death of a copywriter.

barring my ruthless love affair with doing laundry, i was likened to peg bracken by an ex today. he points me by way of her obits andd i had to admit to a degree of overlap. besides being bitter as widows and judgmental to boot, we're both ad copywriters. the difference? she's an ad writer who also wrote several books including THE I HATE TO COOK BOOK and an etiquette book, I TRY TO BEHAVE MYSELF.

Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.

— Recipe for “Skid Road Stroganoff"

The I HATE TO COOK BOOK has about 200 recipes, divided into chapters with headings like Potluck Suppers, or How to Bring the Water for the Lemonade and Desserts, or People are Too Fat Anyway.

of course her books are all out of print, but if you would happen across one, let me know. even though she uses some pretty hideous ingredients like crushed frosted flakes and embraces anything tinned, there's some charming reading to be had. so don't be a stranger to the cookbook section next time you're in a secondhand shop–you may just find my christmas present.

auster, calvino, auster, calvino, (borges?), cervantes

i have never read "don quixote." there are some things which i feel i have absorbed on a cultural level, or feel i know enough about in order to understand them without having read them. or, at least, this is how i used to feel. i don't know, so much, anymore. after having read borges' "labyrinths," and now, auster's "new york trilogy," i feel as though i'm missing something. but wandering into my favourite used book store yesterday & picking up a copy of the cervantes left me baffled. it's one of those books that just requires more effort than i have to invest in anything right now.

but i keep reading books that make me: A) never want to write again, and B) want to die. the latter feeling is nice around the edges - it's like total admiration, the kind of idolatry for the craft of words that makes me abase myself in front of it. some phrase from Auster - "he thought he would find himself in the words" - made me question why i even read books, or why i wrote, or why i really did anything. bastard.

so, next, then, and already a few in, a book of italo calvino's short stories - "numbers in the dark," which is already making me slightly crazy. i have no idea what's next.

also, i seem to have become oddly obsessed with the i ching.

waking up from pynchon, etc

so i just finished 'the crying of lot 49'. pynchon. no, i'd never read it before. don't you just love/hate when someone asks you if you've read something & you know you SHOULD have, but you just haven't yet, for whatever reason? that makes me climb the walls. in any case, i finally picked up a cheap paperback edition of the book & devoured it in the space of a day. finished it about ten, fifteen minutes into my shift at work (i do the maitre'd-thing at a local bar/grille, it's pretty slow in there until about seven or eight), on a monday night. monday is one of my least favourite nights of the week to work, because i share the shift with a retarded elf-woman waitress who is lazy and stupid. in any case. so i finish the book, stare around dreamily, and then realize i have about three hours left to go and no caffeine in my system.

which is when the rush hits. having only ever read one other pynchon (gravity's rainbow, and only half), i had no idea the power of his concluded narrative. i waded around in the dim restaurant, totally fuzzed out of it, completely useless in my employment. i had a small "app-slip" pad in my pocket (appetizer slip, used for making orders in the kitchen) & a pen, but my thoughts whizzed by. pynchon made me want to write. i was hungry to write. i was also despairing, because there's no way in hell i can ever aspire to write like he does. genius. total genius. i have never experienced anything like 'the crying of lot 49'.

i found a copy of durrell's 'black book' (i'm looking at you, kay) & a copy of an interview with him, conducted by marc alyn - entitled 'the big supposer.' so far, it is worth the fifteen dollars i spent - however, in the midst of this weird, bleak fall, i have decided (FINALLY) to pick up paul auster's 'new york trilogy' & am obsessing over it, now, too.

this is a time for reading, and i couldn't be more thrilled. has anyone read any of anne enright's 'the gathering' - which just won the man booker? i read an excerpt over at the telegraph.co.uk, and at first was a little disgusted at what seemed like facile writing, but there's something there. i'm curious to read what beat out mcewan's latest, though i haven't read it. also, has anyone read 'christine falls' by john banville's pseudonym? a co-worker was just reading 'the world without us' by alan weisman ... fascinating excerpts, from what i read. portland - and maine - is such a small town, though, and we don't get what we should for reading material. it's limited to the small estuaries just off the mainstream. i never hear about the things i'd like to. oh well. west coast, here i come (or bust)

short story shorts.

general update

currently reading: murphy by samuel beckett

purchased: the book of illusions & the brooklyn follies by paul auster; anna karenina by tolstoy; waiting for jake by china mieville; fragile things by neil gaiman



haruki murakami the elephant vanishes
it seems to be the most subtle tweaks and turns he takes into the fantastical. plots stripped down to the luscious, evocative story-meat. i've thought about more than one of these stories after reading, and even bought a new copy of anna karenina because of one. do i recommend it? you bet.

tatyana tolstaya white walls
amazing what the right translator can do. unlike the slynx (which was engaging enough but lacked the visceral phrasing to sink my teeth into) many of the short stories were fluid and lovely and i guess it's some of the best writing i've let into my head for awhile now. hard to ignore the familiar russian depression. to sum it up i finished her stories, terrified of getting old but really, very enchanted.

raymond carver call if you need me
i tend to have a difficult time appreciating stories with carver's domestic theme. if murakami is subtle, carver is ten times as subtle with his quirks. it is a lot of adultery, a lot of divorce. however, all of his stories are consistently, solidly well-written, and well-crafted. plenty thuds of disappointment in people. very real, very gentle storytelling.


lydia davis varieties of disturbance
this lady's brain sets my jealousy meter off big time. one my favourite translators when it comes to most french lit (especially anything blanchot), married to paul auster, and tied to a number of incredible accomplishments. i've admired her for many moon. i didn't realize, until rhianna read and then seethed, that lydia davis's book wasn't really a collection of "short stories". like proust and blanchot, her writing is extremely observational. the story is composed of her, describing or breaking things down while a story colours itself in, in the background. honestly, your enjoyment depends on how much you enjoy kicking back and reading archived detail and analysis.

for example: she breaks down, in staggering detail, a collection of letters sent from a 3rd grade class to a fellow student in the hospital. for pages she organizes her labours, discussing and comparing their grammar, their sentence structures, the level of sensitivity or aggression in their vocabulary... to me? oh, boy, do i like it. but if organization and description alone don't do it for you, trust me (or rhianna) that you're bound to think it's a frustratingly boring wad of words that go nowhere interesting (if they go anywhere at all).


woody allen mere anarchy
all i can really say is that it's insane how much humour this man can pack into a handful of words. the way he writes plots may get formulaic after awhile, but the detail, the characters and the way he lines up elements like dominoes for the length of the story and sets them off in a chain reaction in the last gasp...it all works to pull his stories off in interesting ways.