"Reading is, . . . from its first moments, an inevitable process of forgetting. Even as I read, I start to forget what I have read, and this process is unavoidable. It extends to the point where it's as though I haven't read the book at all, so that in effect I find myself rejoining the ranks of non-readers, where I should no doubt have remained in the first place. "

"At this point, saying we have read a book becomes essentially a process of metonymy. When it comes to books, we never read more than a portion of greater or lesser length, and that portion is, in the longer or shorter term, condemned to disappear."

from How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard (tr. Jeffrey Mehlman), from the chapter "Books You Have Forgotten"

Amusing Yahoo Headline

Obama reassures Canada on trade /Maple cookies for daughters

Poem

http://www.slate.com/id/2101150/sidebar/2101284/ent/2101283/

"All of the Words on a Bottle of Rolling Rock Beer in a Different Order"
by Demetri Martin

Boating

- Flaubert's advice to Guy de Maupassant, when Maupassant was studying with Flaubert, learning to write:

You must -- do you hear me, young man? -- you must work harder. Too many whores! Too much boating! Too much exercise! Yes, that's right: a civilized man does not require as much locomotion as doctors would have us believe.

from review of "Afloat" written by Graham Robb in the NY Review of Books, Feb. 26, 2009.

Zadie Smith on equivocal, multivocal lives, with special reference to herself and Obama:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22334

Harvey's Pastrami

Harvey's Pastrami, for years known for "World's Largest Pastrami," has a nice sign in the window:

"Enjoy Our Spicy Galore!"

Somehow changes my picture of Harvey.

Norman Mailer's Review of "The Old Man and The Sea"

"I thought it was good, and would have been better if it hadn't been so full of shit."


-- from a letter to Lillian Ross, Sept. 2, 1952, published in The New York Review of Books, Feb. 12, 2009.

Useful, little known facts about the world, though perhaps fictional:

"Dogs see ghosts. They see disease floating down the street like fog. They hear and smell the unimaginable. Yet dogs are indifferent to such things because they are simply part of their perceived world. . . .

Life and death do not mix. They could never dance together because both of them would insist on leading."

from "the Ghost In Love," which later explains why, for the dog in question, the absolute worst thing he can encounter is to hear harmonica playing, particularly if it is the recording of the harmonica part of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold."

By the way, he likes the version

Greil Marcus, on Neco Case singing Hank Williams' "Alone and Forsaken:"

"None of [her work on previous albums] suggested that she could look a song like "Alone and Forsaken" in the face. She isn't up to Williams; unlike him, she doesn't sing as if she's already dead."

from Oxford American, Issue 63.

Whoa Wild Will Wire WIth Wrap You Young Your

How do you recapture afresh the impact of an overly-familiar work of art?

Here are the lyrics of a great, overly-familiar song, arranged in alphabetical order, with each word in the song only listed once:

9 a all american amusement an and are at baby back be beach beyond bold
bones born boulevard boys break broken but cages can ’cause chrome-wheeled comb come could ’cross day death die don’t down dream dreams drive drones drop
engines everlasting everybody’s feels four friend from fuel-injected get girl
girls glory go gonna gotta guard hair hands hard hemi-powered heroes hide
highway highway’s how huddled i i’ll i’m if in is it it’s jammed just kids kiss
know last-chance left legs let like line live lonely look love machines madness
mansions me mirrors mist my n never night no of oh on one ooh out over palace
park place power rap real really rearview ride rider rims rips rises road ’round
run runaway sadness scared scream so someday soul sprung stark steppin’ strap
streets suicide sun sweat that the their then there’s these this three through
till to together tonight town tramps trap try two us velvet visions walk wanna
we we’ll we’re wendy were when where while whoa wild will wire with wrap you
young your

From a very nice quiz, asking you to identify songs which have undergone the same treatment: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/diversions/and_great_lyrics_quiz_rock_roll_the.php

John Updike, R.I.P.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/01/27/books/AP-Obit-Updike.html?hp

Sorry to see the news of Updike's death. I was a great fan. I liked him best the smaller the unit of consideration. He wrote some very good novels, but better short stories, and unsurpassed sentences. Unlike many great writers of sentences, his were grounded in the circumstances of the greater writing, and the greater world, whether natural or social, internal or external.

Epigraph from 2666

""In those days all I cared about was baseball and ethics, " said Campbell."

from 2666

"On her fifth morning with them, when the medicine she had brought with her from France was about to run out, Lola told them she had to leave. Benoit is little and he needs me, she said. Actually, he doesn't need me, but that doesn't mean he isn't little, she said. I don't know who needs who, she said at last, but the fact is I have to go see how he is. ... "

Sales pitch

Latest undoubtedly false but linguistically intriguing promise from my spam:

Beyond question, any woman will be 100 shocked with your mega.

Baseball Parks In Winter

http://homerderby.com/archives/3176

Coffee House Brawl

My latest dream:

Having drinks at what seems to be a coffee house with a friend from out of town, and someone else. Though a coffee house, whatever I'm drinking is getting me drunk. After two drinks we go downstairs and out to the street. My friend suggests that he and I head to The Dragon, a nearby bar.

Next thing I know, I am back in the coffee house by myself, drinking again. I wonder where my friend is and figure he must be at The Dragon. But then a guy from a group at the next table, slaps and scratches at my face, saying things I don't understand. I bite his finger, though not too hard. I come to realize that he and his friends are acting, and in the midst of putting on a play for the coffee house audience. But the manner in which the actor keeps involving me -- attacking my face -- makes me wish they'd respect the fourth wall a bit more.

My nose hurts from the attack, and I go downstairs to a mammoth bathroom. Mammoth, deserted, like an old basement. Furnished with brown leather couches. I look in the mirror, and learn that the actor had been smearing red paint on me, and my hair and neck are covered in red paint. I wash it off, but it is a difficult task. The paint smears, and I am thoroughly scrubbed and drenched, like a soaking dog, before the paint comes off. I also realize that under the paint I had been given a slight bloody nose.

I leave the restroom and learn from someone entering it that I had been in the women's room. I tell the woman entering that it didn't matter, as I was just washing my face.

Walking up the stairs away from the bathroom, a man recognizes me, and accuses me of treating the actors badly. For one thing, I bit that guy's finger. He starts pushing me and we get into a coffee house brawl.