This morning I worked on choosing our monthly quota of selections from our McNaughton plan, a service that leases popular new books to libraries. I don't know much about mainstream publishing so I relied on amazon blurbs and on the acquisitions clerk, who reads a lot of romance novels and diet books. In the afternoon I browsed through the review sections of academic journals looking for interesting items. Seems like I should be doing something else, like evaluating the strength of the collection in various areas or thinking about criteria for weeding.

This evening I started to watch The Lady and the Duke, Eric Roehmer's latest. In many ways it's a departure from his usual style. Typically he portrays contemporary Parisians negotiating relationships, but here he attempts a costume drama set during the French revolution. He decided to use video instead of film, which, combined with the fact that most of the movie consists of conversations taking place in drawing rooms, gives the movie an unfortunate resemblance to a soap opera. In most of his movies Roehmer eschews special effects, but here he creates a disconcerting stagey effect by superimposing live action over painted backdrops. His films have always depended on dialogue rather than drama, which can seem dull to us Americans; in the past I've enjoyed his stuff, but this one bored even me and I quit after twenty minutes or so. I started up Henry and June, about Anais Nin's erotic encounters with writer Henry Miller and his wife June. It was interesting to see Uma Thurman and Maria de Meideros starring together before the appearance of Pulp Fiction; Thurman is a famous sexpot but I found myself preferring Meideros' delicacy and innocence. Anyway, like other cases of adultery in the movies, Nin and Miller's infidelities seem exciting at first but then the painful consequences come to light and the movie ends with Nin returning to her husband. This seems true to life, but what would I know about it?

In the gym today I struck up a conversation with a professor in the political science department. He said "When I read about you coming here with a Ph.D. from Notre Dame I thought to myself, 'Why in the world is he coming here? What law enforcement agency is he running from? Which of his three wives is he hiding from?'" I had to sign inwardly at this reminder of my failure to make a go of it in academe. Perhaps I can dig myself out of here soon.