September 6, 1982

9:30 P.M.

Went out to dinner with my father tonight and had a wonderful time! We had a most inspiring talk about our names. Then I got into talking about my book, Les Miserables, oh what a great book! Currently I’m only on page 864 but I am so hyper now that I just want to keep reading and reading! Victor Hugo is wonderful and I thank him wholeheartedly for writing that book just so Patricia A.Y.P.D.S. should read it! I use those four names because they are the ones which I am made of. Three of them may all be French and one safardic. Safardic is Spanish Jewish. Anyway, I am so grateful that fate allowed a great book such as that to fall into my hands! I want only to learn more and more form the world full richly of life, literature, languages and experience, people, places and things! I’m watching Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner now and Spencer Tracy with his white hair would have been perfect to play Jean Valjean. I’d like to write to Katharine Hepburn and tell her that. Oh, if only I could touch the man who wrote Les Miserables! Oh boy would that be something. Hugo seems immortal to me! I want to write to Mr. Maher, my old Spanish teach and tell him how I’m doing with my Spanish and tell him that I want very much to learn French and French history all because I read Les Miserables! I know I’m going on and on now. I will probably slow down and change my tune two weeks after reading Les Miserables but now I feel that the book will change me. I can’t explain the feeling that reading that provokes in me. I just can’t but its exciting me so! I’ve got to develop my powers of expression – its really hindering me otherwise. I just cannot wait to talk about Les Miserables in school! I hope we have a long discussion. I would like to go to a lecture on it and listen for hours and even do a term paper on the symbolism in it. I feel that Hugo does employ symbolism but understandably. He suggests things but leaves it for the reader’s imaginations although like Hawthorne things turn out only the way Hugo wants it to. Maybe for example Valjean’s white hair which turned white in less than an hour one eventful day. This can imply his purity of heart. The “Lark” Cosette may also be a symbol. I can’t wait to tell my mother that I read the book in one week and I want bother her and Kevin to read it also. There is just so much to learn from it!!!!!