Nick Calabrese > Recent Status Updates

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

Enjoyed the opening section of the novel.

Took me a second to get a mental image going but now I’m enjoying it. Had to google pictures of the Russian countryside because let me tell u I have no fookin idea what Russia looks like other than the Kremlin. But that’s part of what’s great about reading. Now I know, even if it’s just a little bit more.

First like ten pages wasn’t working for me (to be fair, first two I liked a lot and then had to stop) but then I started doing that style of reading I tried in college where you try to collapse each sentence as you read it and remember the essential semantic content as you go and it’s made it much more vivid and enjoyable.

I think it’s important to keep steam. Just keep going like a meditation.

Just hit a boring section and then the text fractures back to the previous part and the speaker is both the last fragment and the current, and he’s interrupted by the police office taking a statement who basically says “come on now, get on with it” but has the energy of

Me: Is the natural state of the soul quiet or chaos?

Taco Bell cashier: Look buddy, it’s transient, shifting like water