#hirschler

[lampgang]

Herbert Hirschler: „Luftgitarrengott“, Leykam 2021

Den Schlager- und Volksmusikanhängern unter uns ist Herbert Hirschler wahrscheinlich ein Begriff. Bei einigen nimmt er vielleicht sogar eine Sonderstellung ein. Er schrieb mehr als 700 Musiktitel für die Kastelruther Spatzen, Marc Pircher und Co., erreichte Platin- und Goldauszeichnungen und veröffentlichte nebenbei noch zwei erfolgreiche Reiselesebücher („Himmel, Herrgott, Meer, Musik“, „Himmel, Herrgott, Portugal“).

Nun bestreitet Hirschler allerdings neue Wege und legt mit „Luftgitarrengott“ einen unterhaltsamen Debütroman vor. Ein Roadtrip-Abenteuer mit Rock’n’Roll-Klischees und dramatischem Ende inklusive – liest sich leicht und unkompliziert. Anhand einer Familiengeschichte schildert der Autor den unerbittlichen Konkurrenzkampf zweier Geschwister im Musikgeschäft der 1980er-Jahre bis ins Jahr 2070. Herbert Hirschler erzählt keine neue „Fleisch ist mein Gemüse“ (Heinz Strunk) oder „Wo die wilden Maden graben“ (Thorsten Nagelschmidt)-Geschichte, aber er liefert seine Version einer Musikbiografie ab. Manchmal etwas gar zu rasant, manchmal vielleicht wahr, immer unterhaltsam.

Hirschlers Protagonist Bastian Berger schreibt schon als Jugendlicher die Songs für seine Schwester und hofft auf den gemeinsamen Plattenvertrag als Duo. Wie es das Schicksal bzw. seine Schwester will, schaut Bastian durch die Finger, und Lisa Berger wird zu Lucy Hill und in der Folge auch ein Weltstar. Bastian lernt mehr schlecht (Alkohol!) als recht damit umzugehen und schlägt sich selbstironisch durch neun Jahrzehnte seines Lebens voller Ups & Downs. Lustig, pointiert und voller Erfahrung geschrieben, begleiten wir die beiden Bergers durch die vergangene Musikgeschichte, aktuelle Entwicklungen im Musikbusiness und Castingshows der Zukunft mit Großeltern und Enkeln. Warum Bastian immer wieder auf die List seiner Schwester hereinfällt, bleibt das große Geheimnis der Musikindustrie – oder ihrer Geschwisterliebe? Das ist der Aufhänger des Romans und so dann auch ganz in Ordnung. „Luftgitarrengott“ ist daher auch keine reale Biografie einer Künstlerfamilie, sondern eine interessante Geschichte eines Träumers, der aufwacht, als seine Hoffnungen scheinbar in Erfüllung gehen.

[tehirschler-blog]

Land of One Thousand Islands - A Serialized Fantasy Novel: Part 1

Asa and Nala are a brother and sister growing up in a fishing village on a remote island in a far away land. When an invading army captures their village they escape and set off on an epic adventure to save their land…

Asa’s eyes darted back and forth, watching Zumu’s hands as they deftly moved the plane along the point of the outrigger. With each flick of her wrists, more of the design emerged from where it had been slumbering within the wood. Zumu liked to say that she didn’t make the design on the outrigger, she just found the design that lived there since the day the seed sprung forth from the ground, turning into a sapling. Through generations, the design hid within that tree as it grew from a green shoot, not much different looking from a blade of grass, into a sapling, and finally into a towering oak. Asa didn’t know how long that mighty tree had stood in that same spot, hundreds of years, maybe, but one day, when the village needed a new outrigger, the mighty tree was felled and dragged to the shore, and the work began.

What came next was a team effort in the village; the carving of the tree down to the shape of the outrigger, the hollowing out of the seats using fire, these were tasks that many hands took to complete. Once the outrigger had its basic form, however, it was turned over to Zumu for its ornamentation and blessing. The women of Zumu’s family, men did not have the dexterity or artistry for the job, had for generations owned this work. Nobody in the village was even sure that any other family had ever had the responsibility for carving the outriggers. For Asa, it was quite possible that Zumu was thousands of years old and that she had carved every outrigger since the first oak was felled in the forest beyond the village. Zumu longed to carve the outriggers himself one day, but he was not of Zumu’s family and he was a boy, both of which disqualified him from the honor. At best, he could hope to be one of the men tasked with hacking the trees down to the overall shape of the outrigger body with a small hatchet. That still took skill and practice, but it was not the same as Zumu’s work. Before the carving of designs the outriggers were lifeless husks, after Zumu’s work they were living, breathing members of the village, charged with the vital task of carrying the villagers across the water every morning for their food.

