Book Update

The Things They Carried...done. Wonderful book. I can see what all the MFA-ery hubbub was about over that book. Very quick read, very awesome book. Interesting bits though, it for all the MFA-ery surrounding that monster, it does a few anti-workshopy things in there (dreaded averbs, calling things horrible [not letting situation define the feeling for the reader], and a few other things, those are the only two I remember).

Next book is...Deliverance by James Dickey. Yes, that Deliverance. The buttsex movie with a mustacheless Burt Reynolds, a mustachioed Jon Voight and a decidely unhappy Ned Beatty (he's the guy who gets the involuntary buttsex and subsequently squeals like a pig and has divine corn at the end). Dickey is an honest to goodness poet, and from where I am in the novel (round about page 30) the book shoes it. He's showing off his writerly chops. And, you know, so far this book is not too much like the movie. For one, it's first person (I don't recall a central figure in the movie) and has spends a lot of time setting up the boat trip, and there is a consensual (or however it's spelled) sex scene between the narrator and his wife...and it solidified my opinion that there is absolutely no artistic way to write about two people having sex. I mean, what terms can you use? How can you describe it without either ripping open the bodice of romance novels with their throbs, heaves and entering or awkwardly manuevering around those terms, with things like, "She held me in her hand"? Sex in pretty much all the books I've read have either been dirty or well, awkward (aside from Lolita and Humpert's rod of love or whatever he said...that was kinda funny). Suppose that says something about sex or the people who write about it. Same thing goes from authors who write about people urinating. I mean, I loves me some Harry Crews, but all of his character "make water" which just sounds unnatural. But how else can it be said without being juvenille (whiz, leak, pee) or vulgar (piss, drain-the-lizard, drown-the-Liliputians, dickshit).

that's it.

VIVA EL MUSTACHE!!