No, It Won't Be NYRB Classics Week

I had finished the Dud Avocado and had dug some 52 pages into Gyula Krudy's remarkable novel Sunflower. Yeah, I know, going from avocado to sunflower -- sounds like a promotion at Whole Foods.

As to the former, I preferred its second half. Elaine Dundy charged her protagonist with a measure of self-awareness and its frenetic observations culminated with this philosophy.

Jim picked me up at my old hotel the next morning. I'd slept hardly
at all that night and was reeling under the blow of a bad hangover. Jim looked
exactly the same as he always did and this shocked and annoyed me. How
could he be so callous after all I'd been through?

No doubt, all of my friends can appreciate the sanguine logic above.

I have no qualms with Krudy's epic, extolling all sorts of Magyar tropes into a devilish brew. The issue became the sudden availability of The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson. I've had my eye on such for a while now.

I'm on holiday again next week and i hope to embrace both Krudy as well as Patrick Hamilton, whom I've neglected for too long now.