If you liked this, please check out my  historical fiction work: Avenue of the Dead Or my serialized science fiction novel in three parts: Dark Thoughts Book 1: Hearing Voices Dark Thoughts Book 2: Deep Water Dark Thoughts Book 3: Gathering Storm Or my author page on Amazon

[brassmanticore]

Remarkably, the break with the catalogue’s system in this part is also reflected in the manuscript’s style and ductus: The earlier parts of the catalogue were written in an extremely neat and easily legible hand with clear headings for new categories and ample spaces separating the entries – the writer obviously took great care to represent this splendid collection in an appropriate textual form. Here, however, his script turned hasty, headings were virtually absent and the ample spacing disappeared in an increasingly dense organisation of the text with words running into each other. With the start of the letter nūn, however, the writing and the textual organisation resumed its former clarity, probably expressing the writer’s relief to have returned to safer shores.

(Konrad Hirschler, ''Catching the Eel' - Documentary Evidence for Concepts of the Arabic Book in the Middle Period,' Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 2012.) http://www.lancs.ac.uk/jais/volume/docs/vol12/v12_08_Hirschler_224-234.pdf

The poor cataloguist's frustration is palpable even across the centuries.

[brassmanticore]

Defining the book in 13th century Damascus.

"This organisation of the catalogue shows a rather uncomplicated understanding of what a book is: each title has an entry and although many of these titles surely consisted of several volumes this was not of concern for the classification of the library’s books. In the early parts of the catalogue we find a numerical system with numbers after many entries that referred to volumes, but this system is silently abandoned after the early folios. The implicit definition underlying this scheme was thus that a book was the entirety of a text belonging to one title, irrespective of whether it came in one or several volumes. [...] However, this one-text-one-title system of cataloguing posed more fundamental challenges than it seems to imply. There are two instances in this document where its orderly organisation almost falls apart entirely as the writer had to accommodate textual units that could not be fully integrated into this text-based definition of the book. The first instance is in the letter mīm when the writer came to composite volumes (maǧāmīʿ) and the second is in the catalogue’s final part where we find what the writer described as ‘defective manuscripts’ (maḫārīm). In both cases the function of these sections was more complicated than just drawing together manuscripts that were either composite or incomplete. We also find maǧāmīʿ and maḫārīm-manuscripts in those parts of the catalogue that are structured by the three-tiered method. The writer placed, for example, a collection of sermons (ḫuṭab) under the letter ḫāʾ and a number of composite volumes of poetry (šiʿr) under the letter šīn – although in the latter case he grouped them at the very end of the letter’s section indicating again his uncertainty of where to list them."

- Konrad Hirschler, ''Catching the Eel' - Documentary Evidence for Concepts of the Arabic Book in the Middle Period,' Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 2012. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/jais/volume/docs/vol12/v12_08_Hirschler_224-234.pdf

[brassmanticore]

An Attempt to Catalogue a Library in 13th century Damascus

The catalogue’s writer unequivocally set out the document’s function to list ‘books’ in its heading: ‘Catalogue of the Books of the Ašrafiyya Library’. This document employs a very orderly method to organise the entries that run through its folios – or at least it appears to do so.

The first level of this organisational method is the alphabetical order of the titles and lists all entries according to the letters of the alphabet starting with alif and finishing with yāʾ. Under each of the letters a second level of organisation subdivides all entries by size, either as a normal or small (ṣiġār) format. This differentiation was introduced because it presumably reflected the physical set-up of the shelving.

Contemporary illustrations of libraries clearly show that shelves were organised according to the size of the manuscripts. Each of the resulting fifty-six categories (twenty-eight letters each with two sections for size) is further subdivided by a third organisational level of subject-matter.

For this third level the writer of the catalogue introduced fifteen thematic categories; for instance, category three is Islamic law, category five is history, and category ten is pharmacology and medicine. Thus each entry would potentially have a three-figure class mark in the form of letter/size/subject, such as A/s/3 for a book with a title starting with the letter alif, in small format, on Islamic law.

