Feelin' Ancient

Am I going to read THE ILIAD? I'm afraid it appears likely. Was it Emily Wilson who got me on this ancient kick? I read her translation of THE ODYSSEY and her biography of Seneca, and then six plays by Seneca that she translated, which ruined me for reading things that were not ancient. I've even read ancient things I haven't bothered to tell you about on the "blog," such as Josephus. Josephus! And before I took up Witold Gombrowicz for the Million Dollar Book Club, Tacitus was my daytime book. Sitting around reading Tacitus in the broad daylight like some kind of animal! And I guess I'll pick up where I left off if I ever finish Gombrowicz. Okay, I'll be right back. I need to do a little research. All right, I'm back. I have confirmed a nagging feeling. It wasn't Emily Wilson who got me into all this. It was Kirk Douglas! ("Click" here for details.) Sorry, Emily Wilson! Anyway! I guess you're wondering where all this ILIAD crap is coming from, though. Well, remember when I decided to become interested in Simone Weil? I don't suppose any of us will ever forget it! So I'm going around learning stuff about Simone Weil and I see that she wrote a famous essay about THE ILIAD. So I get hold of that and I'm like, "Uh-oh! Here we go again!" And do I want to get my Robert Fagles translation of THE ILIAD off the shelf? Well, hell, no. Didn't I read it already? Or part of it? Did I ever finish it? Also, it's on a shelf behind a glass door with latches at both the top and bottom. That's a lot of work! The bottom latches, in addition, have some stuff piled in front of them, such as my blood pressure machine. Oh! Speaking of my blood pressure machine, let me come clean about something. I've told you many times that I stopped reading old comic books. I still say that is true. However! I do have a gigantic hardcover DC "omnibus edition" of comics that I currently sample while relaxing for five minutes before blood pressure time. This sturdy volume has just the kind of spine I need for laying out the book flat on the dining room table, where the medical task in question is undertaken. So yesterday, or the day before, I think, I saw a representation of the DC comics character the Spectre, and... here... allow me to quote an email I sent to Adam Muto on the subject: "I was looking at a DC comic book from 1989 and it had the Spectre in it, and he was really ripped! I was like... he's a ghost! Has he been going to the gym? You're the only person I could think of to tell." I did not add... "Or should I say RIPped?" because I thought such wordplay would make Adam sad and disappointed. Then I poked around on the "internet" because I was afraid "ripped" wasn't the right term. I spent a lot of time on "web" sites dedicated to parsing the difference between being "ripped" or "shredded" or "jacked" or "swole." But we're getting off the subject! Are we? Well, I recalled seeing a newish translation of THE ILIAD at Square Books. And given the fact that I'm going to have lunch with Tom Franklin one day soon, I just know I'll stop by on the way and pick it up. I can see the future! This ILIAD wasn't translated by Emily Wilson, but it had a blurb from Emily Wilson. [Wrong! - ed.] Now, as a person who has both given and received blurbs, I know that blurbs aren't really worth spit. Except for the time Lauren Graham blurbed one of my books! That one counted!

