what does one read after Infinite Jest???

Anne of the Island, of course. It's like comfort food for when life and literature has given you the howling fantods.

That's what I took with me to Pensacola and I was happy that I did.

I also started reading a Chris Moore novel, Fluke and it's really funny.


Anyways, things are chill here. I'm still eating super healthy (if you don't count the half dozen peach margaritas w/ whipped cream and maraschino cherry toppings I had in P'cola) and feeling really really good about everything; school, family stuff, and my personal life.

um, wow, so I really neglected you guys

Here's what's new:


I'm eating only really healthy unprocessed foods all of the time now, and by all the time I mean every 3 hours.

I'm leaving for Pensacola in the morning, looong drive.

I finished IJ last week.

And I'm in love with RJD2 right now, look him up on Pandora if you've got a minute to spare.

a personal victory, ordinary run of the mill moments of clarity, & a startling IJ revelatory moment

This morning, I jumped out of bed (ok, what really happened was that I cheerily responded "Hello!" to a text that woke me up instead of the more typical "argh. do I know you?" See why for me that constitutes jumping out of bed?)ready to face my day and head to the beach.

I put on my bathing suit and checked my midrange sideways view in the small mirror of my jewelery box... and... kinda flattish tummy area. I mean, not flat flat. Not like before kids. Not like Matt V's prescribed "rock star lean abs" but people- in the past few weeks alone I have enjoyed cake and milk, several pints of beer and a hot dog, a sushi feast, more beer, ice cream with Reese's peanut butter cups smashed in for good measure, and arepas with cheese. [I also have had countless meals made solely of vegetable matter and have stopped using cream/sugar. I've worked pretty hard, in spite of the stuff I listed above (hitting the gym, riding my bike, and so on), so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, it was just a startling moment.]

In that tiny little mirror, for about an hour, I just didn't look completely pregnant. And then I had an apple for breakfast.


Also- moment of clarity for me: I don't know how to flirt anymore. Uhhh. Ok, now what? Dang.


Thirdly, for the IJ readers out there: I read a DFW quote yesterday re: the use of endnotes vs footnotes. He and his editor needed a way to shorten the original draft of the book so they hit upon the idea of weeding out some information into notes. The editor thought it would be more reader-friendly to use footnotes instead of endnotes but DFW said that the use of endnotes "cutely mimics some of the story’s thematic concerns"...

In case you don't follow, what happens when you flip to the back and then back to your page and then back to the back and then back to your page? What are you reminded of? (Answer is a good tennis rally)

Then I was ruminating on how the whole narrative seems to be a tennis rally of sorts, bouncing balls off of different topics and they keep on coming with a sick speed. And then, like that, I knew what those orbs are in the book, marking various sections... And it was so obvious (not the moon or the sun or simply just a pretty, lightly shaded circle). They are tennis balls, flying through the book. Fwap. fwap. fwap. fwap.

#infsum

So, 419 pages in and I'm suddenly afraid Wallace won't "deliver the goods". I mean, sure, reading for its own sake should be (and is) enjoyable, but I want to know that if I'm patient, I will be rewarded. I want there to be an ending.

If 'The Entertainment' ends up being like the gleaming contents of a certain cinematic briefcase... if the climax, gasping for breath, grasping a hold of everything it can in the moments before the (o ho!) parting of clouds... if satisfaction never comes...

I know I just posted my thoughts on Infinite Jest,,,

I couldn't decide if that should be followed by "but" or "so".

I know I just posted my thoughts on Infinite Jest, BUT I did a lot more reading and I have some thoughts and questions.

1) I felt funny about the chronology; years are labelled in a strange way (for example, The Year of the Trial Sized Dove Bar) and I wasn't sure WHEN things were happening. It was getting disorienting. I decided to trust Wallace as I had been instructed to, and when I got to endnote #24 it had worked itself out. Because Endnote #24 sort of lays out the (INSANELY LONG) chronology of James Incandenza's film-making history and uses the weird year labels.

2) Endnote #39, part a is freaking hilarious. Ha! "Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, a.k.a. Wheelchair Assassins, pretty much Quebec's most dreaded [...] terrorist cell".


