Random Pre-Lunch Post
For the most part of my adult life I've known the concept of the social contract, yet I've never actually read the thing untilm recently. I should have much earlier: Rousseau, I am pleasantly surprised to find out, can really write, and really write well.
Anyway, the other things I have been reading include Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, who also Can Write. Naive narrators seem to be the thing now - I'm thinking of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, though Foer's narrator is not autistc, just an incredibly precocious child. (I wonder if someone will ever use a non-precocious, normal, average, and otherwise utterly bland child as a narrator. There wouldn't seem to be much point)
One more thing: this morning's casual surfing has dug up this gem: Thursday and Empire: or, How a Typical Workday Can Seem More Important When Modeled As a Great Era in Western Civilization. Take a look ...
(from McSweeney's Internet Tendency)
Right: it's off to lunch, before the barbarians come knocking at the gates.
Anyway, the other things I have been reading include Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, who also Can Write. Naive narrators seem to be the thing now - I'm thinking of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, though Foer's narrator is not autistc, just an incredibly precocious child. (I wonder if someone will ever use a non-precocious, normal, average, and otherwise utterly bland child as a narrator. There wouldn't seem to be much point)
One more thing: this morning's casual surfing has dug up this gem: Thursday and Empire: or, How a Typical Workday Can Seem More Important When Modeled As a Great Era in Western Civilization. Take a look ...
"6:00 a.m. Like all great civilizations, this one begins in an agrarian phase.
Assorted grains and toasted nuts in a bowl. Perhaps some dried fruit if the
harvest has been kind. Milk on top. This is a dark and fumbling time ... "
(from McSweeney's Internet Tendency)
Right: it's off to lunch, before the barbarians come knocking at the gates.
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