Sort of

So I started The Accidental by Ali Smith and I was like, "Whoa, this is my favorite book of the year." Then I got really bored with it. Then I got really psyched about it again. Then I got sort of bored again. And also vaguely annoyed. Then I think I figured it out: totally dig the kids, not so much into the parents. I'm still having an above-average amount of fun with the book, but not as much as I'd initially thought I was going to have. A'el.

Meanwhile, I've been idly thumbing through The Paris Review's interview archives. Yeah, I'm probably going to have to grab that first printed collection they put out. Total writer porn.

If you're looking for suggestions on where you might start (and, no, I'll save a couple of my friends the trouble of checking: the Eliot interview isn't available online), I've been digging the 1972 interview with John Berryman, and the 1977 interview with William Gass.

The Berryman interview has me itching to take another crack at reading The Dream Songs. The idea of looking at it is a "long poem" intrigues me. (I feel great interest the book, in but haven't yet managed to find my one-way entry into it.)

And the Gass interview has reawakened my interest in reading The Tunnel. Since pretty much every "critical" (or what-have-you) piece I've read of Gass's has made fireworks of recognition and identification go off in my head. (Like, I mean, go look at the paragraph that begins at the bottom of page 12 and rolls through most of 13: gods, yes.) Maybe I'll hate the shit out of his fiction, but I'd have to guess at this point it would be a friendly sort of hatred.

Otherwise: I write and I write and I write. And I don't mind the heat but I hate the humidity. And I watch John from Cincinnati with my girlfriend. (I haven't decided if that show is meaningless or not, but I do know this: I am intensely curious about the upcoming season finale.)