Konrad Hirschler, 'Catching the Eel' - Documentary Evidence for Concepts of the Arabic Book in the Middle Period, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies.

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/jais/volume/docs/vol12/v12_08_Hirschler_224-234.pdf

[tehirschler-blog]

On Reading and Writing: Catch 22

Spawning a short hand reference that embeds itself into the public consciousness gives you an advantage in becoming a great book (See also 1984's Big Brother, Lolita, and Frankenstein). But the question is if the book became great because of the "Catch-22" hook or if the reference became ubiquitous because of the greatness of the book. I don't know the answer to the question, but I'm sure the two feed off of each other. 

Although I hadn't read the book before, I had been aware of the concept of "Catch-22". The principle meaning of the title is a regulation that essentially says that a combat pilot can be grounded because he is crazy, but only if he asks to be grounded. The catch is that asking to be grounded is a sane thing to do, so therefore you aren't too crazy to fly. "Catch-22" is referenced in two other places in the book in different contexts, but it all boils down to "you can't win". Based on this information alone, I started the book and (incorrectly) expected a straight forward narrative about combat pilot during World War II.

The book does take place during World War II, although it is more about the characters (in fact, thirty seven of the forty chapters are titled by the name of the character they focus on) than it is about the war and it could be representative of any war. The war almost seems to be more of a McGuffin than anything; there are portions of the book that explicitly take place during bombing runs, but for the most part, the characters spend their time in and out of the hospital, hanging out with prostitutes in Rome, running a scam business on the side, and dealing with the contradictory and capricious orders of their superiors. In my reading of the novel, every single character seems to be crazy in their own way, some just happen to outrank the others. 

The biggest source of crazy making seems to be not the war it self per se, but more the directives from above. The prime example of this Colonel Cathcart, who keeps upping the missions necessary before the men can return home just as they are about to reach the magical number. Each time, as they approach the number of missions necessary to go home, they wait in anxiety for him to change the number again. He does this not because it is best for the war effort, but in hopes of impressing his superiors with his initiative. Or there's the dead pilot, who's belongings they can't move because he was never officially singed in, so nobody has the authority to ship his belongings home. 

To bring the sense of crazy home, double speak is used consistently in the book, where a character will say something and then two lines later make a completely contradictory claim, and the other characters will accept both claims blindly. It's as if living with such double speak constantly from above inures you to its use on a day to day basis. 

The book is also told in a non-linear fashion, for instance in chapter 12, a character mentions that Milo, the procurement officer for the mess hall, has purchased a load of Egyptian cotton,  but the story is told again 130 pages later as if it is just happening then. This happens frequently throughout the book and gives the reader a sense of deja-vu (one of the themes of the book). This non-linear storytelling/sense of deja-vu is a connection to the characters who certainly must have a sense of deja-vu every time the rug is pulled out from under them and the number of missions is bumped up.

I would say that the book is well written,  and I think I understand where it was coming from, but hung around a little longer than I would have liked. Since there was no real plotting and the book fed back into itself, it felt like it really could have ended any time. But I guess maybe that was the point. 

All credit for compiling this list goes to Leisa Watkins, a more patient individual than myself:

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald (6)

ULYSSES by James Joyce (6)

1984 by George Orwell (6)

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger (6)

ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac (6)

THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck (5)

CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller (5)

LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov (5)

BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley (5)

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh (5)

THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner (4)

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee (4)

THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien (4)

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce (4)

ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell (4)

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf (4)

INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison (4)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess (4)

GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell (4)

AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner (4)

A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway (4)

A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster (4)

LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding (4)

THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London (4)

DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens (3)

EMMA by Jane Austen (3)

TESS Of The D’URBERVILLES, Thomas Hardy (3)

THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne (3)

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte (3)

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers (3)

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut (3)

JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte (3)

BELOVED by Toni Morrison (3)

ANNA KAREINA by Leo Tolstoy (3)

THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway (3)

NATIVE SON by Richard Wright (3)

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (3)

NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad (3)

HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad (3)

UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry (3)

THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford (3)

HERZOG by Saul Bellow (3)

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame (3)

U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos (3)

FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce (3)

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser (3)

WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence (3)

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton (3

THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins (3)

THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe (3)

TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller (3)

MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather (3)

LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner (3)

THE MAGUS by John Fowles (3)

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving (2)

DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes (2)

TOM JONES by Henry Fielding (2)

WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy (2)

MOBY-DICK by Herman Melville (2)

MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert (2)

WINNIE THE POOH by A(lan) A(lexander) Milne (2)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens (2)

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Feodor Dostoevsky (2)

TRISTAM SHANDY by Laurence Sterne (2)

LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa M. Alcott (2)

VANITY FAIR by William Makepeace Thackeray (2)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen (2)

IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME by Marcel Proust (2)

THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James (2)

THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand (2)

GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon (2)

THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin (1851-1904) (2)

DUNE by Frank Herbert (2)

A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute (2)

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll (2)

CLARISSA by Samuel Richardson (2)

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams (2)

A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving (2)

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas (2)

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James (2)

OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck (2)

ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren (2)

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin (2)

CHARLOTE’S WEB by E. B. White (2)

ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe (2)

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Feodor Dostoevsky (2)

THE STAND by Stephen King (2)

REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier (2)

I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves (2)

HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster (2)

TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)

THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence (2)

BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens (2)

ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand (2)

ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner (2)

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James (2)

AUSTERLITZ by W. G. Sebald (2)

THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka (2)

WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor (2)

FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley(2)

As Ranked by my enjoyment...

1. The Great Gatsby

2. Catch 22

[tehirschler-blog]

On Reading and Writing: The Great Gatsby

To be perfectly honest, I've tried to read The Great Gatsby at least 6 or 7 times, but have never gotten through it (which is a little embarrassing for a 180 page book, a little like saying you just couldn't finish awhole Oreo in one sitting). I always read about thirty pages or so and got fed up with all the unlikable people Nick interacted with, plus if Gatsby's so great why does it take him 50 pages to show up? This time, however, I buckled down and pushed through the first 25 percent of the book and reached the introduction of Gatsby. And then I realized that all the unlikable characters were kind of the point. Besides Nick, who we never really learn that much about, Gatsby is really the only likeable guy in the whole story. And considering that he's (spoiler alert) involved in shady dealings and trying to steal another man's wife, that is saying something.  After finally completing the book, which after all the false starts feels like a major accomplishment, my sense is that it’s all about alienation. As the narrator points out, most of the major characters are mid-westerners transplanted to the East where they crash into each other haphazardly (kind of like Jordan's driving) instead of forming any real relationships. While Nick has a relationship with Jordan, it feels flat, there's never any real affection in it. And Gatsby, despite his enormous parties with hundreds of guests (again, spoiler alert) can only manage three mourners at his funeral (one of whom doesn't even have a real name). Even Gatsby and Daisy's relationship in the end feels like a mirage, an affection built up over five years of separation rather than on any real substance.  It strikes me that, given the 1920's time frame, the alienation is not so much about mid-westerners alienated from their foreign surroundings so much as alienation from the modern world. A new world with fast cars and big impersonal cities. The last line of the book even intimates that they are trapped by their past, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." The question is, is Gatsby great? Being rated so highly amongst critics is obviously a burden, what could live up to being considered one of the greatest (if not the greatest) novel ever? Overall I liked the book and Lord knows I appreciate a book that can say what it needs to say in under two hundred pages (the clarity and precision of the novel would seem to work against it, it seems like great works are generally indecipherable to the masses), but its difficult for me to put my finger on the source of its greatness.  Number one, I guess, would be that the title character dies, tragedy is always good for some greatness. I doubt it would be rated so highly if Gatsby and Daisy ended up together and the book ended with them sailing around the world. After that, it does vividly capture a time of transition in America, the 1920's when the country was waking up from the Great War and optimistic about the future. When people were leaving farms and moving to the cities and changing the way we live. Not only does it capture the time period in description, but also in feel. I think that there was likely a concern at the time, maybe more so now with our Iphones and laptop computers which keep us at once connected and isolated at the same time, that the more we advanced technologically, the more alone we isolate ourselves. Alienation and Loneliness are always "great" themes.  On that note, I think enough said about Gatsby, which I enjoyed very much. Next up (I'm not reading them in any particular order) is Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I've never even tried to read that one, so should be interesting.

All credit for compiling this list goes to Leisa Watkins, a more patient individual than myself:

The List...

