On Middlemarch etc, when I was 30 I read this brutal comment about John Cheever: he got his reading done early.
Arrrgh! I hadn't got much if any serious reading done and here I was, ancient already.
So, I spent the next couple of years trying to get my own reading done: Middlemarch, Moby Dick, Brothers Karamazov, Iliad, Gravity's Rainbow, The Oresteia... and so on.
It was completely worth it and a total waste of time.
It was like watching a storm from a distance: spectacular, beautiful, terrifying, incomprehensible, and if it was truly felt at all it was felt in my gut not in my head and too much for my heart to hold.
So, I guess I am grateful and furious that I read this crushing phrase as early and as late in my life as I did.
And, I HAVE STILL NOT GOT MY READING DONE, which is a great joy and a deflating failure to apprehend.
this bit of An interview about reading w Fran Leibovitz, and she was saying Oprah got a lot of people to read- which was great- but the way they were being taught to read Fran did not approve of, the idea of ‘looking for yourself’ in the book, Leibovitz said, ‘ where’s the Fran in Moby Dick, Theres no Fran in Moby Dick, ( something like that) and I started thinking how great it would’ve been if theyre had been.
On Middlemarch etc, when I was 30 I read this brutal comment about John Cheever: he got his reading done early.
Arrrgh! I hadn't got much if any serious reading done and here I was, ancient already.
So, I spent the next couple of years trying to get my own reading done: Middlemarch, Moby Dick, Brothers Karamazov, Iliad, Gravity's Rainbow, The Oresteia... and so on.
It was completely worth it and a total waste of time.
It was like watching a storm from a distance: spectacular, beautiful, terrifying, incomprehensible, and if it was truly felt at all it was felt in my gut not in my head and too much for my heart to hold.
So, I guess I am grateful and furious that I read this crushing phrase as early and as late in my life as I did.
And, I HAVE STILL NOT GOT MY READING DONE, which is a great joy and a deflating failure to apprehend.
this bit of An interview about reading w Fran Leibovitz, and she was saying Oprah got a lot of people to read- which was great- but the way they were being taught to read Fran did not approve of, the idea of ‘looking for yourself’ in the book, Leibovitz said, ‘ where’s the Fran in Moby Dick, Theres no Fran in Moby Dick, ( something like that) and I started thinking how great it would’ve been if theyre had been.
Moby Dick could’ve used a Fran in it : )
i have still not got my reading done. Yes, a great joy, really! But a deflating failure? Too hard on your sweet self, Niall.