Joey Anderson > Recent Status Updates

Eye-opening: a majority of Russians thought they always wanted capitalism and a democratic society, but when the Soviet Empire fell in 1991, they discovered they hated it. What I like about this history is that it is not an historical analysis from the author’s perspective, but simply the actual words of Russians she took from interviews.

The novel did get better once I realized that science and technology were simply a side issue to the central ideas of the 18th century: the European penchant for slavery, commerce, and colonialism in the “Age of Reason.”

Not as interesting as I thought it would be. There must be many readers who are fascinated with the Transit of Venus; I’m just not one of them. I’ve always been intrigued by Pynchon’s other works, so I am sure it will get better.

Welty’s style is so different, so unique, that it is difficult to describe, maybe like a soft summer rain falling in a park filled with trees. The center of each story is always unsaid, always a mystery. She is wondrous.

“It made Call feel that he had outlived his time, something he had never expected to do. Now he had begun to listen for echoes, an unhealthy form of distraction when there were still men in the country who burned people and dogs.”

“‘You see, I suspect that your false assessment of my legal advice, as well as your behaviour in general, are due to the fact that, even though you are a defendant, you have been treated too well, or, to be more precise, treated carelessly, as it would seem. This, too, has its reason; it is often better to be in chains than free...’”

“‘Not one single acquittal, then,’ said K., as if he were talking to himself and to his hopes. ‘That only serves to confirm the opinion I already have of the court. So there’s no hope from that side either. The whole court could be replaced by a single executioner.’”

“You always had such a clear grasp of things, has it deserted you now, of all times? Do you want to lose the trial? Do you know what that means? That means you’ll simply be deleted. And all your family will go down with you, or at least be thoroughly humiliated.”

I’m glad that no one has ever told me that I’ll “simply be deleted.”

"For her, in truth, almost all books were one-book-less; she would have like to be overcome by an immense thirst and for an infinite period of time (figured as between three and five years) to read the complete works of Goethe, Homer, Dylan Thomas, Mauriac, Faulkner, Baudelaire, Roberto Arlt, Saint Augustine, and other writers whose names would keep coming up in conversation in the Club."

Sound familar?

"They liked to challenge the danger of not meeting, of spending the day alone sulking in a café or a park bench, reading-another-book. The another-book theory was Oliveira’s, and La Maga had accepted it by pure osmosis."

The next installment of the Lonesome Dove story

Like an Odyssey of the Western United States. It is also like a death march from Texas to Montana.

“If he had not made any choice when he was young it was that he would not defend himself with the rapid and anxious accumulation of ‘culture,’ the favorite dodge of the Argentine middle class to avoid facing national reality, or any reality for that matter, and to think of themselves as safe from the emptiness surrounding them.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I read this novel forty years ago, and opening it again and reading the first chapter, I found it had the same charm as it did back then. A second virtue is that novels you read before act like a time machine and I remember much of what I was doing in the late seventies. La Maga is back as well as the search for the sugar cube.

Augustus acknowledges the loss of the Old West, his home:
“Thus the sight of the road of bones stretching over the prairie was a shock. Maybe roads of bones were all that was left. The thought gave the very emptiness of the plains a different feel. With those millions of animals gone, and the Indians mostly gone in their wake, the great plains were truly empty, unpeopled and ungrazed.”

A nice comfortable and leisurely read about a group of men in Texas in the 1880’s, but less action (at this point) than you would think. For me, having spent my life in the West, it’s a bit homey.

An interesting idea: the physical self is only a shadow of the inner self, the psyche or the soul, which is a person’s substance. Therefore, we are never what we appear to be. And neither is anyone else.

The War of the Roses is over with the death of Richard, but the last act is a bit underwhelming for the numerous speeches about preparation for the battle on Bosworth Field, and how the victors now see a unified England.

In the fifth year of his rule, Hadrian's rule is less than glamorous. Emperors, it seems, are nothing more than grand (some less grand than others) administrators. The better ones, like Hadrian, built and restored edifices and roads. He limited the reach of the Empire; no more conquest of territory.

A bit dry, but it is a historical biography. However, it is so informative, not only about Hadrian, but the emperors before him and what kind of empire he inherited.

Investigation into Queen Anne’s adultery begins. Incest is also a concern. To save themselves, the Queen’s ladies quickly give her up.