Ambitions for the day

Today will be successful if I stay awake in this afternoon's lecture. Not so tough, you may think, but I nodded off once or twice last week while my esteemed friend and colleague gave a fascinating case study of India's media history. In my defence, I was exhausted, it was stiflingly hot and the chair was comfortable. I thought I'd got away with it until Steve said something and my students tweeted it. Judging by the seminar though, I'd absorbed more than them…

Today should be easier: I'm actually giving the lecture. I'll forgive the kids if they sleep, perchance to dream but I should probably try to stay conscious. It's a lecture on genre and narratology, which is one of my favourite subjects, but it's for media/cultural studies students rather than literature students, so I'm wrestling with Police! Camera! Action! and Homes Under The Hammer. For light relief, I'm giving them this bit of Charlie Brooker in between Propp, Barthes and Genette.



What other excitement do I have planned? Well, I have some RAM to instal (thanks Crucial - cheap and very quick delivery) and a book has arrived: Tom Phillips experimental A Humument, which takes a bad Victorian novel and produces a new, weird one by blocking out most of the original text with art.

Here's a sample of the original book next to the same, treated page.

Mallock's A Human Document, weirdly, is now only known at all because of what Phillips did to it - original copies are worth hundreds of pounds.