Ground control to Major Tom: Ready for lift off.
The Abbot promised that I only had to get to page 300 and then my reading would take off and the Jest would finally make sense, I'd be awash in clarity.
Hallelujah.
In this Page 300 Promised land I'm reading about Poor Tony's Withdrawl From Heroin...
I don't know Abbot...the only consistency and clarity here is addiction...
But, hey, I'm at 300. I'm 30% through the Thick Book. Not bad. Should be done by 2010 (or the arrival of the Great Concavity - whatever the f*uck that is) - especially if I listen to Mr. Ashdale and continue to live large and bounce around in reading and in life...
Oh what does it matter anyway right Mr. Ashdale? We all just go the way of poor Yorrick anyway, right? May as well enjoy whatever pops up on the bookshelf of life and dive into that moment and enjoy and laugh...and laugh, like Yorrick...
We never finish everything anyways right?
Instead it is us who get finished off.
Unless we finish off ourselves.
And some guys finish off themselves before they finish that next infinite novel...
What did you guys think of that New Yorker piece? Do you buy the argument that dfw changed his meds so that he could think and write better and that that med change took him to a point of no return and took him from this world and left his next great novel unfinished and left his legacy basically resting on one piece of work.
So was dfw unfinished? Or was IJ enough? Did it say everything he needed to say anyway? Was IJ therefore "infinite"?
Prior to his demise, I didn't know about DFW's trouble. Funny to think, because the fiction hints at it everywhere. Typical story one reads about creative minds is that they avoid the meds for fear of missing the highs. Trade-off being to abide the lows. In this sense, I was surprised to read that he had a med program in place throughout his writing career and that he pulled off such a spectacular creative life in spite. And I sympathize with his need to go drug free. Makes perfect sense.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on p300. You're cruising now. Over here we just docked the 900p Bolano onto the "read" side of the bookshelf. Full credit to the CDN gov't sponsored paternity leave for that one. Your tax dollars got me thru.
Here in 4am Austin, which is surely one of the most crazed and substance-fueled scenes I've been part of, depending on meds seems like the only way a writer could make it through...particularly a writer with a fragile psyche. Oh, wait--they're all supposed to have fragile psyches, right?
ReplyDeleteFor me, one of IJ's strong lingering memories is the cast of Ennett House characters and the way they speak and think. I developed a soft spot for Randy Lenz, and as we've seen, I'm not the only one who thinks of Don Gately Jr as a hero.
So keep going, till those folks, and the many at the Academy, are as real as your Riverdale neighbours.
And so back out to the streets...
Mr. Ashdale -
ReplyDeleteNow that's where the Education Ministry should be spending it's dollars - on your continuing education; your home schooling...
It's funny but I have kept thinking of the Bolano book as the Bolano book because you keep calling it the Bolano book and as result I have twisted the real title into the number of pages: hence, I thought Bolano wrote 2666 pages. And that number has been making me sweat, making me think about bringing out the knife and making another Carcass for the lit world; because I think I'm going to have to read that book: because I sent it to my Croatian Cousin in France for his birthday - via Amazon.co.uk; and if he reads it and you read it, I'm going to have to "read" it (though at 900 pages I think... I'm still... going to have to... yes... take it apart.)
How's the Bolano Book anyway?
Abbot-
It's 4pm here. What time is it there, in Texas, in your fragile psyche? Did you survive the streets? Were you a Lenz or a Gately? Or a DFW? Did you partake or observe or both?
Publishers of Bolano must have been so afraid of you and your knife they published the book pre-chopped. You can buy it in 900p hardcover or as a three volume paperback.
ReplyDeletePhewf. You guys probably think that I sadistically like dismembering books. But the truth is I'm relieved and will now definitely be buying and reading Bolano in paperback.
ReplyDelete