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald (6)

ULYSSES by James Joyce (6)

1984 by George Orwell (6)

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger (6)

ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac (6)

THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck (5)

CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller (5)

LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov (5)

BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley (5)

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh (5)

THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner (4)

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee (4)

THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien (4)

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce (4)

ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell (4)

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf (4)

INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison (4)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess (4)

GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell (4)

AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner (4)

A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway (4)

A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster (4)

LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding (4)

THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London (4)

DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens (3)

EMMA by Jane Austen (3)

TESS Of The D’URBERVILLES, Thomas Hardy (3)

THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne (3)

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte (3)

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers (3)

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut (3)

JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte (3)

BELOVED by Toni Morrison (3)

ANNA KAREINA by Leo Tolstoy (3)

THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway (3)

NATIVE SON by Richard Wright (3)

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (3)

NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad (3)

HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad (3)

UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry (3)

THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford (3)

HERZOG by Saul Bellow (3)

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame (3)

U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos (3)

FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce (3)

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser (3)

WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence (3)

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton (3

THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins (3)

THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe (3)

TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller (3)

MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather (3)

LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner (3)

THE MAGUS by John Fowles (3)

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving (2)

DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes (2)

TOM JONES by Henry Fielding (2)

WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy (2)

MOBY-DICK by Herman Melville (2)

MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert (2)

WINNIE THE POOH by A(lan) A(lexander) Milne (2)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens (2)

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Feodor Dostoevsky (2)

TRISTAM SHANDY by Laurence Sterne (2)

LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa M. Alcott (2)

VANITY FAIR by William Makepeace Thackeray (2)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen (2)

IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME by Marcel Proust (2)

THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James (2)

THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand (2)

GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon (2)

THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin (1851-1904) (2)

DUNE by Frank Herbert (2)

A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute (2)

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll (2)

CLARISSA by Samuel Richardson (2)

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams (2)

A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving (2)

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas (2)

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James (2)

OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck (2)

ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren (2)

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin (2)

CHARLOTE’S WEB by E. B. White (2)

ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe (2)

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Feodor Dostoevsky (2)

THE STAND by Stephen King (2)

REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier (2)

I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves (2)

HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster (2)

TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)

THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence (2)

BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens (2)

ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand (2)

ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner (2)

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James (2)

AUSTERLITZ by W. G. Sebald (2)

THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka (2)

WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor (2)

FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley(2)

[tehirschler-blog]

Linc, A Story in Progress, Part 46

For the first part of the story: http://tehirschler.tumblr.com/Linc

Linc explained, the words coming slowly, about how Miss Finch's thoughts had nearly overcome him; his method for bringing them under control; and about the difficulty he had maintaining control. Kate scribbled furiously in a bound notebook as he spoke, but managed to not break eye contact the whole time. He longed to look down at what she was writing, but she made it impossible by holding his eyes in her own. When he finished talking she closed her notebook and pulled a rubber band around it before she spoke.

"We haven't had that happen before," she said. Her voice was flat and emotionless, but there was a twinkle of excitement in her eyes. "It will be interesting to see if the results are replicable. Perhaps Miss Finch was an unusual subject."

"Can we take a break? I'm worn out." He couldn't imagine going again already, Miss Finch or not. The first practice took everything out of him and his entire body was fatigued. He felt as though he had just run a marathon without having trained for it.

"You do look pretty fatigued. I think that was enough for your first try. Let's call it a day."

Kate nodded to whoever was watching from the other side of the mirror. She stood up and Linc did the same. She led him back to the living quarters, while he continued to fade. By the time thy reached the common area, he could barely keep his eyes open. All he wanted to do was collapse into be, but she insisted he follow her into the kitchen. Once there, she pulled a bottle of neon yellow liquid from the refrigerator. She poured it into a glass and handed it to him.

"Drink this, it will make you feel better." He eyed the glass suspiciously, swirling the liquid in the light.

"What is it?" he asked, still examining the glass.

"Vitamins, electrolytes, some other herbs, it's like Gatorade for your brain. Except it tastes like piss."

"So just like Gatorade, then?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she replied with a smile. "but it really will make you feel better."

For more stories…tehirschler.tumblr.com