Saturday, November 8, 2008

Dirty Weather


Just finished an okay book: Arthur Phillips' Angelica. Absorbing enough, but like so much modern fiction, hardly pleasurable. And quite frankly, I'm a bit tired of random first-person narrators (in this case a turn-of-the-20th-C actress) speaking in the voice of 21st Century MFAs. (He could have taken a page from Nights At The Circus in that regard.) In general, there was a sort of elliptical telling-not-showing that grated on me. And Americans writing like Victorian English-people almost never get it exactly right, just as American dialogue is always slightly off in a Richard Curtis film. But for all that, a lot to admire.

It is so cold and rainy that I'm rapidly giving up an idea I had for an ambitious walk across the bridge into Manhattan and a few miles once there to this particular custard-filled donut only available on weekends. I need perfume; there is an expensive coat I'd like to visit; there are several interesting buildings I'd like to examine; but really there is no rush.

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