The READIN Family Album
Me and a frog (August 30, 2004)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

Although I have done it all these thirty years or more, although I live my life surrounded by other people who are always doing it, still I think that there are few activities so worthy of inspection as the reading of novels.

Juan Gabriel Várgas


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Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

🦋 The more he thought about it, the angrier he got

He'd had the sense, moments earlier, that Caroline was on the verge of accusing him of being "depressed," and he was afraid that if the idea that he was depressed gained currency, he would forfeit his right to his opinions. He would forfeit his moral certainties; every word he spoke would become a symptom of disease; he would never win an argument.
Digging The Corrections, finding Franzen's voice fits my psyche like a glove. I'm finding all of his characters easily inhabitable, Chip's anxiety, Denise's frustration, Gary's irritable paranoia... even the parents are easy to understand, identify with.

posted evening of January 11th, 2012: 2 responses
➳ More posts about The Corrections

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

🦋 Menardesque dream blogging

I was translating (just starting to translate, I was on the first page) into English a translation into Croatian of Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage. It seemed like it was going to be a magnum opus...

posted morning of January 10th, 2012: Respond
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Monday, January 9th, 2012

🦋 There's nothing quite like a real book

Documentarians Sean and Lisa Ohlenkamp went undercover to see what happens after closing time at Toronto's Type Books -- what they discovered may surprise you.

Thanks for the link, Lauren!

(Incidentally: some fantastic book and bookstore photos are to be had at Colossal Art and Design, where I found the Ohlenkamps' video.)

posted evening of January 9th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Animation

🦋 Dark outside

The moon is behind some clouds above my neighbor's house.

posted evening of January 9th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about the Family Album

🦋 Catachresis

via Bifurcaria bifurcata: Argentine sculptor Amalia Pica speaks with the Dalston Literary Review about a series of sculptures inspired by Juan García Madero's reference to catachresis in the final section of Savage Detectives.

Catachresis #8 (head of the nail, teeth of the comb, eye of the needle, head of the screw)

posted morning of January 9th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about The Savage Detectives

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

🦋 Retrato del infrarrealista joven

The Infrarrealismo FB page today features some grade-school photos of Mario Santiago Papasquiaro:

posted evening of January 8th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Roberto Bolaño

🦋 Macondo, St. Jude

The first chapter of The Corrections makes Alfred Lambert seem very much like José Arcadio Buendía; I wonder if there is anything to this parallel, if it will be further elaborated upon in the rest of the book. I certainly did not notice that the last time I read The Corrections; but then I would not have been looking very closely for such a parallel... When I'm reading about Alfred's metallurgy lab in the basement and about Enid's clearing away of his features from upstairs, and about the growing distance between the two of them, it seems to be shot through with echoes of García Márquez.

The gray dust of evil spells and the cobwebs of enchantment thickly cloaked the old electric arc furnace, and the jars of exotic rhodium and sinister cadmium and stalwart bismuth, and the hand-printed labels browned by the vapors from a glass-stoppered bottle of aqua regia, and the quad-ruled notebook in which the latest entry in Alfred's hand dated from a time, fifteen years ago, before the betrayals had begun.

posted evening of January 8th, 2012: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Jonathan Franzen

🦋 Abbey Road

At the Wooster Collective, a marvelous street painting:

posted morning of January 8th, 2012: Respond
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🦋 Rereads

So I am thinking (as 2012 rolls itself out before me like a glittering carpet...) that the READIN reading theme of 2012 might just be rereading. Somehow the Savage Detectives reread of the last few months seems to have primed me for getting new insight from books I am already familiar with... Rereading The Crying of Lot 49 last week set the course; and today it looks like I am starting to reread The Corrections (a book, it must be said, which owes a whole lot to TCoL49 if my memory of it is any guide).

Here is me reading The Corrections. Thanks for the photo, Sylvia!

posted morning of January 8th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Tsundoku

🦋 On doing things in a sexual realm counter to how things are supposed to be (whew!)

More news from your Republican party (and thanks for the link, Henry): At Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory speaks with some analysts of sex and of politics about the stridently anti-sex rhetoric coming our way from such as Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, at a time when America's Puritan sexual ethic is perhaps less in the ascendant than in the past couple of decades. One can only hope this is the year the panderers to reactionary "Christianity" will be hoist for their own petard. (As one has been hoping every election year since 1988 or therabouts.)

Also: Perry's lunatic belligerence makes for a nice juxtaposition with the crazy anti-sex talk. ...And on a more coherent note, Robert Reich talks straight about where Republican values are taking our country.

posted morning of January 8th, 2012: Respond
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