peter bernadone > Recent Status Updates

My honest reaction after reading the story of Tereus and Procne 😶😶😶😶

You guys will never guess how Tiresias was blinded

By far the most entertaining classic I've ever read so far

By this point I think I have a very good idea of how monstrous this white whale Moby dick is so I would very much like to see him and get on with the drama!!!

Ulysses smashes his way across the Mediterranean!!

Can't beat the setting. If you like dark and stormy sea stories, this is 4 u. Some heavy exposition in the last few chapters but still interesting for the curious reader and/or student of cetology. 🐳

Boswell needs to stop complaining about his melancholy

Never knew St Monica was a boozer as a youth!!

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a generational lightweight 🥴

The chapter on living in the Swiss Alps during the winters is 👌👌👌👌

This is a very pleasant way to spend my Spotify listening hours!!!

Was NOT expecting Hemingway's discussion with Gertrude Stein about gay dudes!

From "A Painful Case":

"He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life's feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life's feast."

✅ “Counterparts”

Farrington is such a meat-faced alcoholic scallywag!! gotta respect slipping outta work for a pint of porter then slipping back in and sassing your boss! this story makes you wanna drink in a warm dark irish pub in spite of itself.

i certainly rate this story. mighty sad but mighty alive.

✅ "Big Red Son"
✅ "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think"

The best essays in this collection so far have been DFW's book reviews. I've never read (nor do I plan to read) John Updike, but DFW's review of "Toward the End of Time" is so thorough, scathing, and funny that it's well worth reading/listening to w/o having read the book.

✅ “The Boarding House”
✅ “A Little Cloud”

We’re in the “early marriage” phase of the collection now; the mid-mid-life crisis. Mrs Mooney a sly girl for “marrying” her daughter off like that. Gotta respec the hustle. I liked Little Chandler. I hope he eventually wrote that book and got outta the hood. Or am I supposed to hope he settled down into domesticity? Ignatius Gallaher is just so COOL!

✅ “Two Gallants”: Just a couple lads looking for sugar mommies. What’s a sensitive young man gotta do to settle down!

❌Driven and derided by vanity?
✔️ Hustling tarts out of their spare gold coins.

✅ “Eveline”
✅ “After the Race”

i rank these two lower than the first 3 stories, but they’re still great. Canada gets namedropped in both of them, which is pretty surprising.

Boswell gets upset when Dr. Johnson talks smack about Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume because they were his buddies. Johnson dunks on them regularly. But Boswell is such a dummy sometimes. He often sounds like a schizoid internet loser the way he advocates for “returning to nature,” etc. Over dinner he argued that candles might be bad bc it would be better to rise & sleep with the sun. Johnson dunks on him obviously

✅ “Araby”

I think i’ve read this story about 3 or 4 times now (it’s only 7 pages) and it gets better each time.

“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a crea-
ture driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”

✅ “The Sisters”
✅ “An Encounter”

Both excellent. “Encounter” especially. Deserves to be read again and again.

2. “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart": Perhaps the best sports essay i’ve ever read and certainly the best book review. Funny enough, the thesis of this essay applies best to hockey despite never being mentioned. I feel Connor McDavid can only be understood in the context of this essay.

1. “Consider the Lobster”: well written but stupid. a attempted moral argument that says (in a roundabout “i’m not saying anything” way) that eating lobsters may be bad b/c they have a nervous system & feel pain. Despite being absurdly long, it shies away from such questions as “what is bad?” & “what is good?” until the final paragraph, when it says such questions are beyond the purview of the essay