other Side of the Mountain, which Selwyn Rodda recommended to me several months ago upon learning that I was a fan of David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus. There are definitely some similarities, and I enjoyed this one much more than the Russ, but still it is not a novel I loved. I've also been reading Ben Katchor's graphic novel, Hand Drying in America, for inspiration. Somewhat like my story, Ben's graphic novel is composed of single page self-contained stories.  

Instead of reading I've been watching some TV. I watched the first two seasons of The Leftovers as well as the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm very engaged in both series. I also recently started Russian Doll which I think is a very sharp comedy and one I look forward to following. There are too many other tv shows I hope to get around to eventually, but should probably ignore if I hope to make any progress on my other projects. 

Lastly, the third volume of Jesus The Imagination was published this month with my essay on Shelley. I still haven't received my copy although I imagine it is in the mail. 

I thought I'd wrap up with a list of potential lists. Below are four topics (each with a dozen or more titles related to it) which I hope to get around to reading in the relative near future: 

• Economics and Utopia (currently working on, to be finished this year)
• Finnegans Wake (next year begin lightly and intensify later)
• Language, Philosophy, and Philology (or, the difficulty of creating a system): Wittgenstein, Laura Riding, Sellars, Pierce, Hans Blumenberg (perhaps next year?)
• American Literature (in a few years)