Alex > Recent Status Updates

Dolorous update.

Picking this back up again after about a year because the sun sets at five now.

I went to see The End of the Tour last night by myself. I was one of 5 people in the theater, and the other 4 were there together. It was not a great movie, and I don't see (thankfully) how it will affect DFW mythos one way or the other. Making the movie was not the right thing to do, since the family was against it, but I also don't believe that their worst fears about it will manifest. Somehow I'm glad I saw it.

Can anyone shed a little light on the epigraphs and illustrations? The former make some sense in terms of setting an atmosphere, but the illustrations seem to appear at random...

The first two collections were pretty spotty for me, but No End of Fun is consistently good so far.

Lumpy progress.

Super-smooth sailing here. I was expecting some unchained PoMo madness, but this is really one of those 'quietly powerful' books.

I'm picking up a Kundera vibe kinda. I swear it's not just the hat on the cover...

"The way he looked at it, if your calculations showed you couldn't do something, then you went ahead and did it without the calculations."

Am I to understand that there are multiple people (programmers) writing this novel and that Big George is top dog among them? Or what? It's too early still to say what is happening here but so far this is... zany. I'm loving it.

I'm a Vollmann Virgin, but I own YBARA and The Rifles. All of these Dying Grass updates are making me want to pick one of those up. So many books, so little time...

Nabokov is great at shaping your impressions of his mysteries in very subtle ways, through attitudes and turns-of-phrase that give just enough away to - maybe not even at the moment you read it - go, "hmm." And so later when those impressions are actually addressed (not answered) it almost feels clumsy, until you recognize the successful subtlety with which your thoughts on the subject have already been steered.

Pynch seems to have greatly improved his prose game since V. Coming at this as a slow-read.

I'm very much picking up a folksier DFW vibe here.

I bought this years ago with an amazon gift card, alongside Herzog and Infinite Jest. This was before I read as obsessively as I do now (the book that set me off would be IJ). It's interesting to me now because I have no trouble imagining Pale Fire as the genesis of DFW's endnote style, and at the time I bought both works my mindset was essentially "oh, look at these books written in goofy ways..." I had no idea...

William Gass should write a book about El Chapo.

Kinbote is hilarious. I'm nervous about the poem though. I don't know shit about poetry.

DFW and Adderall: http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/no...

This has been a mixed bag for me since Percival passed. I find myself bored or frustrated or blown away by poignant prose. There are moments where I think this is some of the best stuff I've ever read and moments where I wonder if it's even worth continuing. The Waves is certainly not the type of book you can only read once and completely wrap your head around. I'm getting anxious to start Crossing to Safety.