Andrew Sare > Recent Status Updates

So luxurious:

"Merton did not speak. He shared a mouth to be torn at the tripod. We went back the way we had come, past the site of the stocks where the Isabel... and other vessels were built, past the site of the cookhouse cellar with its single shattered cup, past the graveyard knoll which we did not visit the first time, for we had seen and heard, and each of us had other keepings and reckonings to manage."

My thumb is usually off the pulse of what is new and popular. But, here I am - looking forward to this.

Weird that Puig's Kiss of he Spider Woman is being released as a movie today while I'm reading another of his books. I had no idea that was coming. Maybe I should have read that one instead, then I would have been more plugged in.

I better start thinking of the next big project after this one I guess. Spoiler, I have one in mind, how long before I make it my next major time suck is the question.

Picked it up last night: no idea what had occurred in the first 30 pages. A vague sense of remembered feelings, which seemed to me had happened in my subconscious during the day, not the prior night's read. Thats it. Like trying to remember a dream gone by, which ironically, or not, is the form of narrative of the book: a stream of consciousness dreamscape. I re-read from the beginning. Its pretty trippy stuff.

“Perhaps the greatest music was that which had no meaning. And sometimes an engraver had added a black spot to his scale to confuse musicians in that great day when his music should be heard…” - Young

slow going

“And now that you have just got to the end of these four volumes - the thing I have to ask is, how you feel your heads? my own akes dismally” Sterne

It took about 150 pages for the titular character to be born, not because anything in particular was happening. Let’s call it rambling by Sterne.

In all that time there were next to no mentions of the mother. His birth was rather an examination of philosophy, current events and morality by the father, uncle and doctor. They were the ones that went through the labour.

Now Sterne is getting to the preface!

“if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page, - I would tear it out of my book.” - Sterne.

Well. That’s the ways it’s going to be is it? I see.

Nathan "N.R." Gaddis (chime in if you're reading buddy) has transcribed Moore's Shandian Spawn reading list which flowed from Sterne. However in that list, among all the titles provided, is "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" by, get this: Yakov de Saglen. Who? What? let me in on what is going on here. There is even a Goodreads entry for the Yakov de Saglen "edition" marked "to read" by 6.

Officially my 700th addition to Goodreads (assuming I don’t have accidental double posts).

This collection is full of QR codes at the end of poems, which incidentally aren't working. I've emailed the author and may put this aside while I wait for a response.

My pursuit of Melville’s Bartleby is perhaps a blind folly. I’m working my way towards Chris Scott’s Bartleby, which I know next to nothing about, save that I have it listed by Christian Bok. Yet Scott’s Bartleby is apparently a continuation of Tristram Shandy, and not Melville. To be reading giants such as Sterne and Melville to get to something obscure by Scott is perhaps backwards. Nevertheless…

So, funny story. I didn’t know this was a short story collection. I had it in my head this was a novel. Entering the second chapter, when there hadn’t been mention of the anaconda and his murderous snake pals for some time, I wondered what the heck was going on. It was like I was reading a totally new story. Well, turns out I was reading a totally different story. Duh!

I’m going to need to hustle the next little while. The sheer amount of stuff I wanted to take home with me from the Latin American lit section at the university library was intoxicating. I grabbed 3 books and did my best to cover my eyes and make a quick exit, lest I would end up taking home a whole shelf.