three emails from nohrnberg though. some corrections to a badly mangled paragraph in the first print of the analogy, an email tantalising me with an amazing title of a paper he had once given (but not the paper itself, because of a great computer crash - i wonder if nohrnberg could do with a summer secretary. i could sublet my place here and live far more cheaply in cville, and i know i can type faster than he, and could probably also do nifty things on his computer and maybe turn all his old papers and notes into hypertext or something (which suits his discursive style much better, anyway.) and i have the advantage over other applicants of being reasonably good at deciphering his terrifying handwriting. - but the title, the title. the paper was given many years ago, and was on the connections between tasso and spenser and milton etc

"called something like Arturo Innamorato, Timias Furioso / Inferno Liberata, Paradiso Conquistada."

don't you just love the way his mind works in analogies? i would give up being here if i could just go back to being a disciple by nohrnberg's feet. also plenty of brilliant writing (preview of stuff that is going into a forthcoming publication - so i'm not sure if he'll let me quote it here) and also some discussion of the peter cook dudley moore bedazzled. i feel sure nohrnberg would like old harry's game, which i listen to every tuesday. (in last week satan was very angry with "bill yeats" for referring to him as a rough beast and demanded to know how can he be in a "prenatal slouch?" then satan, his sidekick demon (who glories in the name of scumspawn - surely inspired by lewis's wormwood) and the professor (who is a permanent resident of the underworld and likes to engage satan in philosophical debates) go to poets' corner (in the section of hell around the corner from writers' block) where they find jane austen surrounded by silly relatives, wordsworth chased by a crowd of carnivorous daffodils, milton being made to play blind man's buff. ("serves him right! he made a huge fortune out of me making his paradise series!") and after giving yeats a piece of his mind satan tapes his (yeats's) mouth up. (but surely, says the professor, that isn't much of a torment? satan: it is if you're irish.)

nohrnberg however won't be baited into more flower discourse (but it would be a great help to my social life! people are all too clever! you can't mean you want me thought an ignoramus! i pleaded to no avail.) i thought, he said shrewdly that he'd already helped me out with the difficult ones and that i had told him i had got the rest. maybe it's just that i am always on about flowers. second assault tonight.