Frivolity When the Earth Is Swallowed Up

This is where I tell you about my trip to Burbank. 1. On the flight out, my seatmate had a sweet dog companion seemingly smuggled under his hoodie. I don't know about dogs. I believe this one was a boxer. But I just don't know. I can't swear to it in a court of law! The dog had one blue eye and one brown eye. It would arise from the neck hole of the hoodie and look at me with a nice expression. Sometimes, due to the angle of its owner, it looked like a human with a dog's head! When the guy got up to go to the restroom, he stuffed the dog into a duffel bag. The dog was fine. 2. Layover at the Salt Lake City airport! This story just gets better and better, doesn't it? So, a booming voice on the public address system repeatedly gave out the first, middle, and last name of a guy who had walked out on his check at an airport restaurant. It was an old-school public shaming... Cotton Mather style! I realize that by mentioning Cotton Mather, I may have confused you geographically. I don't know enough about Brigham Young to know whether he would have made an appropriate replacement in my already shaky allusion. 3. Okay, on the next airplane, a guy across the aisle was scrolling through pictures on his phone and narrating to his friend: "This is a salad bar... that's another salad bar..." Ha ha, anyway, I thought that was funny. They were looking at photos of salad bars! It's a crazy world! 4. BURBANK! Kent was in town, too, and we were both staying in the same hotel. As we rode back to the hotel from Dan Tana's, Kent spied a DeLorean pulling into traffic behind us. He was pretty stoked, I don't mind telling you! He kept saying, "It's a DeLorean! Look, it's a DeLorean! It's right behind us. The DeLorean is right behind us!" But I don't know why, I never turned around to look at the DeLorean. It was just like when Kent begged me to watch Mark McGwire break a home run record and I coldly refused. We'll never know what's wrong with me. 5. On one menu, I briefly misread "scallion" as "sea lion." 6. Kate Tsang and I spent a good part of one afternoon just wandering around in the impossibly vast Warner Brothers prop department. People were working, loading props on carts to be taken to various sets. We just stayed out of their way. No one hassled us. In fact, one man cheerfully asked if we needed anything. We said we were just looking. Then we ended up in some odd corners, such as a section containing many kinds of animals who had been subjected to taxidermy. I have never enjoyed the thought of taxidermy. But here's Kate. She notices that some of the animals are falling apart. She dates them for me to the time "when Theodore Roosevelt was shooting animals" because they were stuffed with straw... a discontinued practice, Kate gave me to understand. I was standing there thinking, like, "Wow, Kate sure knows a lot about taxidermy!" Which reminds me of something: 7. I ran into Steve Wolfhard completely unexpectedly! Somehow we got to talking about the movie THE SEA HAWK and I mentioned how much I enjoyed the monkey's performance in that film. Steve said the monkey made him sad. I got it! I feel the same way about taxidermy. I said, "Were you thinking about the monkey's home life?" And Steve said... I think I have this right... "I was thinking, 'That could have been me!'" Trying to show Steve that I was on his side about being sad concerning monkeys, I said I didn't like it when monkeys were made to ride dogs. Steve said, "Maybe the monkey likes it. Maybe he likes going fast." 8. Oh! Before I get back to the prop department, I should say that when I arrived at the gate into Warner Brothers, I was greeted by a young, groovy guard, not an irascible old guard of the type the movies have trained me to expect. So, when Kate and I entered the parking garage over near the prop department, an irascible old guard really didn't want to let us in. At last, he asked us for identification, and that's when I discovered MY DRIVER'S LICENSE WAS MISSING! I bet you didn't know you were in for thrills like this. Anyhow, it turned out the groovy young guard forgot to include it when he handed me back everything I had taken out of my pockets for him. And I didn't notice! So I'm not blaming the hipsters of today for falling down on the job! BUT! If that hardboiled old-school guard hadn't been so stereotypically irascible, I might never have been allowed to leave Burbank! I might be sitting in a small room at the Burbank airport right now! So, thank you, hateful old guard. 9. Well, I can't really describe how satisfying it was to wander around the prop department with Kate. I don't know - though I suspect there's a Warholian element - why it is so wonderful to look at, just for example, a wall full of rotary phones arranged by color, or a shelf of hundreds of miniature Statues of Liberty, or boxes and boxes of beauty products from the 40s and 50s, or the long row of toilets, of which (the toilets) I sent a photo to just one person: Ace Atkins. Kate and I stayed in the prop department so long that they were closing up. We didn't know it. We just kept trying to get out and finding nothing but locked doors. We could have been trapped forever! Who was going to help us? Not the irascible guard! He would probably think we were getting what we deserved. Then we found a different kind of door: a door that was not locked. 10. Kate and I walked a few short steps from the Warner Brothers lot to the Smoke House, where we dined with one Adam Muto. Now that I can't eat steak anymore because of wanting to stay alive, I was excited to order the chicken pot pie. You know the one! The one that Pen and I saw once! The one as big around as a manhole cover! But friends, I am here to inform you they have taken it off the menu. The server told me that one time... just one time... they had put it back on the menu for a special occasion. But that time is gone forever. We live in new times now. He was very nice, and couldn't have known he was breaking my heart. 11. Reading Seneca's NATURAL QUESTIONS while taking my blood pressure in my hotel room, I laughed when he observed, "Frivolity when the earth is swallowed up shows a lack of serious-mindedness." He was angry at Ovid for beautifully describing an apocalyptic flood but then adding the image of wolves and sheep and lions swimming around in it. "Come on, Ovid! Get real! As if!" Such seemed to be the contents of Seneca's objections. 12. Quinn took me to a place that featured on its menu something called a "Good Ass Salad." Such language! Is that how you get your kicks? Forcing someone's great-grandmother to say the words "good ass salad"? This great-grandmother I'm imagining can't silently point at the item on the menu with her quaking, palsied finger! Thoughts along these lines led me to confess to Quinn that I have been saying "ass" on the "blog" a lot lately. Quinn said, "Oh, Jack, Bart Simpson could say 'ass' in the 90s." She might not have said "Oh, Jack." 13. It was raining the morning I left for home. Kate had said just a day or two before, "It never rains here." But there it was, falling from the sky, the tears of the gods as I like to call it. At a stoplight on the way to the airport, I saw a driver sticking his hand out the window, eager to discover for himself what this thing they call a raindrop must feel like. His beaming grin indicated that he was pleased with the result!

Blank

I have three gigantic books going, four if you count the audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE. Rememeber when I fancied myself a one-book-at-a-time man? At night in bed, instead of old comic books, I now read old BUDDENBROOKS by "blog" favorite Thomas Mann. Then, of course, there's the Pessoa biography I read in bits and pieces as part of my blood pressure ritual... the doctor has me taking my blood pressure less often now, so I may never finish it. Just like Pessoa never finished his masterwork, THE BOOK OF DISQUIET. Ha ha, oh, Pessoa, you're something else. And I have a smaller book next to my favorite chair, but I don't want to talk about smaller books today. I want to talk about the 800-page monster THE SOT-WEED FACTOR by John Barth, which seems like a single joke stretched out to unimaginable lengths, something I can deeply respect. So, in THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, we find "a countenance blank as an owl's," which is fairly neutral as far as owl depictions go in figures of speech. As you know, an owl is "wise" if it's lucky, but more often it's drunk or stupid, etc., at least as far as the owl-hating literary giants of our times are concerned. "Blank," I'll take. It is at least more accurate than the "grinning" and "smiling" owls we have run across elsewhere. Please "click" on the "hyperlinks" for more owl information, or visit your local library.

