I had a phone call with my old writing professor. She wasn't very encouraging. It seems UVA has moved on from me, if I was really even ever there. I love 'Doting,' it's a great, British, panicky, emotionally messy novel, full of the things I love in the art. 'Nothing' has the best first page I've ever read, but then gets dull, though never uninteresting or uncompelling. 'Blindness' is perhaps where I went wrong in my collegiate self-estimation. He wrote that when he was my age then, and he had control over style and just pure sophistication, pure ability to not write like he was actually writing. But, I guess, outside its extraordinary origin it is difficult, and sometimes overly simple. And yet it made me emotional. And more importantly it made me think of it when I wasn't there. The introduction is pleasant and well-written -- though containing imprints of stale academics -- and good artistic criticism. What's funny to me is that he, the author, fell into the cracks of the English canon almost consciously, as if it was where he wanted to go, which makes the happy components of the system dumb. Like would you really, if you believed in art so, not want to be an esoteric afterthought? Why would you angle otherwise, if it was so important to you?