quite a wingding

“That was quite a wingding, yes. Wingding—the word—was only in my brain because I had Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift with me for the entire trip. The novel was quite a gas. This was in China, not Paris back-then, or at my dad’s house as a child in West Philly. In France, I’d found a UK edition of Thomas Pynchon’s V, and I’d also read Melville’s Moby Dick. The latter was a Penguin edition I’d brought from home. I knew I had to read if I wanted to write.”

~~ from “Chinese Sun” by Alex Kudera