The March issue of the Reader is out, and I think I have an essay called "On Junk and the Common Reader" in it. If you live in England, you could go to the library and look, and then you could tell me if it really is in there.
I don't quite know what I'll be writing about today: either Roth/Compton-Burnett/Malcolm X or Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist. I did recently read that novel, but I haven't talked about it here because I'm supposed to be writing a 750-word review of it for the Beloit Poetry Journal. That's not very many words, and I've been afraid of using them all up. I'd be interested in hearing what you thought about it, though, if you happened to have read it.
P.S. No Winter's Tale discussion prompt yet because Paul was too snarled in math homework to read Shakespeare. Maybe we'll get a chance after the piano lesson. Or maybe math will still be cracking the whip.
2 comments:
I was just talking to a friend of mine who is a big Nicholson Baker fan about The Anthologist. He really didn't care for it and I, like usual, was ambivalent. I enjoyed the vehemence of his dedication to meter even when I felt like it tipped the balance into blather. I also like the friendly stream of consciousness of it all. I never quite figured out what to "do" with the pedantic/ theoretical side of it all, though. I kept expecting to make it into some kind of metaphor that paralleled his relationships . . but that never happened for me. Maybe it's just there. I remember enjoying his book Box of Matches much more overall, I think.
I liked it, though I didn't expect to. I especially enjoyed the links between the musical ear and the poetic ear. I'm not sure it made a very scintillating novel, but as a treatise on rhyme and meter as felt music rather than imposed terminology, it was delightful.
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