A Little Off the Top Saturday, August 09, 2003

Just returned from a haircut in the city. For inexplicable, Rain Man-nish reasons, I only go to one barber, an Italian gent across from The Strand. Today I found the shop full and a tiny old man reading through a stack of Maxims. Viva life!

Upon returning to Bayonne discovered the town smelled like a catbox: sharp and sour and vaguely vegetative, with a metallic tang perched on top like a tin roof. Am now comfortable, air-conditioned, full of crummy food, at peace with the world. It's very quiet sans wifey.

Reading a bunch of Evelyn Waugh. A while ago I read an essay "re-evaluating" "Brideshead Revisited," talking about it as a profound Catholic statement. So I read it on the way home from Montreal, watched part of the TV show, and enjoyed it immensely. Altho it has one of those endings that Means Something Spiritual but is more or less over my head. I think everybody ends up Catholic.

Proceeded to "Scoop," one of the funniest books I've ever read and certainly the best book about newspapers. (The two competitors are The Beast and The Brute.) Every sentence, literally, is this good:

“Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn’t know any different, got out, went straight to an hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine-guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window — you know.”

Moved on to "Black Mischief," an incredibly un-P.C., and incredibly hilarious, book on liberalism, Progress and Africa. Every sentence makes you laugh and makes you guilty about it; then the climax comes, deadly serious, and you literally feel numb. Unbelievable.

Now it's "Put Out More Flags," about the upper crust and Bohemian set at the start of WWII. Some great pointed observations, astoundingly good dialogue, hateful-but-intriguing characters. Great stuff!

Must do some other stuff. Will return later. Take care, be well.

@ 2:05:00 PM,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home