The Arts

For our own personal and individual reasons, neither Dr. Theresa nor I eats sandwiches anymore. And I do believe that is correct subject/verb agreement if you think about it for two seconds. So anyway, we were watching a "limited series" (those are terrible!) via "streaming" and it was a mystery thriller suspense drama of action! At one point the guy stops in a diner and orders up three sandwiches to go. And they look amazing, and I believe I will categorize them as "cheesesteaks," though I don't pretend to be an expert. But the scene does take place in Philadelphia. Even so, Dr. Theresa and I were taken by a simultaneous Proustian pang for some Italian beef combo sandwiches we enjoyed in Chicago in 2002. So then the guy gets in his car and starts having action-packed adventures filled with mystery and suspense, not to mention thrills, but we just don't care. All we can think of, and we say it out loud, is that "He's driving around with those sandwiches in his car!" In our distracted state we can't be sure, but it seems like it takes him several hours to get home with those sandwiches, and we're just thinking about how they've been sitting in the car all day. In other arts news, THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT started to seem too grotesque and disturbing to read in bed at night in the hopes of a peaceful slumber, so I switched over to DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather... and it - unlike THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT - gave me nightmares! And death isn't even close to coming for this guy yet! Although... never mind. No spoilers! In a final arts thought, was it really a "Proustian pang" (above)? Didn't Proust actually get to bite into his memory cookie? If I may be allowed to stray off topic, the holidays are upon us, and I should mention a funny Christmas wish I received from McNeil, who asked, "Are you doing anything for Christmas? Besides take your blood pressure and hope Santa brings you one more day - JUST ONE MORE, SANTA!" An artful construction by McNeil, in fact, who goes on to recall imperfectly my alleged love, when we knew each other as children, of the snack cakes known as Sno Balls. To be fair, McNeil couched his assertion in the always reliable "if I remember correctly" context. He was, however, thinking of, or misremembering, Strawberry Zingers, a product I ate 5 days of the week for some matter of years without the knowledge of my parents, and it truly is a wonder I'm alive today. I don't know if they still make them. Anyway, my metabolism must have bordered on the miraculous at the time. I was like Matter Eater Lad from DC comics! McNeil, it must be said, was on the right track, as both items in question (Sno Balls and Strawberry Zingers) were sprinkled with poisonously dyed coconut. [The coconut slivers on the Strawberry Zingers may have been unpigmented, actually, but they were surrounded by a spongy cake-like substance soaked in a deep, alarming, and, indeed, unnatural shade of crimson. - ed.] If I, like McNeil, "recall correctly," Strawberry Zingers came three to a pack, which, to my way of thinking at the time, meant that I should eat all three at once. And I was a skinny kid! If I am doing the math correctly, and it is a very simple equation, I was ingesting 15 Strawberry Zingers a week. This brings us back to Proust, doesn't it? But that's not the point. The point is that McNeil says he's spending Christmas in "a neighborhood that boasts a three-legged alligator."

Of Course She Did!

The rule is that every time I read a book with an owl in it, I have to tell you about it, no matter how the book makes me feel inside. It is my sad duty to inform you that the Million Dollar Book Club is reading a biography of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. You knew it would come to this. But that's not the bad part! How can I say this without alienating all the Nelson Eddy fans who flock to the "blog"? Well, reading this book, Nelson Eddy comes off as a scary monster, despite the efforts of the author to sort of gloss over everything that seems to make Nelson Eddy so very definitely a scary, terrifying monster. And the more she glosses it over, the scarier Nelson Eddy becomes. It makes for unpleasant reading. This is the nadir of the Million Dollar Book Club. Hey! I'll briefly liven things up by mentioning that today, while I was getting ready to take my blood pressure, I read some of that Pessoa biography, and Pessoa had a friend with a "full set of gold teeth." A full set! Not just a couple. All of this guy's teeth were made of gold. Okay, now I feel better. Back to the book with the scary monster. So, a contemporary reviewer quoted in the dual biography doubts that the "night owl clientele" of the Cocoanut Grove are going to dig the restrained decorum of Jeanette MacDonald. Anyway, as I texted to Megan - I don't have my phone here, so I'll approximate my observation - "I never dreamed the most messed up people we would ever read about would be Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy." (I know you don't know who they are. Would it kill you to google something? That aside is to you, the "blog" reader.) Megan texted back that they were more messed up than Salvador Dali. I responded they were more messed up than Tennessee Williams. She texted back that they were more messed up than Errol Flynn. And so on. I'll tell you one good thing. This book caused Megan to dig out the Jeanette MacDonald paper dolls she had when she was a kid. Of course she did!

