READIN

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
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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

Saturday, August 5th, 2006

🦋 Southern authors

At last year's Unfogged meetup, I arrived carrying a copy of Flannery O'Connor's collected short novels -- I had been reading The Violent Bear It Away that morning, and I gave the book to John Emerson, since I had a couple of other copies of the same material. By a weird coincidence, yesterday morning I started reading Carson McCullers' Collected Stories, so I had it in hand when I arrived at the Unfogged meetup. I came away with the book still in hand though -- fortunate since it is looking like a great read.

I'm a bit pissed at The Gingerman (bar where the meetup was held), or at myself (for not divining that Gingerman would not allow children in) or something. My meetup experience only lasted until 6:00, when Ellen and Sylvia showed, at which point the weirdly hovering waitress informed us they had a over-21-only policy. So I only got to chat with Jackmormon and with Teofilo, too bad. We went over to the Pierrepont-Morgan library, where there is currently an excellent show of Rembrandt's drawings. I was very taken with his "Monk in the Cornfield", which could almost have been drawn by R. Crumb. Dropped by The Gingerman briefly on the way home, where I had a nice chat with LB and Becks, and got to meet Adam Ash.

posted afternoon of August 5th, 2006: Respond
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