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What I've Finished Reading
Nothing since Giovanni's Room and The Junior Novel: Its Relationship to Adolescent Reading; I've been busy in a diffuse way.
What I'm Reading Now
So far I don't like Pride of Eden, which has a beautiful cover and a totally infelicitous prose style. It's not even bad necessarily; it's just - blah. Not for me. I don't want it the way some people don't want mayonnaise on a burger. And there are all these scenes like this:
( HATH he now? )
There are a lot of these thud lines (generally as the final line of a section) and they're constantly jostling with a lot of clause-cluttered first-draft lyricism and not-quite-right metaphors to create the prose equivalent of white noise. Is there anything seriously wrong with it? Probably not. It's just relentlessy unsurprising in every detail. And if I wanted to be relentlessly unsurprised for 300 pages, would I pick up a book about a weirdo wildlife preserve owner with ghostly megafauna all over the cover? I would not.
What I Plan to Read Next
Giovanni's Room definitely stoked my appetite for sad fuckups ruining every life in the vicinity and musing about America, so it's time to read more Baldwin! Unfortunately the libraries are still closed, but fortunately there are a lot of bookstores in the world and many of them deliver. I ordered The Amen Corner from an almost-local bookstore that has temporarily replaced its beautiful tiny office-space location with a bad website. It arrived this afternoon and that's how I found out it's a play. Also on my shelves for the near future: Prairie Fires, something or other about Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Nothing since Giovanni's Room and The Junior Novel: Its Relationship to Adolescent Reading; I've been busy in a diffuse way.
What I'm Reading Now
So far I don't like Pride of Eden, which has a beautiful cover and a totally infelicitous prose style. It's not even bad necessarily; it's just - blah. Not for me. I don't want it the way some people don't want mayonnaise on a burger. And there are all these scenes like this:
( HATH he now? )
There are a lot of these thud lines (generally as the final line of a section) and they're constantly jostling with a lot of clause-cluttered first-draft lyricism and not-quite-right metaphors to create the prose equivalent of white noise. Is there anything seriously wrong with it? Probably not. It's just relentlessy unsurprising in every detail. And if I wanted to be relentlessly unsurprised for 300 pages, would I pick up a book about a weirdo wildlife preserve owner with ghostly megafauna all over the cover? I would not.
What I Plan to Read Next
Giovanni's Room definitely stoked my appetite for sad fuckups ruining every life in the vicinity and musing about America, so it's time to read more Baldwin! Unfortunately the libraries are still closed, but fortunately there are a lot of bookstores in the world and many of them deliver. I ordered The Amen Corner from an almost-local bookstore that has temporarily replaced its beautiful tiny office-space location with a bad website. It arrived this afternoon and that's how I found out it's a play. Also on my shelves for the near future: Prairie Fires, something or other about Laura Ingalls Wilder.
