J.T. Wilson > Recent Status Updates

“This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Beauty… what you will.”

Sort of an update on ‘Silas Marner’ plot-wise (at least as far as act one). Readable but not (yet) in a compelling way. Sort of Scarlett Thomas-ish in its all-dialogue, reference-heavy way.

Going from Achebe to Zevin pleases me. At least my range is broad alphabetically speaking.

Eh.

About time I crossed Achebe off the list.

Chic, Sister Sledge, Diana Ross and David Bowie all economically covered in barely 100 pages.

It still seems like we’re nowhere near Chic but I’m in absolutely no hurry to get there given the wild adventures Nile’s having in LA and NYC.

A rare autobiography where the early pages about the author’s formative years are essential reading: Nile’s mother, just 13 years older than him, is the coolest mom in NYC, selling a fur coat to Theolonius Monk less than a dozen pages in before descending into heroin addiction. By that time Nile had already been in a convalescent home (for asthma) and the Cub Scouts.

Still about 150 pages to go!

About 170 pages since the last update, longer than some entire books. Really great in this part.

One of the prominent characters is presumably about to turn heel (this being Dickens there’s already at least two antagonists hovering around).

Progress of 8% seems unremarkable but in this book, that represents about 100 pages.

“The only real answer is in music. Some answers are in my own songs, and some answers are in other people’s songs.”

“Any minute spent playing ‘Good Vibrations’ is a minute that I feel spiritually whole. I hope any minute hearing it is the same.”

Travelling has given me a lot of opportunity to enjoy Waugh’s long sentences, his passages of telling rather than showing, his allowance for dialogue to drive the plot, all things that I tried to drive out of my own work but am beginning to suspect are my strengths. Facile to compare oneself to this, the child’s drawing on the fridge comparing itself to the Mona Lisa.

Of course all the booze is quite F Scott Fitzgerald too.

How strange to read this for the first time while ‘Saltburn’ is still fresh in the memory. (It’s also not a million miles away from ‘This Side of Paradise’, another book about the indolence of university life in the 1920s, separated by an ocean)