Passing Through

As you know (?), I take my blood pressure twice a day. Before doing so, I sit silently for five minutes, for a ten-minute total per day. And as I sit so silently and still, waiting to take my blood pressure with all the suspense of someone slowly scratching off a lottery ticket, or Charlie Bucket peeling off the wrapper of a chocolate bar, I read a book. To qualify as my "blood pressure book," the book must be a sturdy hardcover with a mighty spine that allows the volume to lie open flat on the table. That is the only requirement. All this you know. But I don't think you knew that my current blood pressure book is a biography of Fernando Pessoa, which is about as long as THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. Anyhow! And forgive me for going over some of my other reading habits but it's so obviously important. Anyhow! I have also been reading old comic books at night, ever since Tom Franklin brought me some old comic books in the hospital. But I have to say I'm getting tired of the old comic books. Something has... changed. Something in the... I want to say... no I don't... national mood??? I didn't say it! Let's not talk about it! Once I finish the current pile, which is swiftly dwindling, that may be it for old comic books, at least for a while. Old comic books can't soothe me anymore. Anyhow! ANYHOW! I was very surprised, as Pessoa's biographer, Richard Zenith, which sounds like a name young Fernando Pessoa would have made up, analyzed a specific sort of Pessoa poem by saying, and here I quote my blood pressure book, "And the scenes and moods are not only juxtaposed, they also interpenetrate, passing through each other the way Superman passes through walls, without him or the walls losing their structural integrity." Talk about juxtaposing and interpenetrating: at last my blood pressure book and my old comic books had met! BUT WHY? The comparison is striking for a number of reasons, several of which I am about to tell you until you can take no more. First! The allusion does not seem particularly Pessoa-friendly, especially since Pessoa died in 1935, well before the creation of Superman. Now! We must of course admit that the biographer has an advantage, in this case, over his subject... that of still being alive (as far as I know). Therefore, he can draw from any range of examples he likes, including those from a future unimaginable even to his very imaginative subject. BUT! Pessoa is conducting seances just a couple of pages later. Isn't a ghost something that passes through walls? Might not a ghost be a more universally recognizable figure for the average reader, if the average reader pictures something that passes through walls without losing its structural integrity or altering the wall? I hope it is not blasphemous to suggest that one also thinks of Jesus, in his appearance to St. Thomas. But I'm not done! The biographer's Superman example is interesting to me because... do people know Superman can do that? I mean, I do. But I have made a serious study of all his oddest powers. A superhero who is more famous for vibrating through a wall is the Flash, if you know about the Flash, but, of course, more people know about Superman than know about the Flash... yet the question remains! Does the reader with a rudimentary knowledge of Superman realize that he can vibrate through a wall? I have no evidence to back up what I'm about to say, but I suspect that the average reader, if asked to imagine Superman going through a wall, would picture the "Man of Steel" busting right through it with his super fists, like the Kool-Aid man or the Schlitz malt liquor bull, not that my latter two examples were known for using their fists. The Schlitz malt liquor bull, being a hooved quadruped, was not even capable of making a fist! While the Kool-Aid man may or may not have been able to make a fist, I doubt whether he had the arm extension necessary for pounding down a wall with it, especially as he, if I recall correctly, grasped in one hand a pitcher of the same sweet liquid with which his living body was filled. Nevertheless, it can be easily proven with video evidence that both the Kool-Aid man and the Schlitz malt liquor bull BODILY knocked down their walls, as, I put forth, most people would credit Superman with doing as well. (I am including the "beer label" on this "post," even though the Schlitz malt liquor ads issued, according to my hazy memories, the specific command "Don't say beer, say bull!" May the Schlitz malt liquor bull forgive me and not crash through my wall. Amen. Not that I am worshipping a golden calf! Not even a hypothetical one made, unlike the all-too-fleshly Schlitz malt liquor bull, of golden malt liquor, however tempted I might be at this moment to drink a calf-sized container of such a brew.)

An Attractive Spine

Well, I certainly have gotten myself into some kind of fix with all these books around here, each one carefully calibrated to fit a different portion of my complicated life. For further details, feel free to "click" the appropriate "hyperlinks" in the "body" of this "post." You know about the old comic books I read in bed at night, and the book I took on my recent visit to my parents, which should be distinguished from the sort of book I take on an airplane (determined mainly by size), although I haven't been on an airplane in some time. But the possibility is always lurking, and I do have a number of books around here that would work on airplane, THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA being my current top contender. No doubt you will remember how I, with unknown metaphysical ramifications, took my book for doctors' waiting rooms on my most recent parental jaunt. That was a mistake, and I'm going to have to think about it seriously, as I have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow. And most of all, you are thinking of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, what I would probably call my "main book." There's some trouble with that! You see, I started our new book club book today, so room for the last bit of JOSEPH will have to be made in some other portion of my packed schedule. By the way, in a book club meeting conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order this morning, we voted to rename ourselves the Million Dollar Book Club. My cofounder, I believe, was still calling it the Doomed Book Club, long after I had stopped. Let me check the minutes of today's meeting in order to quote myself accurately: "I stopped thinking of it as 'Doomed Book Club' years ago, after those slackers peeled off one by one, like dirty rats escaping our beautiful sinking ship!" I don't believe I've ever told you that I keep yet another book by my favorite chair, just in case the TV goes on the blink. Right now it's TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED. But none of this is what I wanted to discuss. So! One kind of book I haven't mentioned yet (in this "post") is my "blood pressure book." This is the one I read for five minutes at a time as I sit up straight and breathe normally before taking my blood pressure. The latest of those is the new (?) one by James Ellroy. I'm not sure it's new. But it was still in hardcover at Square Books, where I was captivated by its attractive, glaring spine. You might be asking how James Ellroy could possibly soothe anyone's blood pressure. I'll tell you. It's something about these rat-a-tat, rhythmic sentence fragments, like a hateful, violent metronome lulling me into a peaceful trance. Just yesterday, I think, there were three short sentences or fragments in a row about owls. Night owls, of course. "Night owl this. Night owl that. Night owl the other." I paraphrase delightfully.

