Stewart Mitchell > Recent Status Updates

385 pages left? Home stretch, baby.

Now that I’m halfway through, I’m really appreciating the deliberate pace of the story so far. McMurtry is taking his time and is in no rush to get to any big action; rather, he’s letting this huge cast of characters bump into each other and have small adventures that don’t pertain to the main plot (if there even is one). Lovely stuff.

Very bold of this man to start writing from even more perspectives after 250 pages spent introducing dozens of characters. And somehow it never gets confusing because they’re all so well-defined.

Not much reading today but I’m enjoying this even more than I thought I would. McMurtry has a great sense of humor and he’s great at alternating between multiple characters’ perspectives within a few sentences. We’ve reached some action, but the best moments so far have been the quiet ones.

100 pages in a single location spent introducing characters and eating beans. This is what America is all about.

No doubt I’m going to love this, but I’ll be damned before I read a foreword by Taylor Sheridan.

Only stopping because my eyes hurt.

Continuing my streak of writers who don’t like to end paragraphs.

It’s odd how engrossing this is, considering so much of it is repetition and nothing being described is particularly remarkable. It has a hypnotic gravity to it, though. I can’t turn away.

“…no, no no no, can’t breathe can’t walk can’t stand I am the other. Flight of stairs hold on terrified, into the bathroom the tub the toilet terrified, open the refrigerator bend down and look inside terror just, just terror”

Knowing that Gaddis wrote this in his dying days makes passages like this difficult to stomach. Haunting.

Got though some really enjoyable stories today, although it seems like most of them start off with strong premises and falter when they have to explain themselves.

Having fun with these so far. Neither of the 2 stories I read today was incredible, but they were both better than expected.

Hoping this will be a fun read for October. If I wasn’t such a completionist I would have skipped those pretentious letters to the editor, though.

Things are falling apart structurally at the end but I’m still totally entertained on a chapter-by-chapter level. No clue how this is set to wrap up in the next 30 pages.

I plan on finishing this one over the weekend but I’ve been enjoying taking it at a slow pace so far. Pynchon did a great job of milking the Milwaukee setting, but now that things have moved out of the country he’s really having a good time introducing some future-classic characters.

We have hit the part in the Pynchon detective novel where the protagonist travels to a seeped of strange new locations. This is not a drill.

Didn’t get to read as much of this as I wanted today because I was too busy watching One Battle After Another a second time, but neglecting a new Pynchon novel in favor of a new Pynchon film is a hell of a compromise.

12 years later and Pynchon hasn’t lost his voice one bit. So far this reads a lot like Inherent Vice, which is probably my favorite under-500 pager from him, so I’m not complaining. I know some people were holding out for Gravity’s Rainbow 2.0 but I’m just happy to have another little blessing from the master.

Once again Steve Aylett mistakes a few clever phrases for a novel.

Just when I started to worry that this was getting too repetitive, it becomes hilarious again.