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654. uzmakk - 5/8/2006 9:41:46 PM Oops. I didn't go back far enough. Excerpt from book, right? 655. alistairConnor - 5/8/2006 10:37:17 PM I would imagine he was extemporising from oral tradition. He does that. 656. webfeet - 5/9/2006 4:21:04 AM I had to go away for a few days...Easter Island.. again with karl.
It seems karl has become increasingly out of temper with me. Today, for example. Standing in front of my closet, not knowing comme d'habitude what to wear, karl taunted me as I tried blouses on..the agnes b. blouse was unironed and I wasn't young enough to get away with it,..the unstructured sweater made my breasts look bulky..when I suggested a white blouse, something fresh and springlike, he pointed to my head and said my highlights had oxidized and made me look in sunlight like a puerto rican.....then it was the freshly cut flowers I was trying to arrange in a bowl, 'so Ikea' he sneered, watching me from the window. Then he ridiculed me for being one of those people who are too lazy to change the garbage bags...and so on until he finally went to sleep sipping verbena and listening to Tchaikovsky's piano concertos. thank god.
657. webfeet - 5/9/2006 4:33:43 AM Judith--karl is exceedingly discreet; though i did manage to make out that it's in the atelier of a young designer off the rue de Charonne, some japanese fashion students were recently chased by wild dogs trying to get there. 658. webfeet - 5/9/2006 4:45:50 AM Jen--what is trinny a nickname of? or is it simply trinny? marvelous idea for reality show: trinny and susannah as apprentices with karl. who will survive? i'd waiger trinny. she doesn't need shinpads. she does need a mouthguard, however. and why doesn't karl have his own goddamn show?
Delicate. It's because he's too delicate, an orchid that would expire under the harsh lights of tv. and particular--about too many things.
alrite, I'll buy it. i'm not sure how i feel about this book--i'd like to just get this out beforehand, i think this novel is the equivalent of jodie foster's "Nell" and i'm too lazy and tired to go into it now, but i might try tomorrow. that whole thing about is stuttering voice..the muteness..or am i just a philstine? 659. Macnas - 5/9/2006 11:40:45 AM I had to look up what extemporising meant, but yes, that is what I was doing. If you have a couple of hours to spare I could give you the story of the Tain, but maybe not.
Uz, that story, told here in a very simple form, is from pre-christian times. There are versions of it, where the children turn into ancient old creatures who die soon after, and of course there is the christian version, where the sound of a chapel bell and baptism breaks the curse.
The version I told is that which is commonly told to children.
The full version is far more complex and not as easy on young ears as this one.
The great thing about these stories is that they are mine, a gift to me from long ago, and indeed, they belong to anyone who cares to remember them and pass them on to others. 660. PelleNilsson - 5/9/2006 12:55:40 PM That last paragraph, Macnas, remnds me, in some unspecific way, of Tolkien's world. 661. Macnas - 5/9/2006 1:09:01 PM All old world story telling traditions have things in common, Tolkien invented a lot of his own, but, in my opinion, utilised Nordic styles much more than Celtic.
I'd never consider myself a seanachai (story teller/bard), but I do love to tell my children these stories when they care to listen. 662. Jenerator - 5/9/2006 8:24:04 PM Webbie,
He [David Mitchell] isn't speaking a different language in Black Swan Green. And if was like anything like Nell, I wouldn't have bought it. Now, Cloud Atlas is a different story. Maybe I'm lazy or uncultured, but deciphering linguistic code isn't my idea of fun fiction. High brow Esperanto? No thanks.
BSG seems like a much easier and natural read. 663. webfeet - 5/11/2006 7:32:57 PM Things are getting curioser and curioser...today at Barnes and Noble, shopping for Black Swan Green which-- and this is sad news for New York--was not displayed *anywhere* in the store, unlike Texas apparently--I encountered SuperVitamin Man, in gym shorts, fresh from his work-out, at the in-store Starbucks. He was with a chick, who was also in some kind of spandex. I suppose you could say she's his 'work-out' partner.
