Nick Calabrese > Recent Status Updates

Loved The Pedersen Kid. Claustrophobic and painful and felt like the worst days of having a family except that it was their everyday. Everything about it was surprising. Mrs. Mean, however, not my favorite. Beautiful language for its own sake, which is valid, but I don’t personally find myself responding to it often.

That thing William Gass does where it’s so good and so incredibly negative. Beginning in the house and the little things the mother can’t bear like swearing when everything else is much worse and when she’s shaking trying to measure flour. I like the style of The Pedersen Kid more than some other Gass I’ve checked out. The language is beautiful without being distracting. Less try hardy.

Finished last section before the epilogue. Young Nick sections are so good. The feeling of “oh my god why did I do that I shouldn’t have done that I can’t believe I did that” is done so well. And now there’s a lot I still remember happening in the last like 50 pages so I’m interested in how it’s paced. Unreal book.

A lot of really cool stuff coming together. A favorite is Nick noticing the bed in the woman’s apartment and then that it’s gone, and knowing Mr. Bronzini’s mother had died, and putting together that he’s slept with Bronzini’s wife.

Nick taking Matty’s hand and yelling for their mom to get hydrogen peroxide.

Rosemary’s section where the women call her the wrong name. “Who’s better than me, they said. This was a statement she couldn’t make, partly out of personality but also because she could not feel the ordinary contentment the way she used to. She could not feel favored or charmed… He’d replaced her life with his leaving… There was less of her now and more of other people. She was becoming other people”

Manx -> Charles Wainwright. Loop is closed for reader. Interested in seeing if it’s closed for the other characters. I can’t remember. I don’t believe it is. I hope it isn’t.

Lenny talks about a preacher who sees codes on dollars—same preacher as Manx. Nick narrating uses the word lonely, “for lack of a better word, but that’s the word in fact.” Throughout the novel people search for words and often feel they’re coming up short, though typically they’re correct. Theme Nick admitting (or not) things to himself (like when Marian cries in the car on the trip with the kids).

Liked Marian at home w/ parents, Charles Wainright Jr bomb run w/ long tall sally, lost baseball, simulated bomb blast, Matty wants to obey mom, since it’s just them two, and not gamble for pennies but w/ Nick upstate all the boys want to know him and it will be hard to say no when he’s dealt in.

I see how some people describe parts of the vignettes section as slow. I like the woman running home from her hospital shift, and J Edgar Hoover at the ball (and seeing Klara make a small appearance as a “middling painter”).

Small thought—I remembered Lenny Bruce being littered through the book and it turns out he only shows up for the first time around page 500. Granted there’s a good chunk of book left.

Love Matt in the desert in the bomb labs. Interesting in this section how there will be some argument about conspiracies where the characters are saying “this can’t be true” but it’s clear they think it probably is true, and then in the following sections with Klara at the movie the narrator overtly tries to convince us the movie is interesting before finally saying “admit it, you’re bored.”

First ~ half of the book is great. Good vibes, easy to pick up and read. Something about long books that often break into tons of short little vignettes. It’s nice when you’re just about done reading but then you realize you can hit another white space in just another page, so why not. Seeing a lot of connections between threads I didn’t see the first time reading it, which is always fun.

First Nick Shay sections are really fun and interesting. I still have some of the same sense from the first time that I read this that Don DeLillo is kind of self important in this book (hugely in opposition to the tone of white noise) but much less than the first time. Having already read it too is interesting because he does call back and forth, so it’s nice to get little Easter eggs throughout.

Rereading this big boy. Reminds me of the beginning of my last year of college (since that’s when I first read it). I’m always afraid when rereading that my visualizations will be different. I’m very happy with how many of the pictures in my head I still have.

I don’t remember disliking the prologue, but I really liked it a lot this time. Has me excited for the next 700ish pages lol.

Chapter where Simon Serbinov meets Sonia was fun to read. Lots for interesting stuff about loneliness, death etc. Also one absolutely absurd sentence about her armpit.

Section where they murder some Kulaks was really beautiful