Pallors of Reading Gaol

      Found this meme on Grapez, and figured I'd throw out my own answers, such as they are. Feel free to posit your own answers in the comments.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

      Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

      No, not really. Or, perhaps, yes, always. Wasn't every woman I've ever had a crush a fictional character to one degree or another?

The last book you bought is:

      Actually, bought several recently, including new (to me) hardback editions of the poems of John Donne, Robert Herrick and W.H. Auden, and several other collections, including an old Riverside anthology of Dryden.

The last book you read:

      In its entirety? Northrop Frye's The Well-Tempered Critic, which I'd not read in probably seven years. Before that, Mark Strand's volumes Blizzard of One and Dark Harbor, and before that Cees Nooteboom's The Following Story. Oh, and somewhere in there, Eliot's The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry and The Sacred Wood.

What are you currently reading?

      Blogs, blogs, blogs-- mainly student ones.   Alexander Welsh's Reflections On The Hero As Quixote, another one of my recent acquisitions. And bits of pieces of too many things to name here. (Such is the perenially-distracted life.)

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

      The Poetry and Prose of Wallace Stevens
      The Riverside Shakespeare
      Don Quixote
      The Poems of Thomas Hardy
      a collection of New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles

As to three people:

      If you think I'm answering this question, you're bat-shit bonkers.... Besides, I've read Sartre: maybe having those others on that island might make it into a perfect Hell, with an extra person as brimstone on the fire. In the interim, let's simply say that if forced my candidates would be judged on intelligence, kindness, nubility, and double-jointedness. And, perhaps, whether or not she could sing beyond the genius of the sea.

So, there we are. Probably terribly predictable, these answers of mine, but c'est la vie.