I’m still reading Eagleton and have moved into the post-structuralism chapter. I wish I had more time to spend studying theory. I also wish that I had studied it before now. Watching my daughter (she’s in third grade) work on her spelling lessons tonight made me think about the idea of signifier and the thing signfied. There is something very powerful about watching Maggie work out parts of speech, about watching her form the connections with language in this very basic, very primal sort of way. Store. Order. Board. These were some of the words tonight. I was also reading E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel this morning. His humor surprised me, and the discussion of cavemen sitting around listening to the first stories again makes me think about how we (humans) acquire language and how our desires for stories is so deep-rooted in our consciousness. Now it’s time for reading…Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIIMH.
—Richard Farrell