Lit Bits & A Bit About Running Up Escalators in Heels Whilst Carrying Glass

• I have finished Natsuo Kirino's Out, finally. Thank goodness. Every night I'd race through it, only to find my dreams were labyrinthine and urgent and dark. I woke every morning of this week exhausted from my murder-mystery-esque dreams.  While many have praised Kirino for her writing style, that wasn't what impressed me. Instead, I kept marveling again and again at how she got me to root for truly evil, disturbed people.  I was questioning my own moral codes and beliefs with every page I turned. I didn't quite know what to make of it all.  That is the sign, at least to me, of a very fierce talent.  Grotesque has been moved from the bookshelf to the just-next-to-the-bed waiting stack.
• I have reached a stage in my novel-writing where I want to do little else but write it. I fear any interference (work, social gatherings, travel, other writing) that will take me out of my writerly tunnel. I've spent so many years involved in so many things, soaking it all in, making notes. Now, it would make me blissfully happy if I could state simply to the world (or at least, to all those in my little world): I'll be writing for the next three months, let's catch up at Christmas. Is that wrong?  No matter, it's not realistic.  Must find a way to not be a complete social outcast and disappointer of many by Christmas.
• Fresh off Kirino's Out, I thought a heavy dose of the September fashion magazines (they're so big! with all those new things! all those pretty pictures that don't involve murder or cutting people up!) would lighten things up. Yet after Vogue and Elle and W and Marie Claire, I found I was missing the fix of another plot-driven novel. After so many years of quiet tales and gorgeous sentences, I find I'm now up for any kind of tale, as long as it confounds me til the almost-end. (I suspect this is also because my greatest weakness as a writer is plot and I'm looking for clues.)  What to do? I devoured The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martínez in one sitting. It had me going until the very end and even when I suspected it might disappoint (which, ultimately, I think it did) I was still gloriously unaware of how it might end...which is very good. Quite often I can ferret out how things will wrap up well before I should...and it is my least favorite thing to discover at any point in a novel. Martínez did a great job of leaving just enough loose threads that could lead anywhere.  In the final summation, I didn't buy how it ended.  But I enjoyed the ride.
• As I cast about for to read next (forgoing all the things I am supposed to be reading for interviews and articles and the like), I find I'm scanning my bookshelves for unread mysteries or darker tales. I suspect it is time to visit Sarah's backlog of recommendations with a far keener eye.
• Maybe this focuse on crime novels is an obvious response to my post-Revolutionary Road, post-Human Smoke gaze?
• In between working and writing and taking an odd turn in my reading, I've been very focused on the election. I had questions about Biden, but yesterday's rally set most of my fears to rest. A new fear, however, has supplanted it: when did nearly every "straightforward, unbiased" news source get so out of whack? On NPR and CNN alone this week, I've seen terrible displays of partisan reporting - and not from their designated pundits but from reporters who are meant to deliver facts and unbiased analysis. Then, yesterday's hit by the AP's Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier hit it all home. Very troubling stuff. And lame points go to Yahoo for blindly (or not so?) running Associated Press stories. It has been interesting to see the central news box of the Yahoo home page become a shill as well, inadvertently or not.
• At least when Frank Rich writes something so heavily leaning to one side, it is placed accurately in Opinions.
• Despite all this activity of the week, the most time-consuming and painful of all has been this: falling on broken glass and moving escalator treads at the office on Monday, slicing my hand and arm and knees in several places, and spending a fascinating number of hours in the emergency room. There is a lot here to muse over, to ponder, to gain writerly inspiration from, but after a week of dressing wounds each day and finding new ways to function in the world with one side of my body in awful pain, the only clear insight I can offer now is that same insight I twittered once I returned from the emergency room: if you are wearing heels and carrying a glass bottle of Pellegrino, it is not wise to run up the escalator in a mad rush to start your conference call on time. It is not worth it. Really. This could be the universe telling me, in a rather blunt and literal way, to slow the hell down. For the rest of the week, I have stepped quietly to the side as I've watched countless hurriers race up and down the escalators. I have resisted the urge to hurry right along with them.
• I have also stopped getting Pellegrino with lunch.   

Comments

[Edan]

I'm sorry to hear about your fall! I like your new picture!

[callie]

Edan -- Thank you for the kind thoughts! My cuts are on the mend and I'm walking slowly on escalators these days.

As for the pic - thanks! I figured it was high time my picture actually looked like...me. :-)

[Elizabeth]

I loved Out, as hard as it was to get through. Very atmospheric. To my mind, similar to Donna Tartt's Secret History, in that it dealt with the aftermath of the murder and how each person dealt with their own level of guilt.
I have Grotesque on my "to read" list.