i went to talk to teskey about presentations yesterday and he let me stammer on boringly for nearly half an hour while managing to make it all seem like a real conversation, which was most diplomatic and courteous of him. i wish i had clever things to say, or knew what sorts of things would interest him. it's all so intimidating, but it's also strangely comforting talking to him - i am not relaxed in the same way i can be when i see donoghue or sollors, but all the same, his corner office, tucked in a peaceful corner of the building, the silence, the relative darkness - his window faces away from the sun) and his quiet, old-school cordiality, and thoughtfulness, makes it seem a little like all the times i pop into nohrnberg's office on thursday afternoons and talk about anything, really, for hours and hours.

i still can't seem to make out teskey. i like him very much, and i won't mind admitting i'm a little besotted with him too. (r: you and galena could start a two-person fanclub!), but i also realise that people have such mixed reactions to him because he is considered very unreliable, and people warn he can be frustrating to work with. that, at any rate, is the strong consensus opinion going round the grad student community. not a nohrnberg, in other words. before i came here nohrnberg thought he may be one of the people interested in the sort of riddles/figures project i might want to continue. (marc shell is the other, i think, though i'm nearly as scared of him - and i'm sure he doesn't want to work with a wet hen.) so i'd rather wanted to know more about teskey, but i'm also wondering if it would be at all wise. gret rumour gan that someone feeling uncertain got the departmental secretary to look up everybody's committee lists and discovered that although he's on the committee of quite a few people as second or third reader, but no one has him as a director. "would you?" remarked one of the abds wisely, "no one wants to risk having someone so unreliable." (this was just yesterday i was told this, so i had rather mixed feelings.) and yet this doesn't quite fit in with his perfectly courteous behaviour - truly i think he is marvellous - and very, very brilliant - well, most of them are here - and a lot of them have great charm and attractiveness, but no one quite has that unusual courtliness that enchants me. but perhaps that's a danger too - he is so personally charming, so off-the-wall brilliant, that i can see that when disagreements and rebukes - on either side - both parties being unreliable - arise - it would be impossible to set things right again without it becoming a real rudeness. and one couldn't really make him out - nohrnberg, all gruff exteriors and human and humane within, is one thing, but how do you see through to behind impeccable but impersonal charm? what's behind that detachedness? what i want to know is if he's got real heart, because if he does nothing would matter in the least, even the unreliability might be mitigated.