How to Read

No, Mr. Brownlee, you are missing the point. The Book Mistress’s response on how to read Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is a perfectly reasonable one. We hard-core readers often forget that some people are thrown off guard by anything diverging from a traditional structure. Thus, a “normal” explanation for how to read something that seems so apparent to us might be of great value for them.

This doesn’t take anything away from idiosyncratic readers who are prepared to skip around from middle to end to beginning, nor does this sully those who wish to consult “The Navison Record” exclusively for answers.

We can read how we want to, we can leave your read behind
‘Cause your friends read here and I read there
And the reads are all just fine

Request to the Peanut Gallery

If you are a professional musician and/or composer (ideally, you cut your teeth with keyboards), I need to talk with you. This is in relation to a fiction project I’m working on. I’m hoping to talk with you for about 20-30 minutes on the phone (don’t worry: I don’t bite!) or, if you live in the Bay Area, I’d be happy to buy you a coffee. You can leave a comment here or shoot me an email at ed AT edrants.com

Thanks so much!

Being the First Chapter Chronicling the Return of Camille Paglia

MISS PAGLIA had that kind of loquacity which seems to have been thrown into relief by poor dress. Her mind and mouth were so smugly formed that she could only bear fruit comparable to a costermonger. Had she run out of topics to write about? The servants and the plebs thought not, but their collective emolument steered their ratiocinative rudders. Once a peacock, always a peacock, feathers flitting in the hot air. It became necessary for her to return, huffing out phrases like “aimless hejira” — note the alternate spelling — in relationship to banalities about Anna Nicole Smith. Because this was what Miss Paglia did. She fooled her readers into thinking they were masticating upon something significant, when the meal was mere venison — a common table d’hôte for an unsuspecting commonweal.

Miss Paglia had once been an essayist of some note, sending engaging epistles and pleasant postcards to her fellow baronesses. Then something quite catastrophic had occurred. Pears and oranges flew in parabolic trajectories after every meal involving MIss Paglia. Then Miss Paglia disappeared and returned. But her loyal pups with previously perked up ears had grown up, their perspectives broadened by the lineaments of time.

But Miss Paglia had not changed. If anything, her overbite had grown worse.