Drew > Recent Status Updates

Life of Pi is another book that derives for this one, especially in its ending.

Thinking of Kierkegaard - “faith is the passion for the impossible.”

728. “Where’s the greatness in ruling a mustard seed, or the dignity or pride in governing half a dozen men the size of hazel nuts?”

Page 293.
When I am in the land of the forgotten,
Deserted by glory, favor, and by life,
There, in my open bosom, you will see,
A sculpted image of your lovely face.

Page 652: “God help us, for the world is nothing but tricks and deceptions opposing one another”

Page 482. Each of us is as God made him, and often much worse.

Deep and metaphysical. Kind of a funny version of Moby Dick.

Astoundingly meta fictional for the time. For any time really.

Okay so I love this man. And not just the author but the man, because he is my blood brother and knows how to say the things I can only feel.

How bizarre he got as he aged. Take your Barthlemes and your C. Even Pynchon does match up.

220. I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug.

…my mind slipped from the noose of thought and swung, like a bird, in the center of empty thought.

161. The flowers nodded like bright, knowledgeable children as I trundled them down the hall.

Was expecting an intense detailing of claustrophobic madness. Hoping for it. So, a bit disappointed.

A bit fluffier than I’d hoped. Always thought this book would be weird and intense and dense. Still, I like it in the way I like Mysteries of Pittsburgh and catcher in the rye and to kill a mockingbird.

Still hoping one of the characters, hopefully a male, will turn out more interesting. All the dudes are dolts, which I get it from a female perspective in the early sixties, but still wish her ideas challenged.

Warn the duke: this is a fantastic read. So much story packed into relatively few pages.

Highlights aside from the main plot:
Freud and Jung at Coney Island ride the Tunnel of Love together. JP Morgan and Henry Ford discussing reincarnation (Ford is a true believer), Theodore Driesser anxiously adjusting his chair in circles through the night.

Hhhhh

Maybe the most ambitious book I’ve ever read.

We can do whatever we want. Are we not the world to come?

A philosophical novel, though I’m pressed to explain what that philosophy might be.

Hicks mctaggart.

The thought crossed Hicks’ mind - stopped, turns around and actually winked - that….

Finally gets pynchony around page 40.

2 beyond familiarity or indifference, some deep mischief is at work.

393. There are so many ways of taking vengeance one the world. Sometimes literature is simply not enough.