Busy Then Sick

Umberto Eco concludes his masterful Infinity of Lists with a verse from Apollinaire: Pity for us who always battle on the frontiers of the boundless and the future. Following our return from Chicago I concluded Eco's survey and reveled in selections from Burton, Rabelais, Huysmans and Pynchon. This is certainly a book to be savored.

The first week back at work proved engaging, though I managed to complete Murakami's 1Q84 with a measure below satisfaction. Since then I have considered that the use of Aomame's vocation and personal devotion to intense stretching is an apt portal into the book. Maestro Murakami expects the reader to endure the ritual and the repetition for the sake of a nimble enlightenment. I can’s consider myself as converted.

The Prague Cemetery by Eco became available at the library and I swooped into this pastiche where apparently most of the dialogue is actual from available records, which is astounding. One must measure the recoil when we encounter towards the novel’s conclusion that The Protocols of Zion must include a platform from the Jewish/Freemason Conspiracy that history should be minimized in public education as no one need concern themselves with centuries of tragedy and deception, but focus on a brightened future of possibility. Such cynicism is a shorthand for almost every political movement in history. Eco has certainly triumphed with this one.

My wife’s sister Tihana mailed me a copy of The Loudest Sound and Nothing by Claire Wigfall which I pounced upon and read in a pair of evenings before my present head cold throttled me. I enjoyed the collection with mixed responses as I am so disposed. There are images from within such I can’t manage to elude which I suppose is an endorsement of sorts