Last day in London (for a week)

Simon and Nick being very wise. Richard Brantley came in moments after all of this and asked if we’d be slightly less loud. Then he apologized the next day for sending us to bed. I didn’t get the apology at all, since we, after all, were the problem. But he’s just like that.

Visual representation of how a conference paper gets revised two days before the event. Every item in the picture is utterly necessary.

It’s been a lovely time. Wonderful conference. I’ve been been at Symbiosis 2013 for the last few days in Uxbridge, where I’ve heard excellent talks and have had the opportunity to talk with so many fun and interesting people. My only bit of Anglophilia comes here: British conferences are much, much, more interesting and rewarding than American ones.

The conference organizers, Phillip Tew and Matthew Scott, deserve tons and tons of credit for making it an excellent time. I loved hanging out with Simon Hull and Nick Bentley, Lucia Hodgson, and one of my great mentors, Richard Brantley.

But Richard is one of the most generous scholars I know, in addition to being a very smart one who writes excellent things (like this one, which all libraries should stock).

Beyond that, these people have suppressed and oppressed my people for centuries, so I can’t go more overboard than I just did, unless I’m on one of Marlow’s boats on the Thames, full of horrible imperialists, and I can take a few with me.

Tomorrow I’ll have some lunch in Neal’s Yard or somewhere else in central London, then will be on the train to Portsmouth and the boat from there to France.

But London has acquitted itself very well this time. It might be my tenth trip here, maybe my twelfth. As a British literature scholar, it’s my necessary place. I don’t have as many good reasons to spend weeks at the British Library anymore, now that so many things have been digitized. But conferences are well worth it. The talks, the talking after the talks … All very excellent. And a wonderful Jeremiad from Robert Weisbuch about what we all need to do to make the humanities what they should be again.

And tomorrow … vacation.