Tabs

Life offers an odor of being hectic, though it isn't, not really. The weather has been remarkably stable and work unfolds without any throat punches, so, that's a plus. I have completed a number of books since my last posting. There was The History of Love by Nicole Kraus. I found that oddly affecting while still fuelled by that youthful desire link the stars in a fitting celestial tapestry. I finished Cold Comfort Farm which I enjoyed, though largely for Gibbons' imagination about a near future when private aircraft would be as ubiquitous as Fords. Her wit was biting throughout and it reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies.

Following a wonderful weekend I swept through J.M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K, which I consider profound. Coupled with his Waiting For The Barbarians, Coetzee's vision is penetrating and poetic. I simply wish he would write his lesser novels which simply frustrate in contrast. That remains my problem, not his.

I am nearly finished with another pair of novels: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz and Next by James Hynes. I selected the latter as I found it for a dollar and The Believer raved over it. It is a recycled Mrs. Dalloway, substituting a smarmy, blase protagonist for the insights of Woolf's characters. I devoured 200 pages of it last night and I found myself shaking my head, incredulous. I often think these days that the Nobel Committee was correct in their assessment of Contemporay American Literature.

I am to embark upon my reread endeavor starting tomorrow and then likely some history for samizdat over the holidays.