Serendipitously positioned behind him in front of the smorgasbord of unappealing, pasty cookies and cakes, I stood with Juliette, fresh from Baby Swim, on line where i could get a true-close up without seeming like a pervert, of the back of his neck. Hirsute and compact, Vitamin Man has the girth of a small, Italian sportscar. Perhaps he's just a little too au naturel in the neck hair department, with a few strange ones sprouting like tubers in odd places. He needed to be taken to, I don't know, one of those barber shops at Grand Central Station and get properly groomed.
I've always wanted to get picked up in a bookstore. But this wasn't one of those moments. And, I'm not sure SuperVitamin Man really enjoys literature. Although he does enjoy a certain type of round-the-year tanning salon gym bunny who looks like the seventh grade definition of 'slut'.
As I stood there checking him out, while he and spandex chick ordered their lattes, my daughter kept on shouting, "Darfish! Darfish!"
I didn't know what she was saying. And she kept on screaming it again. "Darfish! Darfish!" pointing excitedly at the cookies and cakes.
Head started to turn in our direction. And still, I didn't get it. Then, it hit me. Starfish! There was a cookie with yellow icing shaped like a starfish.
After ordering our darfish and a mint tea, we snagged a dirty table with a copy of the Village Voice on it. Then as SuperVitamin man and his spandex bunny, walked past us, I had to move the stroller which was blocking their passage.
664. webfeet - 5/11/2006 7:39:19 PM The other bizarre part, which I can't even get into today or ever maybe, was that after leaving Starbucks, there was a dad wearing some kind of plaid cap standing in front of the book check-out, pushing a double stroller.
It wasn't clear whether he was actually on line, getting on line, thinking about getting in line--or what.
So I turn to him and ask, "Are you on line?"
He's about to answer, when I notice his beautiful green eyes and then I realize, desperately, madly, psychotically--all these emotions rising--that I made-out with him, stoned, in the women's room at the grimy sailor's tavern in our hometown when I was twenty! Then a second later, he realizes the same thing and we both kind of scattered as if someone sprayed napalm, in opposite directions.
I would have drunk supermarket sherry when I got home, but I took an advil instead. 665. webfeet - 5/12/2006 4:39:43 PM Having endured all that to get Black Swan Green, it was worth it. I began a few pages last night--and was relieved that I didn't have to wade through strange dialects and tongues as in Sloosha's Crossin'--one of the chapters in 'Cloud Atlas' that is an exhaustive but mind-bendingly brilliant read.
The style in BSG is similar, even if it's the slang of british teenagers in the 80s instead of Hawaiian islanders in the post-nuclear age.
For example, "Moron grinny-zitty as ever. His bumfluff's getting thicker, mind." Or, "He pongs of gravy" --which I take it means he (Moron) is poor. Anyway, I like it. Mitchell is incredibly funny. 666. webfeet - 5/16/2006 5:31:18 AM This is sort of feeling like vaudeville...now is this a book club, jen? Look me square in the eye: or, have you abandoned Black Swan Green for The Prada Murder Mysteries?
Since living inside Black Swan Green, and Mitchell's poetic, pastoral Lord of the Flies adolescence, I am starting to feel like an adolescent reading it. L'oreal hair gel, Thatcher, the Faulklands War, Reagan and Haig, the "dusty flute" from that Men at Work song..today I read it on the subway en route to my doctor's office while I ate from a bag of cinnamon hearts, like a seventh grader discovering Judy Blume. Oblivious.
667. Jenerator - 5/16/2006 7:24:23 PM Don't be so gay~! 668. Jenerator - 5/16/2006 7:26:41 PM We are a bookclub - a ya ya sisterhood of the Mote. I, too, am having flashbacks to parachute pants and Human League and am having fun with it. Just wish I could have more interruption free time and less screaming children! 669. arkymalarky - 5/17/2006 12:12:08 AM Jen are you teaching now or are you still home? 670. webfeet - 5/17/2006 2:56:37 AM Here, you wanker :Interview with David Mitchell
671. alistairconnor - 5/17/2006 10:12:28 AM I'm not sure who the "wanker" is for, but I'll take it. (I can take it.) I'll take the Mitchell anyway. Next time I order some books. 672. Ulgine Barrows - 5/17/2006 10:16:46 AM i'ts cold out here and rough 673. judithathome - 5/17/2006 12:37:00 PM Yep, it's hard out there for a pimp, that's for sure. Or so they said at the Academy Awards.
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