Therapy for Paul Auster

Therapy is the name of a book I'm reading (by David Lodge). I'd already started it three times, but now I think I'll read through it. It's sucked me in, finally. In between the first time I attempted Therapy, the two aborted attempts, and my current, more strong-willed go at it, was Paul Auster. Auster's City of Glass, the Locked Room and Moon Palace are the best novels I've read that treat the theme of identity and identity-making. I also liked Auster's quick fluid prose (accelerates the narrative so that it doesn't get lost in its meditation on self), taken, I think, from the detective novel genre.

Novels Ive read since arriving in France (in no particular order):

1. The Art of Fiction, David Lodge
2. A Heartbraking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
3. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
4. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
5. Where I Was, James Kelman
6. Most of Us Are Here Against Our Will, David Levinson
7. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
8-10. The NY Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room),Paul Auster
11. Moon Palace, Paul Auster
12. Nietsche, Unpublished Letters (ed. Kurt Leidecker), F. Nietsche

On my mind:
A Tale of Two Cities
Walden
Amis's Money
The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury

Disappointed, Sexus Sold

Living in Grenoble, France it's hard to come by the English language versions of any literature I might read so I was delighted to find an English language copy of Henry Miller's Sexus in a nearby bookshop. "I'll buy it later, right now I'll get Dave Eggers' A Staggering Work." I never imagined anyone buying it, but that's precisely what's happened. Eggers' memoir was poignant, heart-rendingly good shit. But, over the indomitable Henry Miller?--Sorry, Dave!

"How I wish I could change places wih you! I'm a roughneck, as you know, but I do love art, every form of art." Sid Essen, Nexus

Short and Handy--Magwich

The "Short and Handy" version of Magwich's (Provis's) story:

"In jail and out of jail. In jail and out of Jail. In jail and out of jail."

Joys and Diminished Hopes

I began this blog some time ago in order, I think, to make a record of writings and artworks that struck a mood, or invoked one, or suggested some new possibility. I had Dylan's song, New Morning, on my mind when I decided to begin the blog. On this Neeee-uu--eew Morning, with you. Here I begin again, perhaps, to record clips that leave their aesthetical marks on me.

Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. Why?, but I'm fascinated with The Convict, Magwich. I read Great Expectations when I was around 13--I'm reading it again at 31. What I recall most about the novel is Magwich. Pip's interactions with Magwich, particularly Pip's retrieving "wittles" for Magwich. Wittles, for me, are crumbs of bread and blocks of cheese. I retain a haunting image of Magwich's hanging.

When I was 17 I began reading pretty voraciously: novels, books driven by ideas, works that I thought my father had read, or ought to have. It's difficult to trace the origin of a habit. Why did I begin reading these books? This knowledge is lost on me. I recall lying on the couch reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra when my father asked, "whatch'ya readin." I said, "Nietzsche." He said, "Ohhh nooo," stared at me for a few seconds, grinned as if he couldn't stop the inevitable train-wreck, but also as if he'd thought the track better than many others I might take. I think this experience fed my desire to read. Also around this time my father found me reading The Brothers Karamazov. He offered some detail or impression about Smerdyakov or Ivan...he was familiar with the book.

The novels that first drew me in were by Dostoevsky, Henry Miller (Black Spring, Tropics), Camus, the works of Nietzsche, Proust, Kerouac, Tolstoy, also Sartre's plays.

Big books attracted me too: War and Peace, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Remembrance of Things Past, Don Quixote.