Quiet desperation

I have four essays to write on Thoreau, Emerson v. Wordsworth, Ulysses and T. S. Eliot. I also have to read To the Light House by Woolf: the amount of work I have to do is unbelievable.

I started reading Thoreau today. Whereas Thoreau’s journals record his intellectual and mental progress and will be read for time immemorial, mine are merely the forgettable, forgotten journals of a life of “quiet desperation” which will pass from the world after I am gone.

I at least expected a letter or two today in reply to the six I've sent since last Wednesday. But nothing. Books to read: The Outsider, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Ecce Homo, Under The Volcano, Demian.