Still More Whores for Gloria
*sigh*
Would that Yours Truly had time to do naught but read . . . and read . . . and read and read and read. And read some more.
Year 2008 Non-Resolution #7: Increased Reading, continues to move forward satisfactorily.
The downside to this success is that, like most drugs worth taking, every high just increases the desire for the next fix. So much to read. So little time! And, appropriately for that particular choice of metaphor, today's eight-ball was served up by none other than William T. Vollmann, through the vehicle of his 1991 novel Whores for Gloria. It's a short, simple read, full of heart-breakingly sad, tender, sometimes violent and stomach-turning tales of street prostitutes in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.
Posted by earwicker at 11:59 PM
Most Tellurick Tom
There is truly no way that I--nay, not even I--can do justice to that which, in fits and starts and my own ignorance unyielding, I have just managed to "read." That would be Thomas Pynchon's most indescribably brilliant, intricate, unfathomably dense and hysterically funny Mason & Dixon. For although I have listed other books in my recent posts--quite marvelous creations to be sure--there is not one amongst them that compares to this freakishly nuanced, never-ending riff upon themes Sacred and Profane (The Sacred and The Profane generally being precisely the opposite of that which one might presume). Fuck You, Tom . . . for the shameless Inducement of many an Insomniackal Night.
---the PL
Posted by earwicker at 11:59 PM
Our Nemesis: Emesis?
You can say what you will, but the misfortune of others can be profoundly funny. Why? I don't know. Perhaps it's one of those "there but for the grace of god go I" kind of things. Perhaps it's because we're all born with a bit of moral twist and perversion. Or perhaps it's one of those irreducible things that can be observed to be true, but whose explanations miss the point of the exercise entirely and fall rapidly into the trap of Greedy Reductionism.
Posted by earwicker at 11:59 PM
Book Worm
Continuing in my New Year's non-resolution vein, Your Literary (Pseudo)Latino has just completed two more books:
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
As I am currently embroiled in the act of adding the epithet Skydiving Saboteur to my current title of Tango Terroriste, I have little time to elaborate upon these books for your general edification and amusement. I'll keep it short and sweet.
Posted by earwicker at 11:59 PM
Three Birds
A little visual skydiving humour (if the graphic doesn't work for you, try this link):
Posted by earwicker at 09:00 PM