For the Spectator on the day after the Emmys I go full Myra Breckinridge and deconstruct the EGOT. Do we use awards to mask the fact that actor publicity has gone downhill? Should more stars go to war? All this and more!
(Really having a Star is Born moment, used to psychobabble on this blog about many things including Graham Greene. I’m still psychobabbling, but now for the very publication once overseen in part by one Graham Greene*… After I emailed in my Spectator internship application I went ‘Hahaha that’s never going to happen’ and closed the tab)
In other news:
I finished my uni essay on Eileen Chang’s Golden Cangue. I really admire Chang for her integration of the Dream of the Red Chamber universe and the Western modernist universe. So much is lost if you haven’t read the Cao Xueqin novel and get into Chang purely as a modernist author (this is an issue with my university - progression of modules doesn’t make sense, all info is scattered). I end up arguing that Cangue, with its multiple renderings of the same traditional poetic symbol, is meant as a biography of written Chinese itself. Plan to repost here but only if it gets a good grade 🤫
I’m still working on another uni essay, about the early Daoists and their conception of naturalism. Probably won’t repost because it’s not as fun. Some of the Daodejing is a good read though
I looooove Midnight’s Children. Magical realism has been redeemed. Rushdie’s writing doesn’t read like ad copy, even though he wrote the book while quite literally working in advertising. No excuses for the Allende translation I read.
*It’s all fine - his controversial Shirley Temple comments were for a different and less significant magazine