Famous Tootsie Pop

Given recent events, I have different books going at the same time now, and given those same recent events, one of the categories is "books I read in a doctor's waiting room." It's not the same as either book in the other two categories, if you are making a chart. There can never be an overlap. Each of the three (so far) books needs to be of a different size, and to have different qualities. The one I read while taking my blood pressure, for example, requires a sturdy spine, like me, so it can lie flat on a table, like me. I don't lie flat on a table. But we all lie flat on a table one day. That's not the point. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. So I was sitting there reading this one novel in the waiting room when, by a big coincidence, the narrator mentioned the problem for which I was about to see the doctor! Not only that, he cited a probable cause for the problem. And this cause was something in the proximity of which I had recently loitered! Now, this is the kind of coincidence that McNeil and I talk about all the time, all giddy from delight. So when I saw the doctor, I said, "Hey, could this thing be caused by this other thing?" And he said "No." So that was a bust. And the coincidence wasn't so great after all. So why are we here? I don't know. It does give me the liberty to mention that Megan and I have been discussing the devil a pretty good bit lately, and then she asked me a question about the Tarot (an entirely separate discussion, although there is, of course, a card with the devil on it. But that's not what we were talking about for a change). Anyhow, I looked up what Jesse Moynihan has to say about another card, the one under discussion, and I was like, "Huh! Okay!" Then I opened JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS to the passage I had been reading... and the devil, in that passage, talks about the VERY SAME IDEAS I had just been reading in Jesse's pamphlet! I'm not saying Jesse is the devil. Far from it! So that was another coincidence. This great tale of life as it is lived in our lively times isn't over yet. Because I had TWO doctor appointments today! I had enough time in between them to stop by Square Books. I was happy to see that Richard Howorth was not just trying to protect my fragile feelings when he said that my books aren't 100% out of print... just 99.999999%! I added that part. They had a big old fresh stack of MOVIE STARS, my troubling masterpiece of short fiction. Lauren Graham raves: "Funny, poetic, vivid, unique. Jack Pendarvis has crafted a collection of gems." I'm not lying! It's on the cover! Go see for yourself. Pick up a few copies for the family. While supplies last! I signed the whole batch, and wrote secret messages in a couple of them. It's like Willy Wonka all over again! Ran into Tom Franklin, who was walking down from the second floor of the bookstore with a young woman to whom he introduced me as "Via Bleidner, Kim Kardashian just bought her book for Netflix." Oh! On the way out of the store, I saw a big poster for the novel I said I couldn't tell you about yet. But I can now, because there's a big poster right there at the front door of Square Books. It's DON'T LET THE DEVIL RIDE (the devil again!), the latest from Ace Atkins! The owl I have been sitting on since January 22, 2023, is... I can now reveal... the owl in the famous Tootsie Pop commercial. Well, I haven't seen the published book yet, just the manuscript, but Ace says he "thinks" the owl is still in there. And I guess you think the story is over. WRONG! Because as I waited for the second doctor, once again reading my "waiting room book" in a different waiting room... well, first I should tell you that I saw a raccoon using a walkway last night. A walkway that a person would use. Like, a narrow sidewalk of sorts. So, anyway, I'm reading this novel again and the narrator is astonished to see "a raccoon using a sidewalk." All right, that's the end.

