Apropos of Nothing In Particular
Last week I finished reading The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, and Amsterdam by Ian McEwan.
Then I went to the library today and checked out a book of short stories by Saul Bellow, The Cadence of Grass (how I love that title!) by Thomas McGuane, and The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard (which I tried to check out once before, but forgot the author and accidentally picked out The Birth of Venus instead—QUITE a different book). I also bought a used copy of The English Patient for $1.
Of course, none of the above books bear the slightest resemblance to Ulysses by James Joyce, or Abundance: a Novel of Marie Antoinette—a fact which I mention only because I am supposed to be reading both of them in preparation for the spring residency of my writing program.
Oh, speaking of Ulysses: I used to think that Ulysses was a book that people read just to say they'd read it, so they could sound superior. I also thought that if anyone said they actually liked it, they were lying, so that they could sound superior. Somewhere along the line, I stubbornly purposed in my heart never to read Ulysses, so that I could (I suppose) sound superior by virtue of my non-comformity to the rest of the crowd. You can imagine that I was a little annoyed when the book got assigned.
But a strange thing happened when I began reading it. I found myself... well... liking it.
Oh well. As they say: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Or in this case, if you can't be superior over them, be superior with them... over other people.
Then I went to the library today and checked out a book of short stories by Saul Bellow, The Cadence of Grass (how I love that title!) by Thomas McGuane, and The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard (which I tried to check out once before, but forgot the author and accidentally picked out The Birth of Venus instead—QUITE a different book). I also bought a used copy of The English Patient for $1.
Of course, none of the above books bear the slightest resemblance to Ulysses by James Joyce, or Abundance: a Novel of Marie Antoinette—a fact which I mention only because I am supposed to be reading both of them in preparation for the spring residency of my writing program.
Oh, speaking of Ulysses: I used to think that Ulysses was a book that people read just to say they'd read it, so they could sound superior. I also thought that if anyone said they actually liked it, they were lying, so that they could sound superior. Somewhere along the line, I stubbornly purposed in my heart never to read Ulysses, so that I could (I suppose) sound superior by virtue of my non-comformity to the rest of the crowd. You can imagine that I was a little annoyed when the book got assigned.
But a strange thing happened when I began reading it. I found myself... well... liking it.
Oh well. As they say: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Or in this case, if you can't be superior over them, be superior with them... over other people.
posted by grackyfrogg @ 8:50 PM
2 Comments:
At 9:26 AM ,
eldila said...
What did you think of The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency? I wasn't terribly impressed, but I seem to be in the minority. I also think Ulysses is dangerous for creative writers...it's like trying to paint landscapes post-Picasso, if you know what I mean...
At 9:48 AM ,
grackyfrogg said...
well, you and i are both in that minority then, eldila. i liked individual chapters, and the author's descriptions of africa... but the chapters did not seem to flow in any logical pattern, so in spite of my amazing mental prowess, i never quite understood what was going on.
i remember one chapter where, at the end, the main character freaks out because she hears someone calling her name from her backyard at night... and that's it. we never find out if it was just her imagination, if it was a real person, or anything. it's never brought up again. very odd.
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