Nick Grammos’s Reviews > Last Letter to a Reader > Status Update

OK, I'm finished. But I'll leave it here until I can write something new. What an exhilarating read.

Now I'm stuck, having read Murnane's views on his books, which to read next. Emerald Blue. A Million Windows. Barley Patch. The Collected Shorter Fiction (as it's known of here in Oz.

After reading about emerald blue and a million windows I feel I’m in for a treat reading more of murnanes works

I tend to gather books I want to read based on the authors I like. This means I seek books to read for some future event like a nuclear winter where I would have nothing else to do except read in a bunker. Here Murnane has re-read all his own books and write about them. So during each chapter, I check my shelves to see how many of his books I have. I'm near complete, only one more book left and the world can end.

I have tried to explain already in this work that a work of fiction is for me a pattern of meaning that might need many years for its formation.

I'm not sure why, but my copy of the same edition has 126 pages, the edition notes refers to 140 pages, so have I have read 47 of 126 or 140? I feel lost as I often am in a Murnane landscape, brushing aside Murnane prose, wading through in Murnane voice.

Managed to read multiple pages without stopping often to doodle. Each essay on one of his own books is a retelling of the story of the story. On FR Leavis What little I understood repelled me. The rest made no sense.
The literary ideologue and 60s Svengali sounds little different today's ideological isms one has to learn that take us further from connecting with the ideas writers offer us. Scary then and now.

I stop after a page, this is inevitable with Murnane. A thought comes, not necessarily the one on the page and I pause to consider, or go off somewhere else in my thoughts. I use a pencil to underline, though I tend not to deface my books any more, preferring fluorescent yellow tags I purchase in packets and use in vast numbers. But I won't ever sell this book. Whoever reads it after me will put up with my commentary