(no subject)
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i had mono this past schoolyear, which proved to be not completely without its advantages, considering my case was serious enough to prompt the doctors to prescribe me twenty vicodins--which i ate at a commendably steady pace while lying in my mother's tasseled canopy bed, plucking them from their prescription bottle as if from a holiday candy bowl. so it was that i read this book in a fog of contentment, but my central point is that it's a lovely reading experience even if you don't have the fortune of reading it while feeling all benumbed and whimsical. james salter has, for most of this book's publication time, been doomed to the obscurity that comes with being namecalled a "writer's writer"--which i suspect just means that his language is so precise and poetic that it makes the critics pluck at their suspenders with jealousy! salter writes much about melancholy sex, but he does so in achingly sensual prose. it's completely up my alley!
p.s. also read: henry james' the turn of the screw (a meritable effort, i suppose) and kazuo ishiguro's when we were orphans (in progress).