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Jan. 9th, 2009 02:52 amJust past halfway through Suttree after...I don't know, a year? It's a beautiful book, but with no narrative momentum whatsoever and a large amount of extremely dense writing (usually even more beautiful). Sketches from a gnostic dropout-fisherman's album, almost. After this I'll be caught up on him--he'll join Crowley as the only living novelist of whom I've read everything, not counting hidey hole odds and ends. Roth stumped me with When She Was Good and The Great American Novel, and I've not yet dared open Letting Go though it's said to have its fans. I haven't made it through Carson's two prose books yet, despite their being clearly awesome.
Took stock of last year's reading--25 books, employing a charitably wide definition of "book". Not abnormal for the last few years but still depressing. Read lots of book chunks, also typical lately. I think I do read much more attentively now, at least. I read to possess, or at least more so--the longest human attention span is still pretty short, and mine's far, far from the longest. But I read to get and remember all I can more than get to what's next. A point comes when you feel you know what's next, when the bigger mystery becomes what the hell just happened, what the hell is ever happening.
Took stock of last year's reading--25 books, employing a charitably wide definition of "book". Not abnormal for the last few years but still depressing. Read lots of book chunks, also typical lately. I think I do read much more attentively now, at least. I read to possess, or at least more so--the longest human attention span is still pretty short, and mine's far, far from the longest. But I read to get and remember all I can more than get to what's next. A point comes when you feel you know what's next, when the bigger mystery becomes what the hell just happened, what the hell is ever happening.
