Bonnie G. > Recent Status Updates

I needed something fun, and Horowitz is a sure bet. I love his slyly autofictitious mysteries! And I feel like this one might include a dig at Rachel Cusk, but I am not certain. So much fun to hang out with Hawthorne & Horowitz again.

I love Philip Roth. He decides to write a sensitive memoir of his father, of that moment where the child becomes the parent that so many of us have experienced, and within that format, he finds a way to talk about his father's "servicable" penis. "I hadn't seen it since I was a small boy, and back then I used to think it was quite big. It turned out that I was right. It was thick and substantial." Never change, Phil!

This has been compared to the work of many others, and in fact I do find it derivative. The publisher compares this to Fleabag, which I see, and to Big Swiss, which I don't. I see this as lesser Martin Amis or Bukowski --stories of entertaining butt-hurt narcissists who live without much thought or care about how their actions affect others. And Torneberg has promise, but she is no Bukowski.

This reminds me of Margo Has Money Problems. Dell is Margo's messier, more entitled, and less enterprising companion. I wish I liked being in Dell's head more, but I am entertained so far.

Note: I use no social media, unless you count GR and LinkedIn (for work only). I find it makes me sad and leaves me with no time to do things I like. I mention that because I don't think I'm online enough to grasp some of this.

The last battle scenes with our erstwhile telephonist bored me. Maybe that was the point? Now we are back with Elana and Shostakovich, and I still feel a lack of narrative drive. I am used to the male gaze issue, after all, we are looking at this woman from the perspective of a particular man who only sees her in relation to himself, but I feel done with his worship. Maybe I need a break at nearly 600 pages in?

I'm finally aware of what I really must do and can't bear to do ... Every day he surprises me or dazzles me or makes me laugh and I feel such tenderness for him and leaving him will be like dying, but staying has become impossible -- he's cruel and demanding and selfish and inconsiderate and false and realy truly nuts, and he's killing me. And I love him. > ~Laurie's diary 4/5/80 -- she left for one day

It's for your wife, said Captain Wirth, smiling. You're so impossible about accepting gifts, I finally said to myself, I said, hit the armored man in his wife-fpot

Thank you, said Gerstein, stroking the soft supple leather of the handbag a little absently.

Human skin, said Captain Wirth. Don't worry; it's not Jewish. A good Russian peasant boy. I picked him out myself.

I recently mentioned in a review that I have cried while reading on the subway twice. Make that three times. I have been reading about Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany to contextualize 2026 America. More than any of the nonfiction this has done that. I have never felt so utterly helpless. Vollmann has done an amazing job of not dwelling on what happened, we all know that, but on how it happened.

I was recently talking to a student who, for many years, was the girlfriend of a member of a well-known Latin American boy band. In my youth, I dated 2 succesful musicians so we compared notes. When she broke things off, people thought she was nuts. I said, "They don't know, you need to make yourself as tiny as possible, to ignore all your needs." She emphatically agreed. Apparently, Laurie was okay with that.

"The winter days dwindled behind the Sixth Army as steadily as the frozen horse-legs stuck in the snow for road markers. Paulus was almost out of cigarettes. Christmas, naturally, was not very happy he wrote Coca. In times like these, it is better to avoid celebrations.

I love the characters and the basis of the story but the author screwed up on the central tension. Mia is tuned into everyone, but she doesn't see or hear the feelings of the person who is supposed to be her best friend since she was a child, even though everyone else does. And she says she can't be married to him because she has kidney disease and apparently, he will be okay with her suffering if there is no ring?

"One of the sacrifices which commanders have to make is to overcome any scruples they may have".

The messaging for Stalin's and Hitler's crews: people must overcome any sense of compassion or humanity to be patriotic, to be worthy. I wish this were not so damn relevant to life in America in 2026.

I also wish Vollmann's women were not either femme fatales or possessed of deeply masochistic levels of forbearance.