How I Read Now

I take my membership in the 2-person book club very seriously, as will be confirmed when I tell you that I moved JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS into a secondary position so that I could more faithfully engage with the biography of Polly Adler. Look her up! I don't have time for your lazy ways. Having finished that Marilynne Robinson book, I now read JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS for 10 minutes a day, 5 minutes at a time, while I wait to take my blood pressure. I make it through an average of four pages a day, a pace to which the book makes itself strangely amenable. I first noticed while reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN that Thomas Mann is very interested in time - its reality and its narrative uses and representation. That's a great oversimplication. To keep going in the same simplistic direction, the only direction I know, Mann is interested in how an hour can pass like molasses, while a decade can disappear in a blink. It is for that reason, I assume, that my readings of his mammoth text, though brief and greatly separated, feel as if they are taking place in a single unending and languorous haze. It may further interest you to know that I believe I was pronouncing "Thomas Mann" correctly for most of my life, and then, recently, I started thinking I was doing it wrong, so I started pronouncing it a new way, but now, whenever I say it out loud, someone says, "Who?" and I say "Thomas Mann" and they say "Oh..." Then they look at me like that one emoji with a straight line for a mouth. (See also, the time a smart-alecky undergrad corrected my pronunciation of "whilst" in front of the whole class, even though I was saying it right and he turned out to be nothing but an ill-informed little and, as I recall it, wealthy jerk with enviable golden locks. On the other hand, what is this bitterness? I am sure he turned out to be a very nice young man and he did demonstrate considerable ability in the classroom. His single flaw, now that I really contemplate it, was his unwarranted confidence about how to pronounce "whilst." There are worse crimes! God bless you, the handsome and polished pebble in my shoe! See also, then, the time I mispronounced the name of Ashton Kutcher, and was justifiably laughed out of the classroom and made to hang my head in dirty shame.) Oh! But what I came here to say is that though (as I have reiterated countlessly) I am under no obligation to tell you about more than one owl in a book, and I have already told you about two owls in JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, old Potiphar was just sitting in his special room where he sits as the sun goes down, and behind his head as he sits in a silent, noble fashion, there is artwork representing owls, falcons, and ducks, I believe in that order, but the book is all the way downstairs, under my blood pressure machine, so I guess we'll never know.

My Dear, Suspicious Friends

Not to brag, but I did successfully predict the hottest new trend of 2024: Rachel and the teraphim! Marilynne Robinson covers it in her new book READING GENESIS. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I picked up that book just because I knew Rachel and the teraphim would be in it. Oh, my dear, suspicious friends. Nothing could be further from the truth. I guess a few things could be further from the truth. After all, I know about the contents of Genesis from my many mornings in Sunday school. And the story of Jacob, which includes Rachel and the teraphim, also contains my favorite Bible character (as this important document ["click" here] from fifteen years ago will confirm), Esau. I was a bit put off by the very rough treatment given to Esau by Thomas Mann. Marilynne Robinson goes easier on him in the end, though she does call him a "boor," ha ha! I seem to be forgetting the task at hand, which is to show you why you're all wrong about me, all the time. See, I happened to find READING GENESIS at Square Books, and I remembered seeing something nice in the New York Times about it, and I've always meant to get into Marilynne Robinson somehow or another, and that's all there is to it. Though I did text Megan that I thought it was going to be a good companion piece to JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. Yes, that's the kind of thing we text about! Sometimes! And I was right. I dip into READING GENESIS for just five minutes at a time, and that just twice a day, right before I take my blood pressure. I probably read somewhere on the "internet" that you should relax for five minutes before taking your blood pressure. And what could be more relaxing than the Old Testament? Even though I am going through READING GENESIS at such a modest rate, I'm getting near the point where it's going to present spoilers to me as I continue with JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, which I am reading at a much faster clip. I mean to say that Robinson covers in a paragraph what it takes Mann tens of thousands of words to get across. You would think I would be immune to spoilers, given my supposed familiarity with the narrative, but lots of times Mann will tell of an outlandish incident and I'll think, "Well! No way that's in the Bible!" and then I'll look, and there it is in the Bible. Oh! Remember how I said that I loved THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, but it took me about 100 pages before I really got into it? The same goes for JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, except it takes 200-400 pages to get going.

Yesterday

Square Books called yesterday to let me know that my Peter Falk memoir had come in: it's the next selection in the Megan book club! Well, I had a doctor's appointment later that afternoon, so I moseyed to town a little early and ran into Shadan on the sidwalk... she's one of the excellent booksellers at Square Books, and let me emphasize that she wasn't even at work. She was just on the sidewalk in the middle of town, and she stopped to remind me that she and I like a lot of the same books, to which I replied that indeed we do. So she told me about a book she thought I would really enjoy: THE BLIND OWL by Sadegh Hedayat, and she even described in detail where I would find it in the shop, like a human GPS! This was just a friendly gesture on her part, I had caught her outside of work - now, that's what I call a bookseller! And she didn't even know about my owl problem. So I went to the bookstore, and the book was just where she had said it would be, and I read on the back cover that it is "a haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation," or, as I call it, "The Bill Boyle Seal of Approval." In fact, if I knew anything about Venn diagrams, or what they are, I could show you how a certain subset of books perfectly overlaps in the preferences of Bill, Shadan, and myself. But the adventures of the day were just beginning! Off I went to the doctor. The nurse who took my blood pressure recorded the results on a piece of paper, and as she did so, she said, "Wow, this pen is great. I wonder where I stole it from." That's an exact quotation! So I said, "What kind of pen is it? I'm always on the lookout for a good pen!" And she looked at the side of the pen and read from it the brand name "EnerGel." And that is what is so damn weird, I tell you! Just ONE DAY EARLIER, I had "posted" a chapter of my serialzed novel SOUR BLUEBERRIES, in which one of the protagonists similarly uses a pen that does not belong to him, is amazed by its high quality, and discovers that it goes by the brand name EnerGel! WHAT! I conclude by assuring you that I am no paid shill for the EnerGel corporation, it is just a weird thing that happened.

