READIN

Monday, April 26th, 2004

Flags in the Dust -- the Bayard's Wild Ride section seguéd nicely into a chapter dealing with the return of Narcissa's brother Horace. I am having a little trouble with this chapter. Horace doesn't really seem that concrete or believable a character, at least when he is present and speaking. When his time in Europe is presented as a story, it is interesting and fun, and the high-flown language seems playful; but when he is moving around Jefferson and talking to Narcissa, it is just dreary.

posted afternoon of April 26th, 2004: Respond
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Friday, April 23rd, 2004

🦋 Bayard's wild ride

Last night and this morning I read the longest (so far) block of narrative in Flags in the Dust -- Bayard's odyssey: beginning on page 119 he takes Simon for a drive, scares him with speed, leaves him to walk home; then goes on to town where he gets drunk with MacCallum, goes to look at the stallion MacCallum is buying, rides the stallion, is thrown, is bandaged by Doc Peabody; then Hub and Suratt drive him out to Hub's place, where they drink more whiskey, and drive back to town; then he drives back to Hub's place with Hub, Mitch, and some Negro musicians, they get the bottle and drive to a city or town (apparently not Jefferson) where the musicians play and Mitch sings; then drive back to Jefferson (with Bayard going very fast and scaring the musicians, and stopping frequently to drink whiskey). The next bit is told centering around Narcissa but belongs in the same narrative block -- she is having dinner with her aunt and telephones Jenny to see if Bayard got home alright, and Jenny tells her he did not come home; when she retires (after receiving a visit from Dr. Alford), Bayard brings the musicians to her yard to serenade her and then they leave. Meanwhile an unidentified stalker (whom I believe to be Snopes) is lying on the roof of her garage, looking through her window. Wow! 50 pages later and still going strong...

posted morning of April 23rd, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, April 21st, 2004

Looking at the William Faulkner on the Web site at the University of Mississippi I found his address to the Nobel Prize committee in 1950 -- it is a speech I have read before but one well worth being reminded of.

It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

A difficult proposition for me to affirm but one which I hope and try to embrace.

posted afternoon of April 21st, 2004: Respond

Tuesday, April 20th, 2004

Flags in the Dust -- I am trying to pay attention to what reading mode I am in as I read each sentence -- this is an experiment with some potential to disrupt my reading experience and if I find it is doing so too much, I will abandon it. But if I am successful I think this extra level of consciousness about my role in the story will be very useful -- I am trying to achieve a meditative consciousness in reading. My hunch is that Faulkner is particularly well-suited to reading this way.

posted morning of April 20th, 2004: Respond

Monday, April 19th, 2004

🦋 Fluent narrative

I started a new book today; Flags in the Dust, by William Faulkner. It is the director's cut of his third novel, Sartoris, with over 40 minutes of previously unreleased Yoknatawpha footage.

I opened to page 1 and was almost instantly swept away by the lushness of Faulkner's imagery -- beautiful! I was seeing the scene inside my head like a movie privately screened, hearing the words like a bicameral narration. And as I read I would slip into and out of this state -- slip into it when I come across a particularly nice image, out of it when I realize I am not really understanding what is going on and I have to back up a paragraph or two to figure out where the story is.

This is a common experience for me when I am reading a good book. Some good books, e.g. House of Sand and Fog, I am in the "cinematic" mode most of the way through, rarely losing the thread. Some good books, e.g. Gravity's Rainbow the first 3 times I read it (well, the fourth time as well to be truthful), interruptions are much more frequent -- there is a lot more complexity and intricacy to the narrative. Both are enjoyable reading experiences; I would venture to say I'm more likely to reread the second type of book.

I am glad to be reading Faulkner again, he is a favorite of mine and I haven't read anything by him for a few years.

posted evening of April 19th, 2004: Respond

Monday, March 22nd, 2004

I finished Tender is the Night this afternoon. I was amused to see Dick ordering Black & White and water when he is with Nicole and Michael -- this is what Kurt Vonnegut ordered when he made his cameo appearance in Breakfast of Champions. And it is -- for that reason -- what I ordered the first time I was ever drinking in a bar, in Montréal, in January of 1988. I got the same response from the bartender that Dick gets -- I'm sorry, we don't have that Scotch, maybe I could fix you up with a Johnny Walker? To this day I have never drunk Black & White, after years of thinking based on one scene from one book that it was what the cool guys drink. I believe this evening marks the second reference to it that I have ever seen.

posted evening of March 22nd, 2004: Respond
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Friday, March 19th, 2004

I'm really liking Tender is the Night. The story of Dick's night in Rome (chapter xxii of part 2) just hit me really hard -- it's like Fitzgerald had identified and dissected all of my pretensions to originality, 40 years before I was born.

posted evening of March 19th, 2004: Respond
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Truth may be stretched thin and not break, but float upon the surface of the lie, like oil on water

Cervantes
Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter X

For some reason, this quote out of context reminds me strongly of neocon arguments in support of the Iraq war.

posted evening of March 19th, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, March 16th, 2004

I started reading Tender is the Night, by Scott Fitzgerald, yesterday. (Picked it up from a street vendor a couple of weeks ago but have been spending my commuting hours on crossword puzzles in the mean time.) It's fun. All the characters are ciphers to me (thus far) except for Rosemary. A nice mix of mannered comedy with something else -- there is an element of mystery or suspense present. A very gentle tension that really points up the jokes. I am about to go look at IMDB to check if there was a movie made of it but am going to say beforehand that I think Gary Cooper should have been in it...

And here it is! Nope, no Gary. Jason Robards is the lead. Jill St. John plays Rosemary.

posted morning of March 16th, 2004: Respond

Tuesday, March 9th, 2004

Ellen finished House of Sand and Fog today. She liked it a lot, for similar reasons to my own -- the clarity of the characters' portraits will take your breath away. One note she found a little jarring was the level of detail in the narration -- it does not seem plausible that the characters would notice everything around them so accurately, when they are portrayed as being disconnected from the world. I can see the validity of this criticism but did not react that way myself.

Ellen told me what the title meant, which I had been wondering about -- "Sand" is Moussad, "Fog" is Kathy -- I thought it was just a reference to the house being near the San Francisco Bay.

posted evening of March 9th, 2004: Respond
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