Luke Brix > Recent Status Updates

Just got to a point where my opinion of this book greatly improved. Second time a book has made me cry.

18/27 it’s neat how the order you pick stuff in can feel right even tho it’s not intentional. How you can feel like the narrator is ruminating or distracting himself just by the ways the chapters neighbor each other. I will say the slice of cancer patient life stuff feels better to me, tho in a boring section about pretending to care about soccer there was a neat narration illustrating the process of typing.

7/27 read both sections that cloudcuckoocountry earned about. One of them was only 4 pages and therefore a lot more tolerable. The longer one, 12 pages, was a hard sit tho. At least those two sections were the only two he recommended to skip. All sections more about the narrator’s issue. 2 about sex one about a near car accident.

First, and 2 more sections. Two looks at Tony’s domestic life, both his recovery time with his semi-neglectful parents and him living with spreading cancer while living with his wife and son.
The sections are really good at slamming an emotion after getting into specifics. It’s also neat how willfully rules of prose are broken. “I think his wife told me one time he cried he won’t see his son grow up.”

Part one: I like the balance of plot and character so far. Picked this book up at BAM on a buy 2 get one. I was interested in the setting of an MFA program and the publishing industry. I think I’ll enjoy myself.

Oh god don’t do this Keiko… it’s not worth it.

Reading this right after No Longer Human makes for a neat Double-feature. It’s a Japanese woman’s outsider perspective.

Borrowed this book off my uncle’s bar shelf. Might get they this one faster because I have someone to return it to. It’s really interesting so far: it seems to be about the way art and intellectualism was quashed under Soviet rule.

Sparrow: an example of using more distant narration in this book. Probably my second favorite in this collection behind the titular story.

A thing at work: typical Saunders polyphony. This story focusing on a workplace dispute where the higher class defeats the lower class despite the higher class doing more damage. Thought it was alright with a few ascensions in the word play.

In for a long haul here. Needed something to break up the fiction I’m taking in.

Love Letter: a don’t-say-Trump story. Found this one frustrating. It was originally published March 30, 2020, so no one knew how Covid was going to last. I feel the same kind of mindset that would publish this would also think Biden getting elected “saved” us from the fascist movement that’s still around.

The mom of bold action: lots of what I like to call “suburban cringe” in this story. It’s certainly a good story tho, even if it’s subject matter makes me uncomfortable.

I don’t know why I’m going through this book so fast. Maybe it’s bc I’m relating to some social anxiety aspect or something. I wanted to read this book since seeing a YouTube video going over this book and junji ito’s manga adaptation of the book. I think the character is more compelling than the writing itself. I’ll need to examine the prose again after finishing.

Liberation day: amazing. Everything works and it’s probably the best kind of writing to experience blind.