Is this too long and does it make any sense?
I'm at the library, trying to pick out a book. I've gotten to the point where I really do judge books by their covers, which turns out to be a refined art, but still risky. It's sort of like gambling, actually. I called bethany, which phone call was similar to the call I suppose would be made from one addict to another, AA style, whispered, in a time of crisis. She's my partner in recovery. Occasionally we send postcards detailing how wonderful life is, how's it going by the way? Yes, I'm still taking it one day at a time. Secretly we both read john grisham novels. In addition to the cocaine, I read several sophia kinsella books over the summer. I'm so, so so sorry.
I have encountered some success recently, though. I brought home a book called Hash by a swedish author that turned out to be fantastic. Mix things like a tuberculosis epidemic, an impossibly old and virile writer, imaginary people that become real to believers, dry comedy, murder, an expository style and a complete lack of respect for the constrictions of time and space and well, it's a family classic. One of my new favorites. And I'm still reading the Diane Arbus biography that I borrowed from Court. Slowly but surely. I would almost always rather look at an artist's work than read about their life. But I felt obligated. Her work, more than anyone else, supported my desire to be a photographer.
Recently I also read "A Room of One's Own" and came across the phrase...something like "one cannot live well if one has not eaten well" and remembered it from high school. I was doing the illustrations for a cookbook that a woman I had met was going to self-publish, and she wanted to open the book with this quote. Did she read the essay? What did she think of it? Is this what she was referencing...as a woman, as a housewife self-publishing a cookbook? Or did she see it in a quote book and as a cook really like it?
So now I have a book called "Some People, Places and Things That Will Not Appear In My Next Novel." This is handwritten on the spine because it has been taped together, I think after some terrible accident involving a car door, a dog, and the only puddle in the parking lot. Glued on the inside flap are cut-outs from the now absent book jacket, including a large black and white portrait of mr. cheever, the author. Somewhere around 1958 the New York Times calls him "one of our most entertaining storytellers." Let's hope so, mr. cheever.
Stephen Crane: stories and tales. Again, the cover. The book is one of those combo plastic-coated cardboard covers that you used to get when you read school-issued required books back in middle school. It has gray, red, white and yellow stripes. It is a Vintage Book. It even informs me that Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage, which I never had any interest in reading. It smells very good.
The point is that I am more than anything reassured at the way the words go on and on, encouraging me in a forward motion. The way that NPR helps me clean my apartment. The world news could be devastating, but the lady with the slight accent is stating the facts as though my missing shoe is going to turn up any moment, and it's perfectly natural to equate each shirt hung with a body properly identified and buried.
I have encountered some success recently, though. I brought home a book called Hash by a swedish author that turned out to be fantastic. Mix things like a tuberculosis epidemic, an impossibly old and virile writer, imaginary people that become real to believers, dry comedy, murder, an expository style and a complete lack of respect for the constrictions of time and space and well, it's a family classic. One of my new favorites. And I'm still reading the Diane Arbus biography that I borrowed from Court. Slowly but surely. I would almost always rather look at an artist's work than read about their life. But I felt obligated. Her work, more than anyone else, supported my desire to be a photographer.
Recently I also read "A Room of One's Own" and came across the phrase...something like "one cannot live well if one has not eaten well" and remembered it from high school. I was doing the illustrations for a cookbook that a woman I had met was going to self-publish, and she wanted to open the book with this quote. Did she read the essay? What did she think of it? Is this what she was referencing...as a woman, as a housewife self-publishing a cookbook? Or did she see it in a quote book and as a cook really like it?
So now I have a book called "Some People, Places and Things That Will Not Appear In My Next Novel." This is handwritten on the spine because it has been taped together, I think after some terrible accident involving a car door, a dog, and the only puddle in the parking lot. Glued on the inside flap are cut-outs from the now absent book jacket, including a large black and white portrait of mr. cheever, the author. Somewhere around 1958 the New York Times calls him "one of our most entertaining storytellers." Let's hope so, mr. cheever.
Stephen Crane: stories and tales. Again, the cover. The book is one of those combo plastic-coated cardboard covers that you used to get when you read school-issued required books back in middle school. It has gray, red, white and yellow stripes. It is a Vintage Book. It even informs me that Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage, which I never had any interest in reading. It smells very good.
The point is that I am more than anything reassured at the way the words go on and on, encouraging me in a forward motion. The way that NPR helps me clean my apartment. The world news could be devastating, but the lady with the slight accent is stating the facts as though my missing shoe is going to turn up any moment, and it's perfectly natural to equate each shirt hung with a body properly identified and buried.