It’s funny how i used to await the Man Booker long list with bated breathe, but now don’t give a good god damn. Is there anything interesting on there or is it yet more middlebrow fare cenrting on socially conscious midlife crises?
So there’s a piece on the Quarterly Conversation that has me wanting to finish the last third of McCarthy’s Tintin and the Secret of Literature. Why did i falter? Because i am a first-rate sucker. Being full aware of McCarthy’s crazy bullshit games, i still kinda bought into it wholeheartedly. I read too many comics in which one really can do that kind of deconstruction. When someone puts up a blog post analyzing every panel of a superhero comic, meticulously footnoting each reference, i subscribe right away. I want cosmic meaning from my escapist fantasy, even if its pure projection. When i read a review (i don’t recall which) that McCarthy was meanspiritedly mocking comics, it hurt my little feelings. I put the book aside and wept. Even if McCarthy was spinning a fantastic lie and i didn’t believe any of it, there was something in that review that made the book sour. This new piece in the Quarterly Conversation whets my sense of fun again fortunately.
Ready Steady Book has a nice piece on Cortázar that i haven’t read yet. I check him as a favorite author, but i haven’t read all of his work yet, so i feel like a fraud. Cronopios and Famas is at the bedside unfinished and The Winners is on the shelf untouched.
A Roberto Bolaño short story in the New Yorker, Clara. One of those first-person narrated character sketch. Another failed or stillborn artist of sorts. Still digesting that.
Tags: Julio Cortazar, Man Booker, Quarterly Conversation, Roberto Bolano, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, Tom McCarthy
I was put off Mccarthy’s book by Anthony Lane’s recent New Yorker article on Tintin. McCarthy’s suggestion that Castafoire’s emerald was a metaphor for a clitoris was just too ridiculous to even consider.
You must finish Cronopios and Famas. For what it is, it’s perfect.
I also highly recommend the Bolano story, Laura. It’s not one of his best, but it did make me cry, something that only one other story has ever done before. (Murakami’s Norwegian Wood)