My Wednesday is Much More Attractive
Jul. 24th, 2019 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
The Stone Raft is the story of how one day the Iberian Peninsula broke away from Europe and went drifting out to sea, to the consternation of many. I liked this premise so much that I bought the book immediately. However, I soon discovered that it was all written like this:
If your reaction on reading the above passage was, "Wow! I'd like 300 more pages of the same, please!" then maybe this is the book for you. I'm not sure that it's the book for me, though having written the above paragraph out twice I feel a little more reconciled to it than I did when I started.
In the end the thing I liked most about The Stone Raft was that after the group had been wandering around with a nameless dog for about a hundred pages, one of them thinks that eventually they will have to give the dog a name, "Fathful or Pilot or something," and after that, the dog is occasionally referred to as Faithful and occasionally as Pilot, but more often as Dog or the Dog. At the very end of the book, the travelers decide to name him Constant and he runs off soon after.
What I'm Reading Now
Giles Goat-Boy, by John Barth, whom for decades I have been mixing up, usually in some embarrassing public way, with the not-really-that-similarly-named Roland Barthes, neither of whom I have read. Soon I will be able to keep them straight in my mind, because John Barth will be The One I Read A Book By Once, linked forever with That Book Where Everything Is College and Orgies.
I am looking forward to this added value because, 150 pages in, Giles Goat-Boy is tedious as all get out. I feel bad now for knocking the one-trick-poniness of Pale Fire because at least that was a trick I enjoyed. And once again, I put off reading something too long and got old and crusty. If I'd read Giles Goat-Boy when I was seventeen, fresh off my Tom Robbins phase and hopelessly trying to plough through de Sade out of an obscure sense of obligation, I probably would have thought it was shocking and hilarious, and quoted it obnoxiously at parties. But I'm old, Gandalf. My days go bouncing irretrievably away from me like supermarket bouncy-balls into the storm drains of time. Every second I spend listening to the Goat-Boy hash out how best to take up the mantle of Grand Tutor and lead his benighted pupils through the Finals to Graduation (while saving the campus from a totalitarian computer and the looming threat of an apocalyptic Campus Riot III) is a second I will never be able to spend in any other way. And yet. I haven't written it off, because there's still time for it to grow on me, but I'm not having the rollocking time promised me by the Preface.
What I will say on behalf of Giles Goat-Boy: it isn't fifteen of them.
What I Plan to Read Next
Pavane by Keith Roberts is an alt-history tale of Catholic England, and much shorter than Giles Goat-Boy. I might also try to catch up on some of the books I haven't said anything about yet - and get back on the horse with Kristin Lavransdatter, which I had to leave behind when I left town because it was too large.
The Stone Raft is the story of how one day the Iberian Peninsula broke away from Europe and went drifting out to sea, to the consternation of many. I liked this premise so much that I bought the book immediately. However, I soon discovered that it was all written like this:
She isn't pretty, he thought, nor is she ugly, her hands are rough and worn, quite unlike mine, the smooth hands of an office clerk enjoying paid leave, which reminds me that tomorrow, unless I'm mistaken, is the last day of the month, the day after tomorrow I'm due back at work, but no, how can I, how can I possibly leave José and Joana, Pedro and the Dog, they've no reason for wanting to come with me, and if I take Deux Cheveaux they're going to find it extremely difficult to get back to their respective homes, but they probably don't want to go back, the only real thing that exists at this moment on earth is our being here together, Joana Carda and José Anaiço conversing in whispers, perhaps about their own life, perhaps about each others' life, Pedro Orce with his hand on Pilot's head, no doubt measuring vibrations and tremors no one else can feel, while I watch and go on watching Maria Guavaria who has a way of looking that isn't exactly looking but rather a way of showing her eyes, she is dressed in black, a widow whom time has consoled but whom custom and tradition restrict to wearing black, fortunately her eyes shine, and there is the blue cloud that doesn't seem to belong to this house, her hair is brown, and she had a rounded chin and full lips, and her teeth, I caught a glimpse of them a moment ago, are white, thank God, this woman is pretty after all and I didn't even notice, I was tied to her and didn't realize, I must decide whether to return home or remain here, even if I get back to work a few days late I'll be excused, with all this upheaval in the penninsula who's going to pay any attentin to employees who are a few days late in returning to work, one can always say there was no transportation. One minute she looked common, the next pretty, and now, right now, standing beside Maria Guavaira, Joana Corda looks terrible, My woman is much more attractive, Senhor José Anaiço, how can you compare your lady from the city, and her affectations, to this wild creature who clearly tastes of the salty air the breeze carries over the mountains and whose body must be white under that black dress, If I could, Pedro Orce, I'd tell you something, What would you tell me, That I know now whom I should love, Congratulations, there are people who have taken much longer, or never come to know, Do you know any such people, Take me for example, and with this reply Pedro Orce said out loud, I'm going to take the dog for a walk.
If your reaction on reading the above passage was, "Wow! I'd like 300 more pages of the same, please!" then maybe this is the book for you. I'm not sure that it's the book for me, though having written the above paragraph out twice I feel a little more reconciled to it than I did when I started.
In the end the thing I liked most about The Stone Raft was that after the group had been wandering around with a nameless dog for about a hundred pages, one of them thinks that eventually they will have to give the dog a name, "Fathful or Pilot or something," and after that, the dog is occasionally referred to as Faithful and occasionally as Pilot, but more often as Dog or the Dog. At the very end of the book, the travelers decide to name him Constant and he runs off soon after.
What I'm Reading Now
Giles Goat-Boy, by John Barth, whom for decades I have been mixing up, usually in some embarrassing public way, with the not-really-that-similarly-named Roland Barthes, neither of whom I have read. Soon I will be able to keep them straight in my mind, because John Barth will be The One I Read A Book By Once, linked forever with That Book Where Everything Is College and Orgies.
I am looking forward to this added value because, 150 pages in, Giles Goat-Boy is tedious as all get out. I feel bad now for knocking the one-trick-poniness of Pale Fire because at least that was a trick I enjoyed. And once again, I put off reading something too long and got old and crusty. If I'd read Giles Goat-Boy when I was seventeen, fresh off my Tom Robbins phase and hopelessly trying to plough through de Sade out of an obscure sense of obligation, I probably would have thought it was shocking and hilarious, and quoted it obnoxiously at parties. But I'm old, Gandalf. My days go bouncing irretrievably away from me like supermarket bouncy-balls into the storm drains of time. Every second I spend listening to the Goat-Boy hash out how best to take up the mantle of Grand Tutor and lead his benighted pupils through the Finals to Graduation (while saving the campus from a totalitarian computer and the looming threat of an apocalyptic Campus Riot III) is a second I will never be able to spend in any other way. And yet. I haven't written it off, because there's still time for it to grow on me, but I'm not having the rollocking time promised me by the Preface.
What I will say on behalf of Giles Goat-Boy: it isn't fifteen of them.
What I Plan to Read Next
Pavane by Keith Roberts is an alt-history tale of Catholic England, and much shorter than Giles Goat-Boy. I might also try to catch up on some of the books I haven't said anything about yet - and get back on the horse with Kristin Lavransdatter, which I had to leave behind when I left town because it was too large.
