What is it called-there must be a name for it-when feeling unlovable leads one to designate another as the most lovable? Obsession requires the utter unresponsivenenss of its object.

Spooky.

Struggling through Season of Migration to the North--dreams, knives, sex, and sandlewood--I'm thinking about history as melodrama, especially as it denotes exaggerated emotion. Moments or centuries, framed as tragedy or comedy, eventually we realize all was plodding along. But we continue to perceive and represent time as tragic or comic. The romantic, Salih's book might be arguing, is sacrificed to the spectacle. Love is impossible when others see a tragedy in mixed-race marriages, say, or when patriarchy dictates a wedding to end the comedy.

I've never had a theoretical impulse in my life.