Late Fees

Inv #                         Description                         Amount
   479428 OVERDUE  Wings of madness [videorecording] / France 5 ; d     $0.75
   515070 OVERDUE  Le Dernier metro [videorecording] = The last met     $0.25
   515071 OVERDUE  The iceman cometh [videorecording] / produced by     $0.75
   515072 OVERDUE  Ich hiess Sabina Spielrein [videorecording] : =      $0.50
   537322 OVERDUE  Hits [sound recording] / Joni Mitchell..........     $0.50
   537323 OVERDUE  Aberdeen [videorecording] / Norsk Film AS presen     $0.25
   587193 OVERDUE  Aberdeen [videorecording] / Norsk Film AS presen     $1.25
   431123 OVERDUE  The Decalogue [videorecording] = Dekalog / direc     $0.25
   431126 OVERDUE  The Decalogue [videorecording] = Dekalog / direc     $0.25
   431143 OVERDUE  Eternity and a day [videorecording] / directed b     $0.25
   438041 OVERDUE  The book of illusions : a novel / Paul Auster...     $0.25
   451193 REQUEST 08-15-10 02:59PM: The West Wing. The complete fou     $0.75
   468248 OVERDUE  Jaguar of sweet laughter : new & selected poems      $1.75
   468249 OVERDUE  Ballets Russes [videorecording] / a Zeitgeist Fi     $0.25
   604098 OVERDUE  Ballet suites [sound recording] / Shostakovich..     $1.00
   604099 OVERDUE  Solaris [videorecording] / Mosfilm Studios ; Sov     $1.00
   615873 OVERDUE  Campo Santo / W.G. Sebald ; translated by Anthea     $0.25
   662380 OVERDUE  Hits [sound recording] / Joni Mitchell..........     $1.75
   662421 OVERDUE  Children of a lesser god [videorecording] / Para     $2.00
   667287 OVERDUE  What I loved : a novel / Siri Hustvedt..........     $2.75
   677610 OVERDUE  The West Wing. The complete fifth season [videor     $0.75
 

An image from Wings of Madness, listed above. A documentary about Santos-Dumont, the early aviator.

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 11:26 PM, David K. O'Hara <dohara50@hotmail.com> wrote:
Dear K,
...
Currently, I'm back in California, staying in my mother's spare spare bedroom and trying to get a handle on my future. Or trying to will one into shape. I've been applying for temporary teaching jobs out here (to no avail) and also to permanent university posts on the east coast and back in the UK, most beginning in January. I've yet to hear anything, though. Mainly, I'm just re-acclimatizing to old surroundings and trying my best not to fall into old habits, old systems of thought. I've been thinking a lot about the concept of redemption lately, primarily because, the other night, I happened to read Cynthia Ozick on the redemptive thrust of literature:

'The tales we care for lastingly are the ones that touch on redemption--not it should be understood, on the guaranteed promise of redemption, and not on goodness, kindness, decency, all the usual virtues...Redemption means fluidity; the notion that people and things are subject to willed alteration; the sense of possibility; of turning away from, or turning toward; of deliverance; the sense that we act for ourselves rather than are acted upon; the sense that we are responsible...above all that we can surprise ourselves...Implicit in redemption is everything against the fated or the static: everything that hates death and harm and elevates the life-giving...'   

Please do tell me anything you've found particularly inspiring lately. Again, even the smallest thing...

Personally, I've been a little bit obsessed with public libraries, falling in love with these old school American architectural lovesongs to the book. Seriously. I'd forgotten them. The quaintness, but also the wealth of real, intimate culutre. The kind of stuff that gets clouded from one's vision after three years in the Bodleian. A strange sort of giddiness totally absent in academia. 

Later the recipient of this email told me that she herself had gone to the library to look up this essay of Ozick's, but someone had torn it out of the book.