Aaron > Recent Status Updates

I now have a baby, so I have very little time to read, but will hopefully get back to it in 2026 when things are a little easier to manage. In the meantime, I am letting myself rest and reflect when possible. It’s frustrating to take a break from reading and writing and drawing, but I also think that I will be a new person on the other side of this event. Looking forward to what that time holds.

“… there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little … perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change!”

I appreciate the analysis, but the writing style is starting to grate on me.

Reading the criticism first. Highlights are Robert Penn Warren, Sartre, and Ralph Ellison. The ones teasing out the qualities of each section of the book, especially pointing out unique relations to the objective truth, are also interesting and useful for a reread.

Reading this again. Working through the criticism in the back of the critical edition first. So fun.

Not exactly sure why it can be so easy to dismiss or joke about Franzen. I guess he clearly has his thing (generational midwestern family sagas?) and he has the Oprah story and his reputation is weird because of how much praise The Corrections got, but he can write a book. This one has me hooked now. Just finished Marion’s first section.

“When you read or write you seem to achieve that control which the lover craves [...] When desire is the subject of a text you are reading, you can open it anywhere and end when you like. If Eros is something written on a page, you can close the book and be shut of him. Or go back and reread the words again and again. A piece of ice melts forever there.”

It’s just so good