Mushrooms

Last night I watched UN FLIC on Ace Atkins's back porch - just look, there I am standing in front of the projector afterward - and I had a pretty good tweet about UN FLIC that I tweeted when I got home but then I realized that nobody wants to read tweets about UN FLIC, so I deleted my great tweet about UN FLIC, and that's when I realized I'd better "blog" about UN FLIC even though I don't "blog" anymore. That's what the "blog" is, I realized: a big old city dump. You don't want to drive out there to the city dump but sometimes there's some unwieldy thing you have to get rid of. So I was supposed to bring something "French" to Ace's, so I found this mushroom recipe in an old French cookbook, and I used about half a bottle of good white wine in these damn mushrooms - pardon my "French" - ha ha! And then they turn out to be these... mushrooms. Just some mushrooms lying there. Just some cold mushrooms lying wearily on a plate. "Serve very cold," the old French cookbook advised. It didn't help. They were just like... mushrooms. You eat one and you're like, "Yep, that's a mushroom." You know, maybe I was too timid with the coriander! "They can't possibly require THIS MUCH coriander!" I yelled. "These old French people were CRAZY!" Well, who's laughing now? The old dead French people, that's who. The only good thing about them (the mushrooms, not the old dead French people) was Dr. Theresa's suggestion that I bring along Bob Hope's cocktail forks for people to spear and eat them with. I also brought Bob Hope's very own personal (former) glass toothpick holder to hold them in! The cocktail forks, I mean. One of my greatest joys of the evening was seeing Bill Boyle's little girl absolutely murdering a strawberry with one of Bob Hope's cocktail forks. (In case some of you don't know why I have Bob Hope's cocktail forks, I bought them at an auction.) Well, anyway,

I didn't understand UN FLIC. Like, Richard Crenna spent a lot of time combing his hair! Like, I think I got up to pee and came back and Richard Crenna was still combing his hair. That's what my great deleted tweet was about. I can't remember the exact wording of my great deleted tweet, but it was something like, "Critics the world over agree that UN FLIC is the film in which Richard Crenna spends the most time combing his hair." So you can see why I deleted it. It's too specific for the high-pressure world of the on-the-go twitter user of today! This "blogger" I found ("click" here) has a more positive spin on that scene (pictured), which I will now quote: "Once we're inside the train, Melville's sure touch returns... The scene goes on for several minutes, during which we see Crenna carefully adjust his coiffure not once but twice... the meticulous preparations are mesmerizing." The fact that I was just all, "Boy, he is sure is combing his hair a lot!" is my own problem. As Bill Boyle pointed out, the long shot of the adorable little helicopter flying over the tiny train made UN FLIC look briefly like a Wes Anderson movie.

Professional Bob Balaban Lookalike

I just accidentally read a short story from my first book and it was okay! My first book is the only one of my books I really like. You should get that one if you want one. But if you don't read any of them you will be just fine and continue to live a productive life. So no pressure! Anyway, one of the characters in the story was a professional Bob Balaban lookalike, and I thought, ha ha ha. As Lee Durkee and I were discussing the other day, you really forget what's in your books after you finish writing them. And Tom Franklin said something similar last time I saw him. So I was pleasantly surprised when I thought, ha ha ha. The story has my favorite last sentence I have written: "I was just thinking about that monkey."

Earth Squirrel Wins

"Look, I'm busy," you say. "I don't have all day to sit around reading every 'post' you ever wrote about corn. I'm no purist! I'm just a guy or gal on the go and the pressures of my job are enormous. If I could read just one thing you 'blogged' about corn, what would it be?" First of all, let me say that is the trouble with this modern world! But okay. I suppose the third runner-up would be my discovery of the curious predominance of corn flakes in the index of Hal Needham's autobiography. And then of course no one can deny the excitement of reading about the corn they eat on Venus and Mars! What could possibly top that? No, not the erotic celebrity kernel-flinging of the glamorous Julie Christie. Sure, that is a good guess, but not everything is about action and thrills and eating corn in outer space with big Hollywood movie stars all the time! It may surprise you to learn that we have to "come back down to earth" - ha ha! - to enjoy the simple pleasures of the time Dr. "M." saw a squirrel eating corn on the cob. No sir, it just doesn't get any better than that. Now there's something to ponder while you sit in your skyscrapers worrying about your briefcases at your big business meetings: that adorable little squirrel just nibbling away without a care in the world! I wonder about the last time that cheeky little fellow had to put on a fancy "necktie" and meet someone in a conference room. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh my. Although the other day a particularly wiry and patchy squirrel came right up the front walk and onto the porch with disquieting urgency of purpose and leapt onto the screen door and glared at me malevolently with a large, black acorn jammed into its mouth and that wasn't adorable. It was ominous and terrifying. I looked into its eyes and the abyss stared back.

