Carter Feiss > Recent Status Updates

Page 118: Sorry, Bobby. Oiler’s dead. No other way to say it… Have you called anybody?
Yes. I had his sister’s number. She lives in Des Moines Iowa.
—>
Page 38: Did he have any kin that you know of?
I don’t know. They always seem to have a sister somewhere.

He’s losing me here. “Let me add a scientific touch. When a young couple become engaged, they go to our Manager of Marriages… If there’s a discrepancy they are advised against marriage. What exactly does the Manager of Marriage do? ‘Sorry but you’re too retarded to marry her :(.’ Also the notion that young parents (i.e. literal children) are better at parenting than thirty year olds is craaaazy.

I’m not loving the pace or main argument of this book but I will give Skinner props for predicting (or maybe theorizing) a lot of modern cultural trends and more progressive social/familial practices. EG Positive Parenting, flexible work schedules.

Pretty good. Not to sound cold but not particularly amazing so far.

Is the three boys being gay for each other canon or am I misreading? Currently feels like the main plot will revolve around some Call Me By Your Name type sexual revelation or something.

Wilde’s good at painting a picture, pun intended, but this book is pretty slow moving. Not a fan of extreme detail and philosophical asides if they needlessly slow down plot.

This book is phenomenal. Faulkner accomplished something incredible in how he set up Addie’s first chapter. In the story of Jewel’s ‘sleeping spell’ I was remembering all the ways in which Jewel was quite like Anse in his anger and stubbornness and how Cash and Darl were quiet and dutiful; how Addie is described. This chapter pulls all that together and seeing Addie’s name as the title was so exciting

For how short it is, this book is suffuse with some of the tiches passages and motifs I have read. Faulkner uses the perspective-shifting narration to bake more detail into this story than what is printed on the pages.

Watching each character cope and “sometimes dissociate” from the death of their mother/wife/neighbor is enhanced greatly by the moments of overlap in each character’s narration.