A site called the Bronte Blog has excerpted the opening of my Sewanee Review essay about Charlotte's novel "Shirley." You may be amused to note that the piece is highlighted as a "recent Bronte scholar paper." Hah! The excerpt itself proves otherwise. I mean, really: how can an essay that starts out by referring to Aeneas as a "pious sap" have anything to do with scholarship? Equating "writer about famous books" with "scholar" is just plain silly, and reductive too. And embarrassing. What would Foucault say? Oy. [Actually he wouldn't say, "Oy." But he might say, "Chut!"]

Dinner tonight: oven-fried chicken, dill and yogurt dumplings, coleslaw. Possibly a custard pie, if the hens can drum up the willpower to lay a few eggs. These freeloading chickens are starting to get on my nerves.