I'm looking at the cover of my edition of Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem". The cover shows a b/w close-up of Joan Didion taken sometime in the early 1960s. She's wearing large, heavy sunglasses. Detached, abstracted, a hint of the sardonic. A perfect face for a woman who mastered a style based on those things. Joan Didion at the beginning of the Sixties. I'd have fallen for that expression, for the impenetrability of her sunglasses, for her belief that memory is a grave affliction.

This afternoon I was exchanging notes with Cynthia Gralla, telling her about Mavis Gallant's short stories, about "The Moslem Wife" and "When We Were Almost Young". I told her that Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo is doing her PhD thesis at McGill on the ideas of 'exile' and 'home' in the works of Nabokov and Mavis Gallant. Cynthia was impressed and intrigued. So I'll transmit her congratulations to Miss Ginny. I'm looking forward to reading Cynthia's doctoral thesis when it's published--- space and interiors in literary depictions of the Japanese demimonde. I want to read Miss Ginny's thesis, too.

American Analog Set is playing. Good Friday-afternoon music.

I'm looking again at that photo of Joan Didion. Oh, I'd have fallen for her if I'd been there in, say, 1962 or 1963. Didion is a tiny thing, barely over five foot one. My preference has always been for girls at least as tall as I am. But I'm prepared to make exceptions. I'd make one for Didion, just as I'd make one for Miss Ginny.

At The Drive-In... I just heard them today. A recommendation from a girl with green eyes. Post-punk and worth listening to. I do like them.

Last night I finally watched "The Informers". Pretty to look at--- great colours, great imagery. Badly miscast, I think. And too short--- no time to develop the characters. I'm not sure what it says to describe a Bret Easton Ellis story (he did the screenplay, too) as lacking in plot, but the film took the storylines from the book and just let them...evaporate. The vampire story arc was gone altogether--- the one real flash of wicked humour in the book. The film lacked...what? The kind of nihilism that made me love "Less Than Zero" when I first read it? Good '80s soundtrack, but no real sense of moneyed L.A. in the days of New Wave and David Hockney sunlight on the pool at the Beverly Hilton. The ending sequence was eerie-sad, but came too soon, came out of nowhere. I'll have to tell Ms. Chang about the film--- a disappointment.

A long weekend... I know where I wish I could be, and I know with whom I should be sharing the weekend. My own goals...hmmm. Watch films, sleep, sit a bit at the coffeeshop or at the Zeppelin Pilots' Club. I want to write and review French. Two girls of my acquaintance are doing immersion French this semester. I need to get my own French back. Just in case I ever am in Montreal...or Marrakech.

Note to self: ask Miss Ginny if ever she read "Lipstick Jihad".

Cristina is singing "Smile"--- one of my favourite Cristina Monet songs. Very much one I recommend.

From an essay by Joan Didion called "Self-Respect":

There is a common superstition that 'self-respect' is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations,and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.

Didion cites Jordan Baker from 'Gatsby' as someone who has that kind of self-respect:

...Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace: 'I hate careless people', she told Nick Carraway. 'It takes two to make an accident.'

I do agree. 'Self-respect' isn't the same as amour-propre, of course. And it isn't, as the moralistas would have it, a kind of synonym for virginity or at least monogamy. I like Didion's definition: 'a separate peace, a private reconciliation'.

Dark skies outside, and thunder. Rain soon enough, in from the northwest. I'll listen to Charlotte Gainsbourg or Neko Case and open a bottle of pinot gris and watch films. Or read about upper-class and expat Iran in the 1960s. [Make note: recommend "Journey to Kafiristan" to both Trish at KisssingVerlaine. And just maybe to Artemis at artemislives and Cynthia Gralla.] I do have a steak to cook first--- protein for the weekend.

A rather lovely girl told me this morning that she'd watched "Brick" and liked it. I'm glad about that. It's not a bad noir film. And I of course am looking forward to "Assassination of a High School President"--- a comic-noir pastiche that should be out this spring. I haven't taken a date to a film in almost a year, but I nonetheless like exchanging film thoughts and sharing films with lovely wicked clever girls.

So--- steak tonight. Then...films, I think. And pinot gris while I listen to the rain.