Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Thanks to the strange combination of Lev Grossman and Isaiah Berlin, I've had a sudden revelation. Normally whenever I want to do something or find that I don't know something, I wish myself more intelligent: I say to myself, "If only I was slightly cleverer, I could be a brilliant [mathematician, pianist, poet, or whatever my current obsession may be]..."

But, thanks to Julia in The Magician King, I've realised my mistake. My problem isn't one of native intelligence, for I find that I'm generally clever enough to do whatever catches my interest. Rather, I'm held back by my dilettantish lack of obsession: that, rather than focusing on my current interest for long enough to become good at it it, I'm all too often distracted by the next sparkly thing that catches my attention. As Berlin has it, I'm a fox. But a fox who wants to be a hedgehog. A hedgehog with many obsessions.

I've also finally realised that it isn't possible to know everything and read everything and be brilliant at everything all at the same time and that perhaps I ought to stop trying and just focus on a handful of things that really interest me. I wonder if this might just be a belated sign of maturity setting in?

For some mysterious reason, I've suddenly developed a bizarre craving for classic gothic novels. Since Thursday, I've read (or re-read):
( Rambling summaries )
I now have to decide whether I can be bothered to read Mrs Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, or whether I should move on to War and Peace — the new Penguin translation is supposed to be very good.

Ok, so, I feel like I'm trapped in the last series of Doctor Who: I've spent my entire day being haunted by lupine allusions.

First it was my colleagues discussing the WOLF method of archiving data, then an essay on The Bloody Chamber. This was followed by an American Gods reference to something that is, "not a god, but like a god, a bad thing chained up in those stars. If it escapes, it will eat the whole of everything", which is presumably supposed to be the Wolf of Fenrir. I wonder if the wolf might be the cause of the storm that everyone in AG is fretting about — I have this vague memory of Fenris turning up as great thundercloud at the very end of Weirdstone, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility.

And as if all that wasn't enough, I've just been skimming a Times article on the theatre production of Gaiman's Wolves in the Walls, which name checks both Angela Carter (the article is, inevitably, titled, "The Company of Wolves" — and I though my blog subjects were lamely heavy handed) and Aiken, author of one of my favourite series of childhood novels, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and its various sequels. The only wolves that don't seem to have come up today are Abner Brown and his scrobbling crew, but of course, now that I've just mentioned them, they have...

I wonder, is this what going mad feels like?