Friday Feedback: Katherine Hepburn Double Feature Edition

It's Friday, so here's what the English Major is...

Reading: Well, same as last week, but I've also picked up Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. I'm only a little ways in. It's enjoyable--it's written in a pared-down style that always manages to be sort of hypnotically evocative (and that also persistently reminds me of Rousseau's paintings). I'm looking forward to the intertextuality kicking in full-force, which hasn't yet happened. My problem with the book is the same problem I had when I read Fear of Flying a few years back--though I know, intellectually, that this book predates the trend (of postcolonial reimaginings of canonical texts, in this case, frank memoirs of female sexual desire with a dash of artistic neurosis in the other case)--that it was, in fact, pioneering, groundbreaking, I can't help reading it in light of its successors, and finding it a little bit dull. Nevertheless, recommended. Every library worth its salt will have this book.

Listening to: Aimee Mann, Bachelor No. 2. For me, this is mood music. If you like to take contemplative walks (and don't mind the whole singer-songwriter approach), you need this on your iPod.

Watching: Nothing, out of respect for Six Feet Under. I'm breaking my fast tonight, though, with the first of a Katherine Hepburn double feature at the Loew's Jersey, an olde-time moviehouse (it's cheap, but then again, I have to buy a PATH ticket). Tonight is Philadelphia Story, tomorrow is an archival print of The African Queen. If you haven't seen them, put them in your Netflix queue, now.