Status Updates From Faces in the Crowd

#fridayreads

I've never been able to say the things I think in the tone I imagine before uttering them.

Frederico's second-greatest virtue was that he always got excited when he grasped a new idea. But then straightaway he'd be filled with disillusion: that was his greatest virtue.

Laura and Enea took me, they didn't ask questions; they're the kind of people who know how to respect others, not to ask explanations.

Leave a life. Blow everything up. No, not everything: blow up the square meter you occupy among people. Or better still: leave empty chairs at the tables you once shared with friends, not metaphorically, but really, leave a chair, become a gap for your friends, allow the circle of silence around you to swell and fill with speculation. What few people understand is that you leave one life to start another.

If you really want to get under a person's skin, make an accusation about their moral hygiene.

I knew it wasn't a good idea to place the least trust in household objects; as soon as we became accustomed to the silent presence of a thing, it gets broken or disappears.

People die, irresponsibly leave a ghost of themselves hanging around, and then they, the original and the ghost, go on living, each in his own right.

I was leading an imbecilic life, but I liked it. I kept an almost metaphysical distance from things and people, but I liked it. I felt almost ghostly, and I liked that most of all.

Leave a life. Blow everything up. No, not everything: blow up the square meter you occupy among people. Or better still: leave empty chairs at the tables you once shared with friends, not metaphorically, but really, leave a chair, become a gap for your friends, allow the circle of silence around you to swell and fill with speculation. What few people understand is that you leave once life to start another.

loving it. 'I saw William Carlos Williams beside me, wearing enormous glasses, inspecting the vagina of a miniature woman lying on a napkin on the bar.. the poet Zvorsky conducting an imaginary orchestra; Ezra Pound hanging in a cage in the corner and Garcia Lorca tossing him peanuts, which he accepted gleefully.

There are people who are capable of recounting their lives as a sequence of events that lead to a destiny. If you give them a pen, they write you a horribly boring novel in which each sentence is there for an ultimate reason: everything links up, there are no loose ends.

"behoove" --> behoover (i.e. vacuum)

and really rather interesting poetry

All novels lack something or someone. In this novel there's no one.

Everything is or should be fiction.

Wait, she leaves her drinks on bars while she goes out to smoke? I thought this was set in a relatively contemporary time.

“I harbored the secret hope, or rather, the secret certainty, that one day I would finally turn into myself; into the image of myself I’d been elaborating for years”

I need to generate a structure full of holes so that I can always find a place for myself

“Novels need a sustained breath. That’s what novelists want. No one knows exactly what it means but they all say: a sustained breath. I have a baby and a boy. They don’t let me breathe. Everything I write is—has to be—in short bursts. I’m short of breath.”

Nicely Bolanoesque; i wish i'd had time to finish it this weekend.

Entra una segunda voz, la de Owen. La primera, una escritora de tono afrancesado marguerite-duresco, era impostada pero bonita. Pero entra esta voz y entre la metaficción, la metalepsis y otras maromas no sé si tendré el vigor para terminar el libro. Tampoco hay nada en el argumento que anime a continuar (¿qué va a pasar con...?). La pregunta parece ser en qué recurso descansa la novela.

"Regañé al niño mediano porque escondió a la bebé en el cajón del refrigerador."

'I make them eat the whole [watermelon], shouting on our sweaters, because we've forgotten the special rugs their mother keeps for picnics. 'We can't eat anymore watermelon, Papa, we'll explode , they plead. 'Keep eating, nothing comes for free.'

My brain is breaking. I was ill-prepared for this book. My brain lacks sufficient compartments to stuff the excerpts into. Or maybe I lack sufficient thread to tie them together.

"...Una mujer que había sido bailarina y seguía enseñando las clavículas y metiendo el ombligo, como si el porte resanara los embates de tantos años sin haber usado mallas y tutú."

She's a pathological liar. More or less.

'It wasn't my habit to take things that didn't belong to me. Just sometimes, some things. Sometimes, quite a lot of things.'

Interesantes sus frases, ciertos momentos cortos. Muchos párrafos los veo innecesarios.

‘Wanneer ik niet met de kinderen bezig ben, zit ik weer aan mijn roman. Ik ben op zoek naar een structuur die vol zit met gaten, zodat het altijd mogelijk is een plekje op de pagina te vinden, de pagina te bewonen. Nooit moet ik er meer in plaatsen dan noodzakelijk is, hem nooit volproppen, helemaal inrichten of optooien. Ik moet deuren en ramen opengooien. Muren opwerken maar ook weer afbreken.’ (p. 22)