Status Updates From Strange Cowboy: Lincoln Dah...

i finally started liking it cause Plot started happening and then literally he spent 3 pages talking about how fat a woman was and then writing for her mimicking an Asian accent, when the whole reason he was interacting with her at all was because he went into the Chinese restaurant suspecting they put dog meat in their food. bad

not loving this………

"Perhaps it was this simple, to desire, people wanted. I wanted to feel as I felt, see as I saw, say as I said, act as I was acting."

"And my son, one of them, of us, of me, would he find himself as I have, seated, wakeful and alone, turning through a shrinking future and a growing past and wondering where want went?"

"Clearly, I would not remember. We understood, I think, that I'd forget. Her purpose. Why she stood. What she said. I remembered rather what she interrupted. My thought, its thrust, the relative importance of a breath."

"The secret is there isn't any secret. No mystery. We know it all. We're afraid to believe in what we know, and talk is the sound of our terror."

"will my son at least not see me someday in his future, just right here, in this chair, poised, seated, an integrated man in a disintegrating household?"

Struggled to settle on a book over the last couple of days, but the quality of the prose here has hooked me at last

Nearing the end of this Trip.

The story of his romance is pretty pretty good.

Still waiting for this to go to work on me.

The book has bogged down for me here, a little slow in parts.

A strange cowboy indeed, trapped within the poetics of his self. The words speak themselves as I read. There is even a touch of McElroy I sense. So far, more than can be expected. I hope it can keep up.

I believe Michel has something here. I especially enjoyed the narrator's mother believing she had lost him when she saw him sitting on the fence rail with a leg crossed. Great visual for me. One that I certainly can relate to.

His mother's rants in the nursing home were certainly worth my trouble. And the cunnilingus scene with middle Lincoln's wife prior to meeting his mother was one of the best (yet shortest) and delightful swims ever. So far so good. Michel uses his language exquisitely.

As a personal favor I am reading this novel even in light of my obsession that I will attempt to put on hold of Walser & Co. I love Sam Michel and am quite envious of his personal relationship with Gordon Lish only because he sees him more than I do. But this reading will be difficult in tandem with the Dylan interviews. But it also may work in Michel's favor which would also benefit me to no end as well. Hoping...

What a fantastic book. Gathering my thoughts for a review - and am very interested to see Proustitute and Kris's thoughts when they finish.

"Violence and mishap, these are the precedent creators of our histories as humankind; in the beginning was not the word, but the rape, and from the rape descended slaveries and holocausts and myths we tell ourselves to transcend them."

The narrative dealing with the dog Hope is both beautifully written and at times hilarious

"Was I the son to curse the crack through which another life was passed into this world of miseries and sorrow?"