Curse of the Recommendation Shelf

You won't believe it! I met Anya up at Square Books today and ANOTHER BOOK HAS ALREADY SOLD from my FAMOUS RECOMMENDATION SHELF, for a total of SEVEN! So that is great. BUT IT IS ALSO A LOT OF PRESSURE. For instance, Lydia Davis sold today and I looked all around the store for something to replace her with and ended up with Hunter S. Thompson. Does that seem exactly right? I am not sure! Plus now the fragile shelf groans under the cosmic burden of both Hunter S. Thompson AND Norman Mailer, and I am not sure it can abide the combo. Suddenly everything seems wrong. The shelf may need some rethinking! Maybe I should start over from scratch. That seems hard! Recommendation shelf, you are my hope and my doom.

Fun in an Abandoned Tunnel

Hey, the Oxford American has a brand new "web" site at oxfordamerican.org. In conjunction with their recent "Best of the South" issue they asked a bunch of people to nominate a "best cheap thrill" in the South. This feature is available only on the exciting new "web" site. I took the opportunity ("click" here, please) to tell people what is so great and cheap about my favorite band, Hubcap City. Meanwhile, George Singleton contributes a hilarious paragraph about an abandoned tunnel (pictured - Hey! Theresa and I have been in that tunnel!) and Joey Lauren Adams tells you how to have fun in a car wash or with a blood pressure machine. As McNeil might remark, this is good information for our troubled times.

The Lewis-Lohan Nexus

Jerry Lewis and Lindsay Lohan are alike, as Mr. Guilfoile's poetic rendering of Ms. Lohan's press quotations (see the previous "post") convinces me. If you care to "click" through and read it (here are some relevant lines: "But all the sicko fans/ And the noise is so distracting") you will see the uncanny resemblance (in subject and tone) between it and Jerry's improvised monologue from THE KING OF COMEDY, part of which I present here in the form of a lovely poem for reasons of symmetry: "I'm just a human being with all of the foibles/ all of the traps/ the show, the pressure/ the groupies, the autograph hounds/ the crew, the incompetence/ those behind the scenes you think are your friends/ and you're not too sure/ if you're gonna be there tomorrow/ because of their incompetence."

Once Again Hypocritical Whining Proves Ineffectual

... but that doesn't mean I intend to give up on it as a way of life. When will I learn? Remember how I used to whine and complain about "myspace" all the time and I grunted and groaned as I joined and finally I made peace with it and learned how to have a good time? Well, by the time all that happened, nobody cared about myspace anymore and everyone had fallen in love with "facebook," which I pooh-poohed in curmudgeonly terms. I tried joining it for about a week under extreme pressure, but found that it was all over my head and everyone else seemed to be in on some sort of vast inside joke or conspiracy the mysteries of which I could not penetrate, due to my advanced hardening of the arteries. So why am I bringing it up? Someone contacted me via "myspace" today to let me know that there is a "facebook" "group" called "Jack Pendarvis is *******" (of which, let me emphasize, I was entirely unaware). I omit the final word because 1) is it embarrassing and 2) it is the title of the novel I have sworn never to bore you with again. But I'm just letting you know I was forced to "reactivate" my "facebook" account so I can keep my eye on these much appreciated yet feared "Jack Pendarvis Is *******" people with their strange and inexplicable taste in entertainment. Hmm. I see that my sister is a member, so I'm sure it's aboveboard. But still. Odd that she didn't tell me. Oh "facebook," you fill me with righteous dread!

The People's TV Korner

We interrupt Dr. "M.'s" TV Korner to present this special edition by way of the old Soviet Union. Now that the pressures of churning out MGMIEET are behind McNeil, he spends his time gingerly leafing through back issues of Pravda. His most recent finding is Pravda's review of a Bob Hope TV special. Here's a representative snippet: "Now, by a directive from Washington, a television burlesque brought together the elderly clown Bob Hope... singer-businessman Frank Sinatra... and grey-haired notables from Capitol Hill. As Marx noted... the feeling of shame is the most revolutionary feeling. Is it not for that reason that shamelessness has now become a distinctive feature of rabid reactionaries...?" Between the ellipses there was some pretty rough stuff about Bob and Frank, too rough for the "blog's" tender hands. It is apparent that the Soviet Union shared "Blog" Buddy Whorton's opinion about Bob Hope's politics. As for McNeil, the show sounded great to him. We searched for a "link" to the entire article, but McNeil sent it by way of some special library feature, so you'll have to take our word about the rest.

Red Planet

Theresa and I saw most of RED PLANET, starring Val Kilmer, on cable last night. And we dug it. Do you HEAR ME? We DUG IT! That's right, a movie with 87% rotten tomatoes. Do you want to watch it? Probably not! But if you do, please do not rent it or buy it. Just wait until it's about midnight one night and you're flipping around and you come in about ten minutes late. Then there's no pressure! And remember the rotten tomatoes, and forget that I ever mentioned it here. And please don't read anything about it beforehand. What happens in it? Well, just about every bad thing that can happen to a person on Mars, okay? And Tom Sizemore plays a fellow with multiple PhDs. Not to mention there's an homage to the spacesuit-encumbered rumble between Jerry Lewis and Dick Shawn in WAY... WAY OUT. Plus it has helpful tips if you ever have to put out a fire in zero gravity. Now forget everything I said. Put it out of your mind! And wait... wait until the time is right. And I don't want any guff if you don't like it. Big deal! Sue me.