The Friday Book is a collection of nonfiction by John Barth. Many of them are introductory remarks he gave before readings, so they tend to dwell on what's on his mind as he's writing various works. And his mind is full of a lot of miscellaneous things. And many of the usual things for Barth... the Arabian Nights, myth, Maryland crabs, and boating. And as a professor of creative writing, he often gets very academic with his presentation, too abstruse for an ill-educated wannabe scribbler like me to fully appreciate. I love Borges and the Arabian Nights almost as much as Barth does, and enjoy his discussions of these topics, but several essaylets and introductions split hairs between modernist, premodernist, and postmodernist novels. Barth gleefully admits that other experts have informed him that his definition of postmodernism is entirely wrong. I gleefully confess I don't care. Another favorite bit was his defense of 'dippy verses' (the very phrase of a critic of one of his novels). Having composed a few dippy verses of my own, I sympathize. I'm not sure why the piece also includes a long discourse on osprey nests, but I'm glad it does. Alas, on the whole, I felt there were not enough enjoyable nuggets in this Cracker Jack box of miscellanea.
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- No. 118 (
essentialsaltes) wrote,
No. 118
essentialsaltes
Halting State / The Friday Book
The Friday Book is a collection of nonfiction by John Barth. Many of them are introductory remarks he gave before readings, so they tend to dwell on what's on his mind as he's writing various works. And his mind is full of a lot of miscellaneous things. And many of the usual things for Barth... the Arabian Nights, myth, Maryland crabs, and boating. And as a professor of creative writing, he often gets very academic with his presentation, too abstruse for an ill-educated wannabe scribbler like me to fully appreciate. I love Borges and the Arabian Nights almost as much as Barth does, and enjoy his discussions of these topics, but several essaylets and introductions split hairs between modernist, premodernist, and postmodernist novels. Barth gleefully admits that other experts have informed him that his definition of postmodernism is entirely wrong. I gleefully confess I don't care. Another favorite bit was his defense of 'dippy verses' (the very phrase of a critic of one of his novels). Having composed a few dippy verses of my own, I sympathize. I'm not sure why the piece also includes a long discourse on osprey nests, but I'm glad it does. Alas, on the whole, I felt there were not enough enjoyable nuggets in this Cracker Jack box of miscellanea.
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Urban Walks
More a note to self than anything else. Bowtie along the LA River Valhalla in Burbank Glendale Zanja Movie set or ghost town - why not…
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The Library Book / The Night Ocean
The Library Book, by Susan Orlean, details two interleaved stories. One, the history of the Los Angeles Public Library, with a focus on the Central…
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Killer in the Rain, by Raymond Chandler
Kind of a neat anthology of some of Chandler's original stories from the pulps. These were largely suppressed by Chandler for anthologization,…
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