Alex > Recent Status Updates

With the exception of Voss’s first letter to Laura, this really is a slow burn. Loved the introduction of Judd. And what’s the deal with the butter?????

Definitely good to have a few Wikipedia tabs open while reading. Between this and Guns of August I feel like I’ve accidentally enrolled in a course on 20th century Germany.

Gonna try to make up for my lack of history reading a bit this year. This seemed like a good place to start.

Definitely pulls you in. Entirely different tone from Harpole Report.

As we get into the actual writings of mystics I am beginning to worry that they may represent everything I believe makes for bad writing. Where is the crazy Lynchian stuff that was teased in the intro?

Hoping to tunnel out by year’s end.

I was already hoping to break out of the prison of monolingualism in the coming year, and boy is this book egging me on.

Hopping over the Elegies straight to the Sonnets. I’ll circle back when I catch up to his Duino ditties in Reading Rilke so that I can read the Mitchell alongside the Gass.

Dig!

Well damn, I think Rulfo is becoming a fave. Better get my hands on the updated Peramo and his final collection.

I’m guessing this is not the way most readers feel but I was loving this until the part about the Karmas. I’m hoping that its inclusion becomes clear later on because right now it feels like a very long digression to build character in a non-empathetic and all-too-direct way, through simply telling us what they’re like instead of incorporating characterizing actions into the plot.

Pure fun.

On to Free Will after this one because I have yet to see an argument in favor of it that doesn’t feel like a rationalization for something folks just really really want to be true.

Certainly a singular experience.

The moment is finally right.

The streak from The Metamorphosis through The Hunger Artist is absolute perfection. Too bad the section of longer stories is bookended by some real mind-numbing clunkers. And those also happen to be the longest works here. Looks like what I really need is an incomplete collection. That could easily enter my top ten. Ah well, onto the bite sized…