Marvin > Recent Status Updates

Finally came back to finish Soldiers Live. Don't know why it's taken so long; I'm weird and fickle.

Through Williams's first collection, This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate. Some gems, some that seem like great ideas that didn't quite get there, and some that leave me cold. Some that stuck with me: "The Kind You Know Forever, "Dropping The Masters," "Baby," "Forty Thousand Dollars," "Glass Of Fashion," "Passage of the Soul," "Original Belief," "Hope," "Oh, My God, The Rapture!."

Notables since finally returning to this: At a Bar in Charlotte Amalie; My Lover Has Dirty Fingernails; Harv Is Plowing Now; The Music School; and The Rescue.

I liked Sleepy. And then back to... well.

Deceptively solid entries in the series. Was worried that covering some of the same ground as the previous book would make for a boring read in

Bleak Seasons is a weird one, I guess. I put off reading it because I knew the events were supposed to coincide with those of the previous entry in the series; but the introduction of a new Annalist, some moving forward of the plot, and Cook's playing with the narrative structure made for an entertaining read.

I feel like I'm in grad school again.

Book is kicking my ass all around. Really good.

Each of these essays more or less bears a nugget of very-goodness. Next is the one on "rhyming action," which is already bringing on a weird flashback to grad-school days when it was mentioned frequently but I never read it.

Ah, defamiliarization. What a nice, unexpected throwback to the theory and criticism seminar I took as an undergrad. I feel better for that.

Unbound, rather.

Zuckerman Bound a much fuller novel. Still a lot of carrying on about a writer's life. Poor dude, what with the fame and fortune.

The Ghost Writer was pretty good, I guess. Writing for writers. Kind of felt half-realized in a way.

Jeff Mangum did it better.

Getting close. Seems more to be unraveling than finishing. Partly in a good way, partly not.

Feels like I've been reading this book for years.

Off I go again. A second time. Already in twice as far as the last time. So not my thing. But I'm doing it. For the glory. Or the honor. Or the love. Or whatever it is one gets.

This novel is, like, delightfully manly.

That I was just reading Bukowski is probably the only thing saving me from a smart-alecky comment about the Japanese. Still, weird book. Weirder still, I'm pretty sure I randomly picked this up at a yard sale around Borger. Or maybe at the thrift store in Dumas.

Disturbing. Not buying it as a novel. Maybe proto-flash fiction? Maybe not.

Won't someone please think of the Southern aristocracy?

Is this book even remotely readable for anyone who's not a fancypants writer?

Thinking probably could've done without THE SILVER SPIKE altogether.

Oh, Croaker.

Can't shake the feeling I've read this before and simply forgotten about it since. Completely. Somehow.