I’ve spent the last two days in the National Library in Canberra, drafting ideas for an MA dissertation on American literature. I need to send a proposal to the universities I’m applying to, along with the application forms. So far I have some vague ideas about connection and metaphor, the creation of identity through writing, and some random authors’ names: Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow. Bartleby, by Herman Melville, has one of my favourite quotes in literature:

Bartleby: “At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable”.

He says “I would prefer not to” to everything, but I especially liked that version of his catchphrase. It made me laugh. Also, I read an essay on Toni Morrison’s Paradise. The writer was quite critical of the novel; I think he said it relied on unexplainable mystical happenings too much, more so than her other fiction. I read Paradise about three years ago, and I think it was the one of her novels I liked least, though I don’t remember enough to agree or disagree with the writer. I thought The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon were better, though.

The library has air-conditioning, which is nice, because the sky outside is filled with smoke from the bushfires which are a few kilometres away from Canberra. There’s an orange-yellow light over the city, and the colours in the sky are spectacular: part of the sky is deep blue, the rest is purple/pink/black, and the sun is dark red. The library announcer has just passed on an emergency broadcast which advises people living in various suburbs to go home and either to evacuate, or to defend their properties. I walked around Lake Burley-Griffin earlier, and the wind coming from the north-east was really warm and strong, which is why the fires are coming towards Canberra. The smell of smoke has been strong yesterday and today, and breathing’s quite uncomfortable, especially if, like me, you’re slightly asthmatic. There’s an eerie feeling in the city at the moment, very surreal.