18 February 2004 Wednesday

titleless

i’m reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.. i’m only at chapter four, but what a beautiful, beautiful book. the style/manner of story reminds me of Vonnegut’s, ”People so smart you can’t believe it, and dumb and nice, and mean.” and Dickens’ ”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” actually, i’m missing Timequake a bit, right now.. and i want to jot down so much of East of Eden... but it’s not so easy to pull out quotes from it, as it often was with Vonnegut’s, and still maintain the poignance; and circling or putting stars next to every sweet/notable/right-on piece of the book would be just messy.. and not really possible.. it’s the whole thing that’s making it so beautiful.. the context of the people he’s introducing.. that’s what makes them so human and awesome and ordinary and perfect.

words matter. well, they don’t always matter terribly, in terms of one for another, since the entire basic purpose of words to begin with is to communicate, and that is simply the act of conveying one’s ideas or intentions or feelings or desires. but when it comes to literature, and poetry, words very much matter, since each one is, or should be, carefully chosen from the author’s repository to specifically convey and/or conjure that particular idea or intention or feeling or desire. there’s a song (by Nickleback)that’s been unfortunately stuck in my head today, since it was on the radio this afternoon… it would be a pretty good song, except that the chorus comes across repetitively, and i can’t get past the choice of lyrics: ”now the story’s played out like this, just like a paperback novel; let’s rewrite an ending that fits, instead of a hollywood horror.” the singer’s singing about a relationship; hollywood horrors pretty exclusively contain violent bloodshed, fear, sharp-objects, and grotesque, inhuman villains. unless the singer is suggesting that those elements are present or potentially present in his (clearly currently unsuccessful) relationship, then the comparison to the however-ideally alliterate and rhythmic ”hollywood horror”, is simply poorly chosen.

and wireless connection, why must you berate me so?
all
day
loooooooong.