How do you follow a magnum opus?
You don't. You're emotionally drained, plus there's the fear that you just won't be as relevant the next time you go to write. Then, of course, there's the fear that your magnum opus wasn't as good as you thought in the first place, 'cause it pales in comparision to Shakespeare.
(Poop on you, Harold Bloom!)
Update time, then!
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1. Books I have recently purchased and will read soon:
-Hopscotch- by Julio Cortazar
I'm into this whole "friends of Borges and we all collectively extend the cult of modernism in our own way by exploding it" thingy. Ultraist fiction, indeed! Bring on my Spanish dictionary!
-Child of God- by Cormac McCarthy
Has anyone else read any of McCarthy's earlier work? I'm not talking about the Border Trilogy (-All the Pretty Horses-, -The Crossing-, -Cities of the Plain-); I mean his pre--Blood Meridian- stuff . . . pretty creepy and excellent, from what I understand.
-Selected Poems- by Gwendolyn Brooks
She's black, she's urban, she's an careful wordsmith with a fabulous ear for meter. She is everything I am not. I adore this woman. Why? Because she is everything I am not?
-If Not Now, When?- by Primo Levi
Levi's one of those writers that comes highly recommended by my favorite writers. I look forward to revisiting WWII Italy. Or would that be just visiting WWII Italy?
-Time's Arrow: Or, the Nature of the Offense- by Martin Amis
So he's supposedly a genius, an auteur, a creator of the highest rank . . . we'll see. I loved his memoir, but I'm a little iffy about his fiction.
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2. Mad props to my college homie: Brad Kibler. Words cannot express my joy. He is truly the Prince of Tides, a southern gentleman, a lover of history, the man who asked me, quietly, to stop listening to so many Queen and AC/DC albums.
Miles and years have seperated us. He's away the heck and gone in Coastal Carolina; I'm in metro Atlanta, and we haven't really kept in touch.
I often recall a legendary trip through the heart of Alabama: Nashville to Mobile, driving straight through (after the KOA outside of Columbia, Tennessee was found to be hosting a biker convention) -- we couldn't take a chance on our own personal Sturgis, so we decided in the middle of the night to see the ocean. I, for one, had never been.
Ahhhhhhh . . . maybe the funniest thing I have ever experienced is awakening drowsily to discover that the car was stopped at a gas station in Clanton, idling, one Kibler foot on the brake, one Kibler foot on the clutch, completely prone with the seat all the way back, eyes closed. Thinking he had fallen asleep, or died, I softly wept and whispered, "Brad, Brad." He immediately responded, "Don't be sorrowful, other Brad. I have not died, or fallen asleep. I have merely been struck blind by extreme fatigue. You must drive. When we get to Nashville, take me to Vanderbilt. Tell them I am blind. Tell them I have insurance."
He came, he saw, he commented.
