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Jun. 16th, 2004 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iceinyourmusicWhile waiting at the dentist, I read Coming Through Slaughter.
I love the title. It rolls off my foreigner tongue like a nonsense litany of crazy words.
coming through slaughter coming through slaughter coming through slaughter.
Coming through slaughter, a jazz novel.
Jazz novel: something else you have to keep saying. Jaaa-zz novel. They've pasted a Sunday Times quote on the front cover of my Picador paperback: "Perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written". So you can't help but think of it as a jazz novel, and then you read it as one, looking for the syncopated beats and the themes and variations and improvisations. And usually you find what you're looking for.
I think the point was to remind me that there's very little you can't get away with in writing, as long as you do it decidedly and outrageously enough.
I've also been trying to reread Ian McEwan's Atonement, but it's not working at all. I laboured through it once when we first got the book and remember nothing. I don't know. It's supposed to be good, isn't it? And still the story puts me off, the style puts me off, even the probably supposedly interesting narratorial gimmickry feels tired and old and off-putting. The only other McEwan book I've ever read is The Cement Garden, and I seem to remember liking it - clever little song and dance around your everyday Freudian imagery and an excellent ending. But. I tend to fool myself into believing that I've enjoyed a book once I've either written a paper on it or read someone else's analysis on it, so. i.don't.know.
Got 3/3 for the first programming course.
ETA: It depresses me to find that there are no Mary Sue HP fics on ff.net featuring me. none! zero! How can that be?
The two of them after work busy with their own hobbies, Webb's curiosity making him move serene among his growing collection of magnets and Bolden practicing for hours, strengthening his mouth and chest as he blew violently into a belled cornet. So the constant noise in Webb's ears was the muted howl in the other room. Till coming into Webb's room with beer and sweating Bolden would collapse in an armchair and say 'Tell me about magnets, Webb'. And Webb who had ten of them hanging on strings from the ceiling would explain the precision of the forces in the air and hold a giant magnet in his hands towards them so they would go frantic and twist magically with their own power and twitch and thrust up and swivel as if being thrashed jerking until sometimes the power that Webb held from across the room would break one of the strings and Webb would put his magnet at his foot and drag the smaller piece invisibly towards him or sometimes throw the magnet across the room halfway up the strings and the tied pieces of metal would leap up and jointly catch it in their smooth surfaces like a team of acrobats. Bolden would applaud and then they would drink.
I love the title. It rolls off my foreigner tongue like a nonsense litany of crazy words.
coming through slaughter coming through slaughter coming through slaughter.
Coming through slaughter, a jazz novel.
Jazz novel: something else you have to keep saying. Jaaa-zz novel. They've pasted a Sunday Times quote on the front cover of my Picador paperback: "Perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written". So you can't help but think of it as a jazz novel, and then you read it as one, looking for the syncopated beats and the themes and variations and improvisations. And usually you find what you're looking for.
I think the point was to remind me that there's very little you can't get away with in writing, as long as you do it decidedly and outrageously enough.
I've also been trying to reread Ian McEwan's Atonement, but it's not working at all. I laboured through it once when we first got the book and remember nothing. I don't know. It's supposed to be good, isn't it? And still the story puts me off, the style puts me off, even the probably supposedly interesting narratorial gimmickry feels tired and old and off-putting. The only other McEwan book I've ever read is The Cement Garden, and I seem to remember liking it - clever little song and dance around your everyday Freudian imagery and an excellent ending. But. I tend to fool myself into believing that I've enjoyed a book once I've either written a paper on it or read someone else's analysis on it, so. i.don't.know.
Got 3/3 for the first programming course.
ETA: It depresses me to find that there are no Mary Sue HP fics on ff.net featuring me. none! zero! How can that be?