"Needless to say, the pages of a score are subdivided not only horizontally by the staves, but also vertically by partitions between measures which assure that every voice will sing to the same beat, In the symphony called "Barbarossa" these bar lines where provided by a double file of tall German executioners aiming their rifles at an evenly spaced line of civilian hostages who stood facing a stone wall."

After visiting Art in jail: "I fled from that place to Olvera Street, nearby, to La Luz Del Dia, my favorite cheap Mexican restaurant, where I enjoyed my food outrageously like people fuck when someone has died."

Laurie is a Class A enabler who desperately needs adoration and control, but she is also a delightful raconteur and an honest and talented writer. This is plain fun.

"Why, she was as blonde as the smoke which now rises up from all the synagogues!"

Whatever else this book is, it is an extraordinary accomplishment. Vollmann inhabits these people, which one hopes he found a deeply disturbing experience.

(Relatedly, I keep wondering whether there was a decision to portray nearly all of the men as having the inner life of an incel, or whether the incel is Vollmann.)

I was thinking Vollmann's thesis was that history is a lie, but I have come to understand that Vollmann believes truth is a lie, and his argument is compelling. Also, I was thinking that "pussy-whipped." is misused to denote the misogynistic view that women control men with the power of the pussy. Vollmann gets it right. Hetero men disempower themselves and women they desire by imbuing the vulva with mythic powers.

L

It is not just that this is over 800 pages (2.45 lbs per my kitchen scale -- I was curious) it is that I have already had to do research on cabala and Lenin's sex life, and I am only 36 pages in. That said, I am already a little in love with this book. I consider this the counterweight to The Wayfinder. This is a different way to approach history through fiction, and so far I am a fan. Big fan. Huge.

"In L.A., we put a gloss on everything, and we insist that gloss is reality. Everything has to be pretty or at least amusing. In New York, it's generally acknowledged that everything is nasty, and when they put a gloss on it, they understand it's just a gloss over nastiness. In New York you can be crippled, stupid, diseased, and not at all amusing and still be a member of the human race."

Pepper delivers moments. She creates that sense of being there. Often not great places to be, but reliably fascinating.

I have been grumpy of late, so this book has had to work hard to leave me with a goofy smile on my face over and over, and its hard work paid off.

I loved Lincoln in the Bardo so much. Maybe if I had not read that, this would have been less disappointing. It is all so unsubtle and so caustic. George Saunders strings words together brilliantly, and he does that here on more than a few occasions, but wordsmithing is not enough.

This is weird and fascinating. It has a sort of punk rock sensibility. There is nothing elegant about it; this has not been workshopped, but its heart and energy are undeniable and compelling. Laurie Pepper (who was a first cousin of Eve Babitz!) is fascinating to me, more fascinating by far than her husband. And all the inside Synanon stuff is amazing. I love a cult!

This continues to charm me to my core.

So far, this is a bit of a slog for me. Block's mother appears to have borderline personality disorder. Though she is not cruel, she is guided by mental illness, she inflicts cruelties upon her children and, to a lesser extent, at least one of her sisters. She separates her son from the rest of the world to make him just hers. It is sad, certainly, but so far it is bringing nothing new. I feel like a gawker.

This is a complete delight. I usually don't love Austen retellings, but this captures the soul of Emma. It is not perfect, but it is very very good. I read the second in the series, Elizabeth in East Hampton, before this, the first, and I appreciate how the books share some DNA but have a very different voice.

Finally nearing the end, and the drama just really ratcheted up!

That feeling that you don't want a book to end . . . not getting that at all. Reader error. This book is fully steeped in fantasy and folklore which is not my thing -- I expected more historical fiction. Objectively though, that parrot is the worst.

Bailey is inconsistent, so expectations were not high, but I am still surprised at how bad this is so far. It is a mess, all over the place, and both leads are entirely without a sense of humor. Also, I can't imagine anyone doesn't know what the twist will be after Bailey bafflingly out of nowhere peppers the text with references to Mad's desperate need to know who donated him a kidney. I may end up with a dnf here.