B List: George Farquhar--The Beaux' Stratagem.......................................58/73
C List: Will Self--Shark..............................................................................91/464
We read some Rousseau at school, The Social Contract certainly, and some people read Emile. I don't remember whether we read any excerpts of the Confessions or not, though we certainly didn't read the whole thing. When the book back in the mail I was surprised by how big it was, I was imagining it to be about half as long. However, though I have just started it it seems like it is going to be an amiable read, and it's been a while since I've read anything from the genre of 18th-century philosophy, which in its English and French incarnations at least I generally enjoy.
After a series of relatively long novels, Farquhar is the first of 4 consecutive plays coming up the B list. Expect a report of some length soon. Indeed I should have finished this several days ago already but you know...busy with nonsense.
This brings us to the Will Self book. Born in London in 1961, Will Self is the author of 24 books, including 19 works of fiction. He is undeniably a highly intelligent and skilled writer, and I have to admire this to an extent. At the same time I find myself dragging my feet quite a bit when it is time for me to take up his book. For starters, the entire 464 pages appear to be a single paragraph, which seems unnecessarily taxing on the reader to me. There is a Joycean stream of consciousness element to the composition in which the various threads of the story come and go and as my concentration is not that great I frequently get lost for a page or more during these transitions. One of the storylines involves the famous catastrophe/ordeal of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in World War II, and that part is very good. There is a part set in a mental hospital in London that holds my attention somewhat, there is a part involving a sex worker and her young children and Vietnam war protests in 1970-era London that I can just barely follow, and, well, you get the idea. I did genuinely love Ulysses, or many of its various parts and qualities anyway, when I went though it as a 25-year old accompanied by an entire volume of annotations, recollections of the conversations of friends who had recently taken a class on it, and so forth. Perhaps I would not feel the same about it if I took up now without all of these specific associations, though I might, because it still has other associations with a time and an idea of literary culture that I probably would hold in romantic regard anyway. This Will Self book has passages that are like that, that evoke those kinds of feelings, but the structure of it doesn't allow me to leave off and get back in to the story at the point I was before. Every time I take it up it is as if I am starting the whole thing anew, the characters have no solidity for me, certainly no established charm or interest that I wish to explore or draw from. I do feel that I should stick with the book a little longer though.
I need a haircut. I try to go about every six weeks, that is why hair begins to grow overlong on the top and sides.
What accounts for my extreme busyness? Getting an inspection sticker for both of my old cars in January (in my state your birthday dictates when your car registration and inspection are due, and both my wife and I are January babies--January is the worst possible month in this part of the world especially to have to do this) was a complicated and expensive ordeal, though both run well enough that it is worth the expense if I can make it through another year without having to buy a new car, or two of them. Dealing with insurance issues. Various appointments for kids/teenager stuff. I've got one kid doing school online that I have to help a lot. My oldest son got his driver's license. All of these things. And this time of year, the dead of winter, I get very tired, I took a forty-five minute nap today, I never need to do this from April through the Christmas season my energy is pretty good. But this is just late night scribbling for the sake of scribbling...
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