A few quick notes; for the test, which we will be preparing on Wednesday, we need to have one question about the first part of Don Quixote, which should also be quoted/refrenced at least once in our 3-5 page Apology, along with some reflections on the previous Apologists. The Apology is due the same day that we deliver our short oral report on it.

I also think that I ought to see The Fall now, and know that Philip Pullman recommends Wallace Stevens' poetry and The Art of Memory.

And I'm a bit late on it, but here are two of my touchstones, with more potentially up for bloggage.

"O God, I have an ill-divining soul. Methinks I see thee now thou art so low as one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails or thou lookest pale."

-- Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 3 scene 5.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns."

--Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, last paragraph chapter 1.