George: Always going on about the weather, I see. Not as hot an August afternoon here in New York, naught eight. But I’m beginning to understand why your diaries haven’t been publicly released until now. You’d be alarmed by the BlackBerries we have these days. Unfortunately, they don’t redden, and neither do their users. Unless, of course, the recipient has just received a naughty email. Alas, it’s business as usual with most BB communiques, with the recipients playing King. Really, just as disheartening as always writing about the weather. Then again, weather is one of those safe topics which harms nobody. Last night, two crazy nightmares involving John Barth dying and my website being replaced by a monotonous voice telling readers, “We’ve corrected him. Don’t worry.” Very funny in the waking world. It made me laugh anyway. But at 3AM, I had to race to the computer in a barely awake stupor to make sure that this wasn’t real. Did you ever have nightmares like this? And if you raced such imaginative steed, did you spill your seed upon your diaries? Or is the Orwell Estate holding back on the juicy stuff? And for goodness sake, what are you reading these days? Me? I’ve read Auster’s new one and am working my way through Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side. Both quite interesting. Very hot in the morning. In the afternoon sudden thunder-storm & very heavy rain within the head upon realizing the full scale of what Mayer’s writing about.
Responding to Orwell: August 12
– August 12, 2008Posted in: orwell-george
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
I’m assuming, since they’re going to all the trouble of blogging Orwell’s diary, that he’ll move beyond meterological commentary soon. I mean, geez, he writes extremely well and all, but there’s only so much you can do with rain and fog.