... so I am free to wish I was reading.
Anyway, I just finished one good book (Love Invents Us), one gooder book (Great Granny Webster) and I am in the middle of a collection of two novellas (Class Trip and The Moustache by Emmmanuel Carrere) that is knocking my socks off so far. The translation is amazingly elegant in Class Trip which made the reading even more delicious because I was wondering through each nasty little scene what, if anything, had changed from the original French.
(Apparently The Moustache is now a film too.)
Reading Carrere makes me want to check out this book by him, which caught my attention when it came out a couple of years ago. It is a bio of Philip K. Dick, the idol of a certain kind of nerd, one I usually like very much, and writer of some of the most engrossing sci-fi ever. Dick has also written some amazingly impenetratable crap(like the last two books in the Valis triliogy), but even his worst casts a spell on a line-by-line basis. I imagine writing a bio of Dick that adequately captures both his brilliance and his glaring shortcomings as an author, as well as gives just enough facts and specualtion about his twisted private life would be very hard. From my small taste of Carrere, it seems like he has the subtlety to do it so I'd like to give I am Alive and You are Dead a try when I am in the mood to be someone else.
3 comments:
Here's an oldie for you - "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (1968) by Tom Wolfe. :)
Hmmm, Paul. Are you refering to the fact that Dick was an acid-head (he was/0, or do you just want me to read Wolfe? I have always been curious about this book...
I want you to read it ,because I think you might enjoy it ! :)
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