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Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006

In New York Magazine this week, Jennifer Egan mentions 5 books she has found useful. Nice -- I have not read two of them, and have only read a smattering of poetry from a third. I am excited about going to see her read tomorrow evening.

Update: What a great, great reading -- Chapter 5 was a good selection. She said hi to me! I'm all flustered now.

posted evening of August 22nd, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Look At Me

Saturday, August 19th, 2006

I finished Look at Me today -- I'm in shock at what an amazing book it was. It reminded me very strongly, towards the end, of Vineland. Beautiful characterizations, and such a strong, clear voice! There were a couple of weak points in the plot, where the string of coincidences got to be a little hard to buy; but these passed quickly enough as I was swept back up in the glorious rush of the narrative. Off to find Invisible Circus, and her book of short stories.

posted afternoon of August 19th, 2006: Respond

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

🦋 Shared Experience

Ok, 2 answers for my shared experience question:

• I would like everyone to know the music of Mississippi John Hurt. It's a little silly but I get hassled by the fact that whenever the Blues comes up in conversation, people think about electric music recorded in the 70s and later, or possibly about electric music recorded in the 50s. Plus I want everyone to know this music because it's so good.
• I would like everyone to know American Splendor by Harvey Pekar, and the graphic art of R. Crumb. I think productive conversations would be possible if I could just refer to Crumb's vision of sexual inadequacy and everybody knew what I was talking about without any explication. This also goes for Pekar's work ethic.

I want to tag Roy Edroso and Dave Feldman.

posted evening of August 17th, 2006: Respond
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Tuesday, August 15th, 2006

🦋 Shared Experience

Okay, this is my idea for a "meme" -- it doesn't quite fit the questionaire model that's out there but whatever: what creative work or works (book, movie, music, painting, sculpture, etc.) do you wish was part of the vocabulary of everyone you will ever speak to? What prompted the question was me thinking about Look at Me, that I wished everybody had read it so I could use ideas in it as premises and assume people were going to understand what I was talking about -- this often happens with books I am in the middle of reading. But I want to generalize it a bit and take it outside the experience of reading a book and digesting its ideas. Anyway -- I am going to work on an answer and tag some people later on. In the meantime if you are interested feel free to write your own answers.

posted afternoon of August 15th, 2006: Respond

A note about Look at Me -- I really want Charlotte's and her brother-in-law's mutual antipathy to be explained -- it is so deep and intense, right now it is just sort of hovering over the story without contributing anything.

posted afternoon of August 15th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Jennifer Egan

I am reading Look at Me [SPOILERS FOLLOW] voraciously. Constantly adjusting my perspective as I read it, at times I am perched above the story looking down into it and thinking about its structure, frequently I am drawn down into the guts of it -- when Charlotte made her plan to get Anthony to start drinking again, I reacted with a wave of visceral disapproval; but when Charlotte made her suicide attempt I was only very marginally with her, thinking more about what would happen in the story around this event.

posted morning of August 15th, 2006: Respond
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Monday, August 14th, 2006

This morning I started Look at Me by Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep. I'm happy to say it is living up to my expectations so far -- beautiful prose and character development with occasional surprising insights.

posted evening of August 14th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Absurdistan

Friday, August 11th, 2006

🦋 The Haunted Boy

Tonight I read "The Haunted Boy", which is by far the best of the stories I've read so far in Collected Stories of Carson McCullers. The voice is absolutely flawless.

posted evening of August 11th, 2006: Respond

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

A really nice thing about Carson McCullers is her range. I said yesterday she was reminding me of J.D. Salinger -- and was reminded of him again this morning when I was reading "The Jockey" -- but not at all last night, when I was reading "Untitled Piece". All of it feels somehow familiar, but the linkages it is calling up are all over the place and most of the time, I am not certain where they are pointing.

posted morning of August 8th, 2006: Respond

Sunday, August 6th, 2006

Carson McCullers is a name I have always had floating around in my consciousness as somebody I ought to read and would probably like. I've always associated her with Flannery O'Connor as a female southern writer of short stories from the mid-20th century. But come to find out, she is not really like O'Connor too much. This is kind of out of left field but I'm thinking her writing reminds me a bit of J. D. Salinger's.

I have not read any Salinger in a number of years -- but the thing I remember best about it is the excellent description of people feeling discomfort around other people and failing to connect with them. And I'm picking up on that same discomfort as a major them in the few McCullers stories I have read so far. I think there is a similar way of using language too, but I might just be making that up. McCullers is (thankfully) missing the stuff that annoys me about Salinger -- the precious Glass family situation and the bogus mysticism.

I am wishing now, that I had read these stories as an adolescent -- thinking they might have been really helpful.

posted evening of August 6th, 2006: Respond

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