In the past year I’ve bought a typewriter, a laptop, pens, pencils, notepads, legal pads, and index cards. I estimate I’ve produced less than 5,000 words of prose. I’ve been collecting ways to write – the typewriter is too loud and makes me feel like a chode because I know the guy in the room next to mine can hear it, index cards are too small and I can’t take them seriously, notebooks get shoved into drawers too easily and forgotten about, legal pads are wonderful for plotting budgets and errand lists — but I cut my teeth on the blinking cursor and that is what feels natural.
I want to start a reading blog. I buy books endlessly and when I do read it is not deeply. I’m trying to muscle through William Faulkner’s Sanctuary right now, which, as I said to a fellow reader earlier, feels like a punishment. The writing is polished and structured but it doesn’t swallow well.
Coetzee’s Disgrace is more digestible. I went to the bookstore today because I was in that part of town and not only didn’t I sell back the copy of Take the Cannoli in my sell pile, I bought more because books take up very little space and are cheap for what you get.
I’ve heard most of the stories in Take the Cannoli on the radio before, but one of the stories featured one of the gay NPR Davids and that led to me thinking about whether or not they had ever been lovers. I think about that every time I think of either one of them.
I’m also moving through Lewis’ Boomerang, which details how cheap, easy credit allowed different countries to fuck themselves into the poorhouse, the way a rat will eat itself to death if you lesion its satiety away. The only connection I can find between the books is Sanctuary and Disgrace both feature sexual assault, but Faulkner’s use of sexual violence is lurid, “look at what happens to this girl from a good family when she strays” while Coetzee’s narrator doesn’t choose to see the truth of what he’s done, which makes the actions of the other characters seem needlessly antagonistic until further reflection.
