Buried at Bobst

I've lately become quite a recluse. I can count on one hand the trips I've taken out of my Carnegie Hill neighborhood in the last month, and those were all out of necessity. I have seen friends, but typically for lunch and always on my turf.

The short of the long is that I've been busy. Damned busy, actually. Though my not-for-certain graduate school enrollment is still a year away, the GRE, and more specifically the literature subject test, is not.

The exam, if you're not familiar with it, is an extraordinary pain in the ass. There is no reading list. Passages can be taken, literally, from any surviving English or American text and any world text that post-dates 1925. There are unofficial guides--such as this one--that organize data from a handful of previous exams. The problem, however, is that they are all vastly different with the exception of the comparatively major titles.

It's true, many of the test questions relate directly to the passage provided. But in just as many cases they ask the victim to identify from 6 lines of text an author, time period and genre.

So I've been reading. Furiously. Will be for awhile. Please direct helpful offerings to me by e-mail, particularly if you're well-versed (har har) in classical poetry.