Day Eighty-Eight
Ulysses by James Joyce Page: 50
The Thin Man & Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett Page: 644 Finished
When I write a crappy blogpost like yesterday’s I wonder if it’s even worth sticking to my daily blog commitment. Some days I can compose a long and thoughtful-ish post and other days…nada. Oh well, here’s to the good days. I know I haven’t posted many pictures lately but them’s the breaks. We just ordered a new flip video camera and hopefully soon I’ll be posting home videos of the boys. Hopefully, that is, for the friends and family who visit here just for the pictures of my adorable little ones.
I’m done with the Dashiell Hammett books and not overjoyed with them. Detective novels, by nature, handle all manner of sordid events and it takes a wise author to handle sordid situations without soiling himself or the reader. Now these novels are not nearly as exploitative as they could be nor are they as nasty as much of what is published today but I still feel vaguely unsettled by them and the affairs, alcoholism, and murders.
Ok here’s a mental exercise. Think about something. Think about a book, movie, friend, enemy, possession, website, politician or album. Now stop and think about how you were thinking and figure out how many of the things you were thinking were in the form of catch-phrases or cliches. Now think about whether you were really thinking what you believe or whether your thoughts were being shaped by the preformed words and phrases. Courtesy of George Orwell.
Nobody showed up for the Joyce reading but I downed 30 pages by myself. If I read it once a week, every week left this year, I only have to read 27 pages at a time. Woot.