After a severe shortage of sleep, Donne's Holy Sonnet 10 seems immeasurably profound.
I've been reading poetry in the middle of the night, with my eyes all bugged out from sleeplessness and an excess of insight. During the day, I read Haruki Murakami's collection of short stories, "The Elephant Vanishes." There's a wonderful story in there about insomnia. A woman gives up sleep, instead choosing to read and reread Anna Karenina every night.
O starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.
Anyone who knows who wrote that wins an imaginary prize.
And now I have to go write a letter.
I've been reading poetry in the middle of the night, with my eyes all bugged out from sleeplessness and an excess of insight. During the day, I read Haruki Murakami's collection of short stories, "The Elephant Vanishes." There's a wonderful story in there about insomnia. A woman gives up sleep, instead choosing to read and reread Anna Karenina every night.
O starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.
Anyone who knows who wrote that wins an imaginary prize.
And now I have to go write a letter.
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But I'm a big cheating librarian. There's this amazing full-text database of English literature--you can search for any phrase in practically the whole body of English and American literature. It's completely mental.
It's called Literature Online by Chadwyck Healy, by the way. Some books even have full color images. About a billion times better than microfilm.
A friend of mine turned me on to a truly mind-blowing writer--Richard Hughes. I'm halfway through "The Fox in the Attic" which is perfect because it's half set in Munich.