Goddamn but the English sure do like to write about the weather.
Dickens or Bulwer-Lytton?
75% here
One of the passages I thought was Dickens writing in the voice of a Bulwer-Lyttonesque character. And on the last one I didn't think Bulwer-Lytton had the capacity for self-mockery and I was wrong. I think B-W wasn't as bad a writer as we have been led to believe but that may have been the point.
Old people and their opinions
I was at the Strand yesterday and some little old man sidles up to me and asks me if I read "Gone with the Wind." I said I tried to but it blew away. Psyche, I didn't say that. But he continued to pick out books I hadn't read and asked me if I read them. He couldn't believe how illiterate I was and asked me where I went to school. Then this other old man came to the other side of me and said, "Have you read Anna Karenina? You have to read Anna Karenina." Finally I had it and started showing them books I have read. And the little old man says, "So you have read something." I didn't buy any books but I went out and bought a bong. Take that, old dudes!
fucking new york, man
That East Coast thing where random people think they have a right to get up in your business while you are minding your own never ceases to amaze me. You cast aspersions on a man's literary acumen out in these parts and you might find yerself with a belly fulla lead.
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I think of it as a public service that New Yorkers provide one another: the opportunity to vent some hostility. At least I was under the impression that the proper response to any unsolicited advice was "Yeah, well who the fuck asked you?" Or "I got your Gone With The Wind right here, old man." [grab crotch]. I'd hate to think that I was the one being rude this whole time.
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I was at the Strand yesterday and some little old man sidles up to me and asks me if I read "Gone with the Wind." I said I tried to but it blew away. Psyche, I didn't say that. But he continued to pick out books I hadn't read and asked me if I read them. He couldn't believe how illiterate I was and asked me where I went to school. Then this other old man came to the other side of me and said, "Have you read Anna Karenina? You have to read Anna Karenina." Finally I had it and started showing them books I have read. And the little old man says, "So you have read something." I didn't buy any books but I went out and bought a bong. Take that, old dudes!
That'll show 'em. Old people have a way of making you feel silly. There was another old woman who used to come into the cinema, and every time she came in, she would ask if I had found a publisher for my book yet, and I'd say, "No."
Her face grew more and more disdainful with every repeat of this exchange. It became almost unbearable for me, as her face seemed to reflect my own sense of personal failure far better than my own face in the mirror.
In the end, though, I grew to enjoy saying, "No."
I reached a zen point with failure.
I insist upon it now.
Joined: 2007-09-14
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