3) The similarities between IJ and The Royal Tenenbaums seems to be coincidental.

I will tell you about other things, too.

1) I'm still mostly eating crazy-healthy. I have re-introduced more variety, but still being pretty restrictive for the sake of getting fit and I think (fingers crossed) I'm making some progress. For fuck's sake, I hope I'm making progress.

2) One of the two hens got out when Conner was putting fresh water inside the coop the other day (or so I hear) and Sugar chased the poor thing for hours. It hid under Harry's house for the night and hasn't laid an egg since the ordeal.

3) Sewing a LOT. A lot of diaper covers. Hey- need any diaper covers??

essentially on track with infsum

My favorite bits between the first and sixty first pages?

The opinions speech in the college admission interview, the quintessential stoner's shopping list, "happification" - what a RAD word (p 42), howling fantods, maternal and otherwise, the phrase "neuralgic with A.M. dread" which I personally know something of, and the reference to where 90% of people store their kitchen linens.

And that whole bit with the mold is just nuts, heart-wrenchingly nuts.

Here's what I'm wondering, though: does ETA (for Enfield Tennis Academy) read to you as Estimated Time of Arrival in your head when you see the letters ETA??

And do you think David Foster Wallace can be credited with promulgating the endearment 'Moms' as opposed to the conventional 'Mom'??? I do. I have no knowledge of anyone referring to their mother as 'Moms' until fairly recently (its definitely not unusual nowadays), which gives the trend sufficient time to have circulated beyond readers of IJ.

summer reading list

I've stumbled upon a magical formula for ensuring that we get out of the house early on Tuesday mornings this summer!

If you know me, this is no small feat (I tend to run late and I don't normally enjoy rushing my kids through breakfast and out the door)... We want to be at the free kids movie early enough to ensure a seat, therefore the kids cooperate. And then after the movie, we stop at the used bookstore which is conveniently situated nearly next door to the theater.


It's foolproof and failproof.

The first week I got Artemisia which is a Mannerist art history legal mystery/novel/biography about a female artist. Densely rich, and perfect for wasting long stretches of time while educating yourself.

The 2nd week, I got Julie & Julia, which I later discovered is being made into a movie. I can definitely see why. Funny and fast read.

Now, I don't know what I'll take home on Tuesday, but I'm shooting for a copy of Hamlet. Of course, I've read it before, but it's been a while and I'm on board for the Infinite Summer challenge (thanks, Colin!!) and I ordered my copy of the reputedly Joyce-ian Infinite Jest today on Amazon. The title is a reference to Hamlet and I hear that it's best to have it fresh on the brain when going in to IJ. Which puts me behind schedule because I read the few pages I could today on Amazon, but in order to read all of it (1000+ pages) by summer's end, I've got to average 75 pages per week.

Oh, but the first handful of pages? Charming! Funny! And, considering the opening scene is a college admissions interview, close to home.

Mester Morel shan't have gone to hell

Oh no... hell might be too tidy an end.

Instead, he should have paid for his (fictional) transgressions by first being fed aquatic neurotoxins that would leave him retching and grasping for sanity, and then he should have to lay down in the FUMC's wasp-y morning car circle for luxury car after luxury car to use as a speed bump.

Ok, maybe that's too violent. Well then, the lovely wives who wear diamonds in the morning, blonde and beautiful, tan and incredibly fit, could look down in disdain and he would be in HELL.


ANYWAYS, can you tell I'm reading Sons and Lovers (D.H. Lawrence)??? This book has been in my collection for so long, it has both my name and James' name in the front cover. And if you have to ask who James is and why his name is in the front cover of my book, well, then you haven't known me more than a decade.

I sometimes wonder if I did the wrong thing by breaking up with him. I think he would have been true to me, I think he would have stood by me when I wasn't blonde enough, or Protestant enough, and so on, but I would have been relegated to raising my children out of the back of our green and white VW bus.

Wow, I feel so old and frumpy and PLAIN all of a sudden.

Do I need to put on my diamond earrings and go to the gym or something?

comfort reading??

