It's All About The Benjamins

Over the course of the weekend I tried, repeatedly, to sit down and write a decent blog entry. It was a decent weekend filled with excitement, ranging from spending time with my fiancé, seeing the movie Stealth, to witnessing our youngest cat, Cleta, negligently lose her catch--a sparrow--to her older, proweling sister, Smokey, who capitalised on her brief unattentiveness. I continue to read Asquith's Shadowplay with mixed feelings, though it is slowly turning into a love-hate relationship. It reminds me of a comment Dr. J made about Greenblatt over drinks last year: you figure with the learned, brilliant kind of research and knowledge these New Historicism critics/scholars possess they would know better than to make some of the blundering statements or assumptions they make in their books. Asquith, too, falls into this rut on a regular basis. After about 75-100 pages her arguments seem like a rap song; you have a sense of the intellectual rhythm or beat she is blaring into your mind's ear, though she often also flashes a dazzling show of her historical knowledge like it was 'bling-bling'. Just to remind you, of course, that she is 'street' credible (or to make up for her intellectual blunders) with her scholarly historical consciousness. Yep, I just compared a book on Shakespeare to rap music. I MUST be fishing desperately for ideas.