Finally added these Madison SHADOW toys from the 70’s to the collection; they join a coloring book and “Crime Fighter Detection Belt” kit from the same era:
Other than my adoration for the character, the oddness of the licensed Shadow toys over the years fuels my passion for acquiring them. Such is the challenge of making toys from a a decidedly adult character…
Need to stop looking at the Insta stories of one side of the family and tuning into the relayed happenings of another as both trigger me into wondering if any of the choices or the sacrifices I've made for this creative malarkey were worth any of it as I stare down decade two of offering little to the world beyond these picayune maunderings, weird shit, and triggered speculative lifefictions directed towards my illegible journal of what could have been if only if only.
Being that I was born 10 years before any of my cousins on either side to a complicated upbringing, I've felt, for the last 30, like the starter kid of both families, the beta launch: I am a cusper, the lost generation, born either ten years too late or ten years too early – though, considering all of my friends (wife included) are anywhere from 10 to 20 years older than me, I'm guessing it was the former.
I know I can't change the past and I know how pointless any and all of this speculative lifefiction is so maybe all I’m doing here is logging a reminder to myself. Note to self tag, activate.
Stage and control room blueprints for the recording of a 1939 episode of THE SHADOW radio show, via Martin Grams Jr.’s incredible THE SHADOW: THE HISTORY AND MYSTERY OF THE RADIO PROGRAM 1930-1954:
This will, by no means, be a complete and incisive look at a Nobel-winning doorstop of a novel and its mesmerizing and often frustrating leaps and bounds. Not sure I'm equipped for that after one read, or even two, but I will re-read JACOB eventually – along with everything Tokarczuk has written.
What I can tell you / me is that I'm in love with her rhythm and voice – which speaks volumes about the brilliance of Jennifer Croft’s 2021 translation – and that, with JACOB, she has pushed the bounds of what a novel can do (see: mesmerizing and frustrating; I was happily mesmerized in my frustrations). Among those frustrations was that I couldn't keep the names of several of the characters straight, even after more than a month and a thousand pages together – though I suspect that this is a result of my own limitations as a reader and will be rectified in a revisit.
(This is also not an unusual occurrence for me, especially in books involving more than three or four characters. Or in life, really.)
Recommended – though with the caveat that it, like the history it mines and explores, requires diligent and mindful dedication: be prepared to not absorb all of it in one go – but also to witness a staggering exploration of all that a novel can do.
My complete list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.