What do you do when things in your life are shaky or times loom with uncertainty?

I get back to reading. When life is beribboned and gay, it's easy to let the books sit silently, but certain situations (ie; breakups) call for comfort reading.

Starting in the middle of last week, I picked up The Long Winter, a Little House book that I'd first read when I was still in elementary school. I read it in 24 hours. Then, a day or so later, I moved on to Little Town on the Prairie, the next book in the series.

You guessed it, since then, I have read from there through the next two books (the last two in the series) as well.

I've been reading These Happy Golden Years to Cora, strangely enough she wanted to read that one next, skipping Plum Creek and everything that happens before the spring after the long winter... Oh well, I've just been explaining as we go what the heck everyone's talking about. Like when she asked me "Mom, Mary's BLIND??" and "She went to college??".

Ok, so for the sake of not talking to myself- what is your comfort read of choice?

and come gather 'round the stripper pole?

On Sunday, since I was sans enfants, I rode my bike up to Borders (in the bitter cold) and hunkered down with a few books and a cup of coffee. I actually zipped right through two of them, cover to cover.

The first one was Candy Girl, by Diablo Cody (that chick who wrote the screenplay for Juno). It's the true story [blah blah blah] of how she worked as a stripper, etc. Interestingly, when she first began working in strip clubs she had a decent day job and a happy home life with her boyfriend & his little girl.

Ok, granted- that's a pretty juicy story, but what I liked best about the book is her use of language. She gets the texture of words. She employs literary technique, skillful narrative, and subtle humor even though she would have still sold plenty of copies 'taking the easy way out'.

Since I've been writing a lot, when I read and my mind goes to the behind-the-scenes stuff... How was the piece constructed, and in what order? Which parts gave her the most satisfaction, or the most trouble? How much of a real life person do you write into your book, and where do you draw the line?

it's (not yet) Thursday

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar..., by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, is, hands down, the best book I've read all year ;-)

No, seriously, it's funny. The comedic jewels are strewn hither and yon. Although it's a book of jokes, they tie everything up in a pretty way.

Take for example, this joke illustrating Western Empiricism:

"Three women are in a locker room dressing to play racquetball when a man runs through wearing nothing but a bag over his head. The first woman looks at his wiener and says, "Well, it's not my husband." The second woman says, "No, it isn't." The third says, "He's not even a member of this club."

Or this, the introduction to the section discussing logic and fallacies:

"The 'Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc' Fallacy

First, a word about the social usage of this term: In some circles, when uttered with a straight face, this phrase can help you get lucky at a party. Interestingly, it has the exact opposite effect when uttered in English."

Hee-larious, unlike the other two books I'm reading right now (Waterlily and The Origin of Financial Crises) and the one that I'm supposed to borrowing from Carvajal, asap. Right, John?

this is how

...I've been handling the issues, so far.

I'm reading Carlos Castaneda's Tales of Power and hoping to absorb some lesson on strength and self assuredness.

Since it's a book I've already read, there is that nice comfort that I can pick it up and open it to any part I want. Yesterday I reread the part where Don Juan explains the tonal and nagual to Carlos, which are (self)consciousness and invisible power, respectively.

They sit on a bench for a while and people watch, picking out people who have weak, out of shape tonals, and Don Juan adds that self indulgence can weaken the naturally sensitive tonal.

The nagual is where a warrior's creativity, power, and immpecability come from, and it is entirely invisible and un-imaginable, but when it is in balance the warrior can draw on it at will.

Maybe this sounds a bit esoteric to you, for a discussion on childrearing, but I can't imagine anything else I can do at this point to balance the two forces working on me right now- (somewhat just)outside expectations and my preference for my own method of handling my children (certainly NOT perfect yet!). I am open to change, but not at the expense of my relationship with C and C.

So, I want to have a strong, balanced tonal and nagual, so that all of my life is like clay in my hands. I know my children are their own selves, but I want to manage them deftly when needed, and others, too.


Also, I don't know why my reply to Cassie came under the name of Luz Dary, my aunt. I was sure I had completed the sign in as myself.