So, in this rather weird transition between the semester and its end (a few meetings left), and also between working hard on the Liverpool presentation and working on the next paper, and having made myself a bit sick in doing so (gastro mostly), and trying to get a list of things done around the house, and sleeping too much in the day and too little at night – I'm resetting myself, bed by 2 am now, and some work out in the world tomorrow afternoon – I've been reading Robertson Davies' High Spirits. For the third time.
A minor book, a collection of occasional Christmas amusements, his yearly ghost stories for the time when he was Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. I think my eldest sister bought it for me one year, when I was completely excited by his Deptford trilogy – now you see where I first got my idea of Jungianism – and I remember thinking ooh, this will be fun.
It wasn't. I was bored, the jokes seemed drab, the stories dull and academic. I was hugely disappointed the first time through; I must have tried again, on the off chance it had gotten better somehow, a few years ago, and it probably wasn't too bad.
Well, the joke's on me now – I'm enjoying it this time, and have even laughed out loud several times. Which tells you something about me – I've finally reached an age where the humor makes sense (lots of old-fashioned academic in-jokes); the whole is pleasant enough, a bit like Dunsany's Jorkens stories (which somebody or other recently published complete in three volumes, which, yes, it's true, I bought). Very clubby, very cigar-smokey, very casual, but funny in their quaint way...
At this rate, I'll grow a white beard before long.
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