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Where Did Last Week Go Wednesday
Where, though? It's a good question.
What I've Finished Reading
About three-fourths of the way through A Double Life, a wonderful thing happens. With a completely straight face, the author J. Michael Lennon appears at a party, in the third person, as "J. Michael Lennon, a young professor at the University of Illinois." Maybe it's not that wonderful, but I laughed and laughed. This shout-out to Mailer's "third-person personal" is all the funnier for being apparently egoless. Lennon appears a few times throughout the rest of the book, with no attention called to the fact that he is The Author of the Book You Hold In Your Hands, Dear Reader.
I enjoyed it a lot, though my fondness for Mailer is pretty abstract. Eventually I'll read his novels about Jesus and Hitler, though probably not Harlot's Ghost (the 1,100-page CIA novel that ends with the words TO BE CONTINUED). I followed with detached amusement his not-very-deft attempts to feud with Michiko Kakutani and be a Hollywood Intellectual. I didn't find his claims to totally genuinely 100% love all women as convincing as Balzac's. There is one really sad and nerve-wracking story in here, and that's the year Mailer tries to engineer a writing and party-going career for his paroled prison correspondent, Jack Abbot.
Mailer on Mailer in The Spooky Art:
You can always count on Mailer to give too much credit to himself even when he's trying to be self-critical.
What I'm Reading Now
If I'd picked up To Shape the Dark at a bookstore or library instead of ordering it, I might have balked at its multiple fancy fonts and slightly irritating introduction and put it straight back on the shelf. I would have missed out - not necessarily on a masterpiece, but on a thoroughly enjoyable anthology of sci-fi short stories about scientists. Editor Athena Andreadis congratulates her authors on having avoided the "as you know, Bob" style of writing, but they mostly haven't at all. I'm surprised at how soothing I find these fresh buckets of exposition being dumped over me one after another.
Favorite story so far: "Fieldwork" by Shariann Lewitt, about a geologist whose grandmother died trying to colonize Europa. That's the other, more obviously soothing thing about sci-fi: the illusion of a future. It's terribly cozy to think anyone could have a grandmother who colonized Europa.
What I Plan to Read Next
The Woman in the Water, a Most Comfortable Man in London prequel about A Deadly Serial Killer, arrived yesterday. I've been sort of sighing resignedly in its direction.
What I've Finished Reading
About three-fourths of the way through A Double Life, a wonderful thing happens. With a completely straight face, the author J. Michael Lennon appears at a party, in the third person, as "J. Michael Lennon, a young professor at the University of Illinois." Maybe it's not that wonderful, but I laughed and laughed. This shout-out to Mailer's "third-person personal" is all the funnier for being apparently egoless. Lennon appears a few times throughout the rest of the book, with no attention called to the fact that he is The Author of the Book You Hold In Your Hands, Dear Reader.
I enjoyed it a lot, though my fondness for Mailer is pretty abstract. Eventually I'll read his novels about Jesus and Hitler, though probably not Harlot's Ghost (the 1,100-page CIA novel that ends with the words TO BE CONTINUED). I followed with detached amusement his not-very-deft attempts to feud with Michiko Kakutani and be a Hollywood Intellectual. I didn't find his claims to totally genuinely 100% love all women as convincing as Balzac's. There is one really sad and nerve-wracking story in here, and that's the year Mailer tries to engineer a writing and party-going career for his paroled prison correspondent, Jack Abbot.
Mailer on Mailer in The Spooky Art:
Writers aren't taken seriously anymore, and a large part of the blame must go to the writers of my generation, most certainly including myself. We haven't written the books that should have been written. We've spent too much time exploring ourselves. We haven't done the imaginative work that could have helped define America, and as a result, our average citizen does not grow in self-understanding. We just expand all over the place, and this spread is about as attractive as collapsed and flabby dough on a stainless steel table.
You can always count on Mailer to give too much credit to himself even when he's trying to be self-critical.
What I'm Reading Now
If I'd picked up To Shape the Dark at a bookstore or library instead of ordering it, I might have balked at its multiple fancy fonts and slightly irritating introduction and put it straight back on the shelf. I would have missed out - not necessarily on a masterpiece, but on a thoroughly enjoyable anthology of sci-fi short stories about scientists. Editor Athena Andreadis congratulates her authors on having avoided the "as you know, Bob" style of writing, but they mostly haven't at all. I'm surprised at how soothing I find these fresh buckets of exposition being dumped over me one after another.
Favorite story so far: "Fieldwork" by Shariann Lewitt, about a geologist whose grandmother died trying to colonize Europa. That's the other, more obviously soothing thing about sci-fi: the illusion of a future. It's terribly cozy to think anyone could have a grandmother who colonized Europa.
What I Plan to Read Next
The Woman in the Water, a Most Comfortable Man in London prequel about A Deadly Serial Killer, arrived yesterday. I've been sort of sighing resignedly in its direction.
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In practice, there are authors whose writing I am delighted to read 1100 pages of at a go, and subjects I am overjoyed to spend 1100 pages exploring, but Mailer and the CIA are not among the happy few.
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Status: still unopened. :|
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I'm reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time right now, which divides its narrative between intelligent spiders and the last remnants of humanity, and the parts with the spiders are--so far (I'm about 40 percent in)--kind of in the style of a David Attenborough documentary, and it's great.
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Children of Time sounds fantastic.