Happy Christmas
I'm not going to leave off with that one!
Light posting this month has been mostly due to the year-end silly season at work, all kinds of stress from that medical scare, and the fact that every single night for the past five weeks has included some kind of children's activity.
I'm not complaining--it's not lost on me that these are the good times, and I'm thrilled to be getting a week off to spend with my family. Merry Christmas, everyone.
9 comments:
And happy holidays to you and your family K.
Thanks Smutty, hope the trip is going great.
Happy New Year, K,
Keep them reviews a-comin'.
Thanks, you too.
Mario Vargas Llosa coming up soon. So much going on in that one...
True that.
Which one? There are so many. I once heard Bill Gass compliment him on his failed presidential bid, saying, 'politics loss was literature's gain'.
His book on Flaubert is still the best one on the topic, even better than Julian Barnes. That's saying a lot because Flaubert's Parrot is a sublime piece of genius.
He deserved the Nobel. It's not too often I agree with their selection, especially of poets. Now, if they'd only give one to Haruki Murakami and then Cormac McCarthy.
Looking forward to your review.
On another discussion board, I heard many opinions similar to your own (resounding approval of the Nobel committee's selection this time). The War of the End of the World was most recommended as a canonical novel choice, so that's what I picked up. One of those books that makes me really want to get up and cheer for the general human condition, you know?
Cheer for the human condition? O No! I hope you've found a fitting antidote.
In Parise of the Stepmother is one of my favourites.
I'm reading John Gardner at the moment. It's a sort of pseudo-Gothic tale about monsters [from monstrum, 'a showing forth']. To my mind, religiosity shows inversely through the Gothic, especially the US variety, which I love. Have you read Shirley Jackson, Cornell Woolrich? You know Hawthorne, etc., of course. Anyway, it's horror and the grotesque that affirms my faith in the human condition, such as it is.
Best to you this new year. My niece says I absolutely must see The Book Of Eli. She's well aware of my celebrated pedestrian taste. Great to see you, by the way. We would've made a great gay couple, if we were, well, gay. Or something. Anyways...
Yeah, that'd be a pretty big hurdle. I could settle for "odd," although to tell you the truth, I'm just happy to have any friends at all these days. Happy new year to you too.
Haven't seen Eli--please let me know how it stacks up to dystopian scientific masterpieces such as Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow.
religiosity shows inversely through the Gothic
I like this comment, and it's funny to me how much milage the term must have obtained in 800 years. It's been associated with religious styles (and speaking of Llosa, I'd already been thinking of his backlands as something very remniscient of Victor Hugo's medievalism), and these days comes through like a picture negative of that. At some point it must have had something to do with Germanic people.
I've only read the Shirley Jackson short story that everyone else has, although I was recently reading about Shirley Jackson. She's been sort of on the list.
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