What's a guy got to do to get some sleep around here? Huh? Huh?

I've currently got a, ah, large number of words written about Orhan Pamuk's Snow--lots of false starts, lots of digressions, lots of vague ideas. Whether or not this little piece of mine ever sees the light of day, I'll say this much: Monsieur Champion was correct in suggesting that, if you give yourself over to Pamuk's writing, you'll find plenty of mental meat to chew on. Ahhh--the joys of a well-played literature as food metaphor.

Anyways, here's a sneak peek at what I'm writing up:

First off, before I even start, it might be worth noting that I feel like I might totally lose my shit at any moment.

and

It was the evening after I'd slept two hours that I read the last 175 pages of Orhan Pamuk's novel Snow. I drank a lot of coffee at a coffee shop near my apartment, because I knew if I tried to read it at home, I'd be too comfortable and too distracted by just about anything I could find to let myself be distracted by to get through the rest of the book, which I needed to finish that night. (Don't ask.)

This was, I will admit, not the way to read the book. Snow is a book of intricacies and details, ideas and meanings, many of which too easily blend and blur together during a high-speed reading session. I'm sure I missed more than I got.

So why then write about it? Why then pretend like I got enough from the book to be able to offer some ideas about it to people who may or may not have read the book? Isn'’t there risk here, risk of mis-representing the book, or mistaking the events or the ideas of the plot and the story?

Why? Because sometimes, you've got no choice.

Yeah, don't ever say I'm not putting myself out there for you to ridicule. Or for you to find likeable. Or lickable. Whatever. Weirdo.

In any case, I'll sum it all up for you: Snow is a good but damned tough novel, and it probably won't get as many readers as it should, which is a damn shame, especially what with Pamuk being really relevant right now. Plus, I think that Snow pretty much nails the middle ground that, unless I'm completely mis-reading things, seems almost called for in Slate's take on the Ben Marcus vs. Jonathan Franzen (or experimental vs. realist) (or art-minded vs. reader-minded) (or up-in-the-clouds vs. down-on-the-ground) (or babbling idiots vs. pandering sycophants) affair, a dichotomy I could have already told you was total bull-honkey, but it's nice to see them "big-media" folks catching on to the idea, anyways. Yeah, I went there. Whatever.