Amanda Rivera > Recent Status Updates

Besides the bits where Hemingway's getting books from Shakespeare and Co. or sitting at a cafe writing, my favorite part has got to when him and Fitzgerald are in their pajamas at a hotel. Scott thinks he's dying, Ernest thinks he's being dramatic.

'So I went to the far side of the street to look up at the roof in the rain and see if any chimneys were going, and how the smoke blew. There was no smoke and I thought about how the chimney would be cold and might not draw and of the room possibly filling with smoke, and the fuel wasted, and the money gone with it, and I walked on in the rain.'

"I went to the window&looked out then pulled a cord that shut the … curtains ... She had taken her hat off&her hair shone under the light. She saw herself in one of the mirrors … I saw her in three other mirrors. She did not look happy ... 'What's the matter, darling?' 'I never felt like a whore before,' she said. I went over to the window&pulled the curtain aside&looked out. I had not thought it would be like this.”

"The Italians were using up an awful lot of men. I did not see how it could go on. Even if they took all the Bainsizza and Monte San Gabriele there were plenty of mountains beyond for the Austrians. I had seen them. (...) Napoleon would have whipped the Austrians in the plains. (...) Still nobody was whipping any one on the Western front. Perhaps wars weren't won any more. Maybe they went on forever."

"Afterward it was dark outside & I could see the beams of the search-lights moving in the sky. I watched for awhile &then went to sleep. I slept heavily except once I woke sweating & scared &then went back to sleep trying to stay outside of my dream. I woke ... before it was light & heard roosters crowing & stayed on awake until it began to be light. I was tired & once it was really light I went back to sleep again."

'Here was the soup. It was a plain gravy soup. There was nothing to stir the fancy in that ... The plate was plain. Next came beef with its attendant greens and potatoes-a homely trinity, suggesting the rumps of cattle in a muddy market, and sprouts curled and yellowed at the edge, and bargaining and cheapening, and women with string bags on Monday morning.'

I'm actually listening to the audiobook. She does so many voices, the written word won't suffice.

'Some one came in and as the door opened I could see the snow falling.'

'I myself felt as badly as he did and could not understand why I had not gone. It was what I had wanted to do and I tried to explain how one thing had led to another and finally he saw it and understood that I had really wanted to go and it was almost all right. I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.'

I love the way this book is written. 'Then Ivan said firmly to himself: "Why, of course, he's at the Moscow River! Onward!" Someone ought, perhaps, to have asked Ivan Nikolaevich why he supposed the professor was precisely at the Moscow River and not in some other place. But the trouble was that there was no one to ask him. The loathsome lane was completely empty.'

I love the way this book is written. 'Then Ivan said firmly to himself: "Why, of course, he's at the Moscow River! Onward!" Someone ought, perhaps, to have asked Ivan Nikolaevich why he supposed the professor was precisely at the Moscow River and not in some other place. But the trouble was that there was no one to ask him. The loathsome lane was completely empty.'

'Decide not to lose hold--and then don't.'

'The little Stockbridge school had made a place for him on the faculty some twenty years before the rest of the academic world suddenly became interested, and for that he would always be grateful. But in truth, after so many years of teaching these bright and lively young women, both he and they, he found, had begun to repeat themselves a little.'

'You would have thought, listening to my bowdlerized ... life history, that rather than having received a warm & gracious letter from the ... writer inviting me to come and spend a pleasant evening in his house, I had made this journey to plead a matter of utmost personal urgency before the most stringent of inquisitors, and that if I made one wrong move, something of immeasurable value to me would be lost forever.'

I'm seeing Roth speak tomorrow, and I saw a used copy of this book for a dollar.

I think this last section is my favorite. Kundera and I seem to share the same ideas of why mankind treats other animals so poorly.

'Dear Time, / Fuck You'

'there are no coincidences, said my friend / who bathes in light / but joined a cult by accident one night / outside / streets on streets on streets / like orgies / for starving feet / a picture of what is mine wrapped up in her mother's arms / above the light / which happily / descended from me / as I too dwelt / lower / before it rose / and it is now always turned on'

Fists raised high, they shouted out slogans condemning Soviet imperialism. To her surprise she found herself unable to shout along w/ them. When she told her friends about it, they were amazed. She would have liked to tell them that behind all occupations & invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil: the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by w/ raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison

I really like most of it so far.

'for a kick / and a stutter / of lost things / gone sailing in the brutal winds of change / and growing old / and wearing out / and rusting / alone / living in hope / like a stubborn kid / allergic to the knowing / love has come and left / silently / without an end / and yet / this springtime scare / it is inevitable / and something inside the gray / it is growing'

'i am not at the party / not dancing / not laughing / not drinking / not holding a glass / not seeing your dress / not under a moon / not with you / not facing east or west'

'long before / long before / the being born / that sadness is an ancient thing, an aged storm / a reminder maybe / really, only / and / something inside you is a clock that is ticking in a color map and a feeling number / to count the things / that / lift you up and / drag you under'

'I am / so lost / to lose.'

'When on summer evenings the melodious sky growls like a wild animal and everyone grumbles at the storm, it is because of the Méséglise way that I am the only one in ecstasy inhaling, through the noise of the falling rain, the smell of invisible, enduring lilacs.'

'The whole thing was amazing. They seemed to be spot-lighting the cloud for us as if it were part of a sound-and-light show, a bit of a mood-setting mist drifting across a high battlement where a king had been slain. But this was not history we were witnessing. It was some secret festering thing, some dreamed emotion that accompanies the dreamer out of sleep.'

'Society is set up in such a way that it's the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters.. I'm a college professor. Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods? We live in a neat and pleasant town near a college with a quaint name. These things don't happen in places like Blacksmith.’

'No one knew what to say. Being alive was a richness of sensation. Dozens of things, hundreds of things.'

No one knew what to say. Being alive was a richness of sensation. Dozens of things, hundreds of things