Perusing Prose

[perusingprose]

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.

Philip Roth---American Pastoral

[perusingprose]

Happy people exist too. Why shouldn’t they?

Philip Roth——American Pastoral

[perusingprose]

People think of history in the long term, but history in fact is a very sudden thing.

Philip Roth---American Pastoral

[perusingprose]

"What is there to see outside one's own internal monologue, the infinity of one's own mind?"

--Jesse Browner    Everything Happens Today

[hellanne]

[sunshineyone-deactivated2016080]

[wildsouldarkspirit]

[perusingprose]

Memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated and arbitrary as glimpses through lighted windows

Marilynne Robinson ----- Housekeeping

[unfamiliarstreets]

22:49

It’s a practice of grand illusion, a masterwork on a constant stage.

[perusingprose]

"We owe many errors to the abuse of words"

Jean Le Rond d'Alembert---"Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia"

[perusingprose]

"Invention it must be humbly admitted does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos"

---Mary Shelley-----Introduction to Frankenstein

[perusingprose]

"When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe"

William Faulkner -----As I Lay Dying

[perusingprose]

The little things seem more real than some of the big things.

Robert Goolrick----Heading Out to Wonderful

[perusingprose]

Seating Arrangements --Maggie Shipstead

Captured by the intriguing title and quirky cover art (on the galley I read it was a small, lackadaisical, overturned chair) I eagerly dove into Maggie Shipstead's debut novel. Unfortunately, my eagerness was met with the same dissatisfaction that accompanies an overzealous gulp of excruciatingly hot and disappointingly watery hot chocolate.

Reading the back cover's synopsis and even the first chapter had been like looking, mouth watering, into the curling swirls of rich chocolate and creamy milk only to find that someone skimped on the main ingredient and the only thing chocolate about the drink was the color, while the flavor fell flat. This book primes a reader's anticipation in the first chapters by previewing tantalizing snippets of button-down prep-sters gone promiscuous, wedding weekend philandering, old histories, new relationships and beautiful northeastern coastlines. 

But a preview and a few snippets are about as far as it goes and the stage is set and the lighting cues primed, the show never seems to start. But, like the overheated watery hot chocolate, what lingers is not the book's flavor or richness of language but the unpleasant tingling of the burnt tongue. I found the characters irksome and petulant. Shipstead seems to have flawed her characters carefully and intentionally, but this makes them somewhat grating rather than accessible or realistic. 

To beat the hot chocolate anology a bit more, it seems like there's something more there than there is, so you stick with the book hoping that maybe the chocolate dregs are concentrated at the bottom, maybe you'll get that rush of action, flavor, and redemption at the end... but alas no. 

Perhaps I found this book so unsavory because I had such high expectations for it and couldn't shake the sense that there was something more to be found there. 

Bottom Line: This book was none of the things I wanted it to be, but maybe, like the characters, I was looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place ans so missed what I should have found.

Seating Arrangements: 3/10

[perusingprose]

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

Leo Tolstoy ---Anna Karenina

[asincerelie-deactivated20130121]

“Memories are worse than bullets.”

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (via asincerelie)

[pissintheocean]