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Flashes of brilliance in the first story, but I also gagged on a line or two. I may skip right to "Night Soul" from here to get some context for the Silverblatt interview.

The section titled "Blackboard" that starts on page 310 is probably the best thing I have ever read.

I had jury duty today and so thought I would make a much larger dent in this tome but was dismissed around 11:30, much to my ambivalence.

Just received my used copies of You Bright and Risen Angels and Darconville's Cat in the mail. I'm getting my tome on.

I had to pick up some late James to read alongside The Tunnel, he comes up so often in the Gass interviews. James' prose is clearly a precursor, and perhaps even more pleasurable. It may even be more tangible in the mouth than Gass - you certainly chew.

"Prose goes most smoothly when drawn toward a culmination rather than when pushed from behind." Probably a problem I'm having.

There are just far too many insights to quote here. Game over.

"...when what they have to tell the world is, you know, as old-fashioned and confused as, “The sky is falling,” or, “Gee, life is hard…” I have really no interest in persuading anybody. I have no sense of having something to tell somebody, and I suppose that is what I want to tell people."

"I have nothing I want to tell anybody. But when one is teaching or lecturing, or offering opposing views—as with my arguments with John Gardner, the impression you are distinctly getting is that I want to persuade people of something, that I have some message. But the views that I have and formulate are mainly called for. I am constantly amazed by certain authors who feel that they must tell the world something..."

Just came across this extensive set of interviews: https://medium.com/the-william-h-gass...

It's 60 degrees and sunny here in Michigan and I'm reading this puppy on a folding chair outside. After tunneling through another miserable winter it's good to feel the sun on my neck.

I've decided. My Spring will sing with towering tomes of elegant prose. Darconville's Cat, Mason & Dixon... what other elixirs may my paws fix on?

You see? You can write a reasonably abstruse passage and still entertain with it. Gass composes pristine prose with superb prowess. As predicted, I'm incredibly impressed.

Let's do this.

Chapter 34 was a cool read. It was essentially two chapters in one,perhaps similar in a way to Pale Fire. It looks like a normal chapter and you start reading and soon realize that it is both a piece of a novel and a critique of that novel. The critique starts on line 1 and continues, skipping every other line and the novel does the same, only starting on line 2.

Oh look, something happened.

Just read the back of this book for the first time and it seems to suggest that Oliveira won't be a pretentious twit for the entirety of the novel... fingers crossed.

mmmmm?