Kealan Atkinson > Recent Status Updates

III. THE PART ABOUT FATE

II. THE PART ABOUT AMALFITANO

I. THE PART ABOUT THE CRITICS

Chapter 24 shocked me to my core. That excitement turned to fear when the shower rod fell halfway down the tub. How could that happen unless someone pushed it down? I hadn’t locked the door. Whenever the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, soft murmurs and footsteps accompany the sensation. I thought death was on the other side of that door. I grabbed my Louisville Slugger and went inside.

My ears hear every-

“I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.”

“You can’t make a race horse of a pig.”

“No, but you can make a very fast pig.”

30 pages were cut from this printing and now I have no clue what’s happening.

Don’t fail me now sparknotes.

Chapter 4:

Steinbeck said, “I recommend that you read it very carefully- very carefully because if you miss this [Charles’ letter], you will miss a great deal of this book and maybe will not pick it up until much later.”

Is this letter simply alluding to Charles and Adam as Cain and Abel? Certainly there’s more to it as Charles wrote, “Seems to me there’s something not finished… didn’t get done.”

I thought Faulkner wouldn’t know much about fighting. Nowhere near what Hemingway knows. I think Faulkner knows more about drinking. But this line is cool:

“He fought with the blind and desperate valor of a starved and cornered rat he fought.”

Faulkner’s narration style and techniques trump that of even Dostoevsky.

Faulkner writes about warm nights; Hemingway writes about cold mornings. And yet, I get tired while reading Hemingway in the morning and I fall asleep while reading Faulkner at night.

“No, no!” he said. He was climbing down from the bus. “They’re not first-rate flies at all. I only thought if you fished them some time it might remind you of what a good time we had.”

Trout fishing with an old English guy sounds like a nice way to enjoy Spain.

Hemmingway’s prose is able to capture your attention immediately and swiftly immerse you in his story. I don’t know if it will hold my attention throughout.

“He was fairly happy, except that, like many people living in Europe, he would rather have been in America, and he discovered writing.”

Tom White and his family are likely the only good things to ever come out of Austin, TX.

Compartmentalize. Always compartfuckingmentalize.