Greg S > Recent Status Updates

Dichotomous thinking…

I’m imagining how different this book would be if these people had children instead of endless leisure time.

odd. — “She’d read about the September bombing a few weeks ago in a newspaper, and her first reaction then had been a surprising homesickness…”

Sylvia marvels at three ordinary things just because it’s Joyce.

James Joyce, not a good listener, apparently. — “…he interrupted.”

I’m rolling my eyes. — “…her milky skin…”

Lol. Who? Nora Barnacle? — “…Joyce’s wife, a woman with an imposing physicality, like one of the nudes climbing out of Rodin’s marble.”

sure, why not? — “…upholstery had gone nearly white and threadbare with use where her rear end now rested..”

This is the third book that I’ve read this year where the mention of a dead romantic partner initiates a romantic scene with the main character. Is this a trope or what?

she’s what? thirty-three?

Here’s all my savings for your new business! what is this, Harry Potter? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Intergenerational wealth, am I right?— “I shall be sending you the contents of my own savings account…”

Sylvia strategizing after someone dies. Wasn’t Sylvia also friends with Suzanne? Sylvia is giving me “nice guy” vibes. — “..she felt it was wise to give her as much time as she needed to grieve for Suzanne.”

Adrienne says the Eiffel Tower has too many steps and Sylvia immediately wonders about Adrienne’s weight gain? weird!

the very next paragraph is a fast-forward to when Adrienne has gotten over Suzanne’s death. It’s like she never existed.

Sylvia, the cold-blooded shark. Or is it the author that’s cold-blooded? — “Was it possible that the voice she’d heard calling her back to Paris hadn’t been the city’s, but Suzanne’s dying plea, asking that Sylvia come back to take care of Adrienne.”

“There’s this notion of the ’20s as a wild period where everyone is just grabbing everything they can get,” adds Nancy Bristow, history chair at the University of Puget Sound. This idea is broad-brush hyperbole of a reality that held true for only a certain class of Americans—not everyone.” says Lynn Dumenil, a historian… In her class at Occidental College…”

After WW1, people were famously not optimistic. — “Now everyone is full of optimism…”

a quick google tells me one point of Manets painting was to show the mundane and realistic, not ‘the stuff of gods’. — “For modern life was indeed the stuff of gods, as Manet’s name for his prostitute-model plainly said.”

what does that mean? — “…on the bookseller’s ample, soft form.”

a bit rude. — “…whom Cyprian referred to—very quietly, and only to Sylvia—as la crapaudette, a variation of the French word for toad.”

what does alcohol have to do with american progress? or are we just grabbing the most recognizable concepts of the 20’s?

lol. mon dieu! The power of seeing someone else with a girlfriend! — “Sylvia felt suddenly disoriented, knocked off balance by her surroundings…”

get out of here. Moby Dick is no one’s favorite. — “What about Moby Dick? That’s one of my favorites.”

It’s only page three. what is happening ? — “…that this pretty girl in the outdated clothes should so admire her own favorite founding father.”

It doesn’t make sense

lol. what? — “I got lucky and found DeWitt Albright on my first try.”

story time. — “The first time my father took…”

A five-year-old would not say it like that.

This book is like reading the brain of someone with ADHD.

Aside: when you tell someone you’ll live in Japan, they wail and weep over the long distance. Then when you live 2 hrs away, they only mildly grumble, despite the fact that they visit you exactly the same amount if you lived those 18 hrs away.