Evan > Recent Status Updates

About an hour's worth of reading away. I think my review will be on Youtube, not here. I'm done writing them here, I guess. I've soured on Goodreads for various reasons. I may leave the extant account up as a dead relic, as people still read it. I want to scale back on activities. I have a fairly concerning heart condition and I want to touch grass and be more insular. I met some old pals this week and it was nice.

Def food for thought in the homestretch as Pynchon in a way that's almost unbearably intense ponders death, extinction, colonialism and our inheritance of death and our imperatives to hasten it. He's certainly bleeding on the page here, as Hemingway once put it. Because Amazon is burning books, our human inheritance, I don't know if I even want to write a review or just leave the site entirely, in protest.

Just the tiniest sliver of pages left between my bookmark and the back cover and yet I am slogging it, not racing for the finale like I normally do with the goal in sight. This thing has sucked the life out of me; the will to ever read again or to live. OK, it's not so dramatic as that. I live life with love as never before and no Pynchon is going to change that. But gawd, anyone who finishes this deserves an award.

This has gone positively Salo. I was losing my breakfast almost.

Slow progress; inching my way to the finale.

The digressive jags are coming hot and heavy now and I can't help but admire the audacity of it. Who else but me is going to laugh at a reference to "Norma Shearer's closet" unless you know minutiae about the history of MGM studios in the 1930s?

There's something to be said for knowing historical and pop-cultural references of the early 20th century to get lots of the laughs in this, and luckily through life-long study of these things, I do. But I can't imagine a neophyte tackling this and just having all this wash past them. Anyway, we are so close.

Up till now I've been a good boy and have read the text only but I think I'm going to employ Mr. George Guidall's audiobook in tandem to help me make it to the finish line. I decided not to use him for most of the book because he reads it very fast, but now that I have my bearings (as much as one can in this) I'm amenable.

100 pages out. Def gonna be taking a break from maximalism after this -- in this year of maximalist novels -- because I'm bloody right exhausted. Just read a whole chapter about the history of a light bulb named Byron. Yeah.

Took a few days off from this to do library reorganization and necessary house chores.. I kinda want this over with. It's wild and readable but also likely not my thing. Let's power through.

Great thing about being on the verge of slaying a feared novel is its demystification, and you can sit back and say, "So, *this* is what all the fuss is about?"

I have no idea what is going on at the White Visitation in this hubbub, yet oddly, the words are readable. Onward.

We've arrived at Bernstein's Harvard thesis. Snoozefest. But, as I say, I'm nibbling at this.

Saw this original 1982 hardcover by Bernstein at HPB for $1 and was curious so I bought it. This was his sixth (final?) book, apparently. I did not know of it. Opening part is OK. Just a bunch of reminiscences. I'll nibble at this as I head into the final chunk of Gravity's Rainbow.

Took a break from the book yesterday, not always advisable with the ongoing danger of slipping and slacking and losing steam on a maximalist monster, but, back on track again.

I'd say page 500 in this book is a milestone. It does get easier if you make it this far, though I can't say I love the story or many of the incidents all that much. A great idea once in awhile keeps me going.

Just read *that* passage. No comment, for now.