Sobriquet 38.2

 

The following post was originally published on 1/1/08.

Again, I will keep the evening's entry brief. I did manage to finish revising the essay I have been sporadically working on the past week or so. I hope my editor chooses to publish the manuscript but, regardless of his decision, it feels nice to have gotten something completed. The dissertation continues to weigh on me, especially as what I had intended to be a short bit of work has become a month-long project. I'm not sure if it is because Age of Iron is not one of my favorite Coetzee novels or if there are other factors at play, but I cannot wait to move on from this book and the discussions surrounding it. Still, I feel that I have learned a good deal more about apartheid and South African society from these past few weeks than I did in any of my high school history classes.

In any case, I want to thank all of my friends and the other well-wishers out there that have been visiting this site and sending emails and commenting on my entries. In all seriousness, I do not know how I would have gotten through some of the reading load without the sense of obligation I now feel to report my progress to the handful of readers that have helped make this project work. Thank you all!

So, now that I have cleared my plate of other commitments, I hope to get a nice chunk of the dissertation written in the next week or so.

For tomorrow: Read a few chapters on Coetzee in the book-length studies and otherwise prepare to write.