I’ve set my comment system here to require an email address for all comments. Take heed, though: your address isn’t made public nor is it used for anything other than notifying both of to replies on our threads. As always, you don’t need to sign up or login for anything to comment. As soon as I’m able to turn that option off, I will. Name and email is all that’s required.
Finding my way to something in the MainFictionThing by having a document open on the Infinite Canvas based on the Reveries section of Mervyn Peake's TITUS GROAN (currently reading and loving: Gormenghast will be the first fantasy series I've completed): the internal thoughts of all the characters at Titus's birthday breakfast before the next turn happens. Useful exercise even if it's doubtful that I'll use it in the final thing, find the rhythm of characters' thoughts, etc etc.
Combining with something Kim Stanley Robinson said in a recent City Arts and Lectures episode : that the novel (paraphrasing here) isn't a tool for self-expression but rather a way to get inside the heads of your characters, of other people. Playing that up here – not that I'm writing a novel – at least I don't think I'm writing a novel but who knows: maybe this is the inversion of the seven-year paragraph – or maybe a brief flash of getting somewhere before it all comes to a(nother) halt. Whatever it is, I'm going to run with it until I fall flat on my face.
Spent a bit of time waiting in a parking lot (grocery store: my wife got solo grocery shopping down to a science during the pandemic so we’ve decided not to fuck with perfection) this morning and took the opportunity to use it as a case study in my effort to use my Kindle Paperwhite with greater frequency: Economist and NYRB subscriptions show up there now; HOW TO TAKE SMART NOTES in there, too - a book I don't necessarily want to read in my daily reading blocks but do want to peruse in times outside (such as titular parking lot). While the PW's shit for reading comics, it's great for reading manga - ASTRO BOY, LONE WOLF AND CUB, and the third volume of BLACK JACK dwell there as well. That it still had 76% battery life after being buried under piles of books and Bergman / Varda Blu-Ray doorstop sets for three months is an added bonus… she’s seriously got it down to a science: I was in that parking lot for all of 20 minutes, maybe. Respect.
Concept art for MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949) | via
While I try to highlight mostly lesser-known artists with my EarBlissery, I’ve had the 20th anniversary edition of ( ) on a loop the past week and I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t include it. Still holds the same raw power as the first time I heard it, all those years ago. One of the best.
