10/11/2002 - 5:46 p.m.

An author ought to write for

Know how bored I was today? I became thoroughly engrossed in Emma. I hate that book with a passion that defies description. I forced myself through Pride and Prejudice this past spring, and I still hated it when it was all over. I have nothing against Miss Austen's writing, it's just her people are so insufferable. I would like to give that ponce Mrs. Bennet a good talking to, and I would absolutely love to give that manipulating little Emma a kick in the teeth. There is nothing in the least loveable about the people in her stories. They're quite horrible really.

George Elliot made her characters quite nice, even though they really aren't. I love Maggie Tulliver to bits, and Tom, even though she's a spoiled brat and he's daft as a brush. And I like Dorathea, even though I couldn't like her if I met her. Perhaps it's just because George Elliot was writing just later, and had left much of all that gossipy manipulating nonsense behind. Although, she was also trying to write as a man, which she accomplishes slightly better than the Bronte's did, and that may have had some influence on things. Charles Dicken's knew she was a woman though, just from reading her work.

Charles Dickens dissapoints me to no end. His books are so clever, and his writing is so good that I want him to look well, the way Ebenezer Scrouge's nephew Fred always looks in the movies. However, you never see a picture of him without that awful old beard and poofy hair. I found one, once, of a very young Dickens, which is quite in accordance with how he ought to look, and I do my best to keep to it, but when the others will be the more prevailent; it's most disappointing.

I wonder what people think I look like? What do you think I look like?