The Last Class

Today I had my last class as a BA undergraduate. It was oddly anti-climactic, actually, probably because I have some exams to get through before I cease to be a student altogether. Also, I have to work on my Last Essay, which is going to be about Janus, God of the Gates, which epithet I find aesthetically appealing given the timing.

Also today, I finally finished the dreadful Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence. It's very highly thought of, and I hate it bitterly. I only kept reading out of bloody-mindedness, and I feel that any book which requires you to read the first three chapters twice, the Introduction and look it up on Wikipedia before you have an idea of what's going on has some essential problems. That, and every now and then I felt like I was reading what the Eye of Argon could have been if Jim Theis had been able to spell. F'r'instance:

Gudrun was as if numbed in her mind by the sense of indomitable soft weight of the man, bearing down into the living body of the horse: the strong, indomitable thighs of the blond man clenching the palpitating body of the mare into pure control; a sort of soft white magnetic domination from the loins and thighs and calves, enclosing and encompassing the mare heavily into unutterable subordination, soft blood-subordination, terrible.
D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2000), p113.

Note the use of the word 'loins.' It's Lawrence's favourite word, and I mean favourite, and I'll grant that many men have nice bottoms to look at, but if it's eye candy he's interested in, he could stand to give us a slightly broader view of men's other nice features also. Bah humbug.