13 Comments
author

Just looked it up. I will try to find a copy here. That job sounds like a setting for a Muriel Spark novel.

Expand full comment

I had a dear friend, now passed, who called me Countess, after the Yeats play.

Expand full comment
Feb 7Liked by Alexander Chee

These get better and better. I love them so much I'm going to try it myself, a twist on the journal intime. Did anyone long-ago and famously relevant write their ji in third person?

Expand full comment

You do speak pretty good English.

Expand full comment

My first job in London involved sitting in a pretty ricketty office at the top of an old Georgian house near Dickens' former home and sorting old book contracts. Ackroyd's London was one of thousands in the filing cabinets. I should finally read it... I was wondering the other day if I still had the attention span to reread Iain Sinclair's Downriver (an even denser, darker, dreamier London). Ackroyd might be more realistic.

Expand full comment

Definitely a field.

Expand full comment

Do you think of your name as imperial? Mine is Victoria and I am ambivalently conscious of its history.

Expand full comment