Claustrophobia

...Or, I’m getting the sense that D&G are into vampires, horror and the supernatural which could be a problem for me because I believe I may be faint-hearted.

Because of my work, publishers send me free copies of books from time to time. Sometimes what they send me makes perfect sense – new editions of books I’ve already used before, but sometimes the choices seem fairly random. I often read the random books anyway. I see it as an opportunity --a book that has literally fallen into my hands out of a box full of styrofoam peanuts.

I read Edith Warton’s The Age of Innocence because of this. I really liked this book a lot. It was like a glass vase – delicate and cleverly engineered. I liked its density and intensity. I’d like to think about how she accomplished that. I’d read it again…It was so still and close in one way and so dynamic in another. I think about it whenever I take off gloves or receive flowers.

I also got Bram Stoker’s Dracula from a publisher. I thought I would like it because I’d just read The Monk, The Castle of Otranto, and Frankenstein and I was on a bit of a gothic kick. But Dracula deeply disturbed me. It gave me nightmares. I was clawing for air, swimming up towards the greeny sunlight…claustrophobic. I actually gave the book away to MP because I felt I could not even keep it in my house. My friend J. laughed at me! But it would take a lot for me to ever crack the cover of that one again…I don’t even want to write about it anymore…