at dawn the haunting sandstone palaces
Jul. 25th, 2008 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI just finished reading Salman Rushdie's newest novel "The Enchantress of Florence," which was lovely. Very sensual, rich, velvety. So pretty. Plus, has the best book design in, like, ever. It's a sexy read, really worth it. Fully recommended.
The prettiest device in it is that the chapter titles are the first few words of the chapters themselves, isolated on a separate page. They form these lovely little koans, small discrete mediations on language and narrative. In the day's last light the glowing lake. At dawn the haunting sandstone palaces. On the road to Genoa the empty inn.
I've only got one more month to go before we head home to Illinois. I think I might have a decent lead on a possible graduate opportunity that I'm - tentatively - really excited about. I'm worried about money, because business has been slow. The recession mean that people are cutting back their expenses, and waitresses are the first ones to feel it. People can give up restaurant meals pretty easily, so they do. I'm still making better money than I would in any other industry, but it's a lot less than it could be. Oh, material goods, I need to learn that I do not need you.
Also, This may be the first time I've ever said this, but I actually kind of feel like folks are over-analyzing this one. Penny is just as well developed as Hammer, not quite as well as Horrible, but then again none of them are. They're all big walking symbols, it's just that since The Girl is always a walking symbol we get jumpy.
I loved it superficially - the hammer is his penis, yall - but wished that the camp could have been a little higher, more energetic. I have very little patience for emo boys in love, so maybe that's it. The Penny/Horrible duet in Act Two is stunning, the rest plain fun.
A thought on Joss' philosophy - he's taught us to read him through existentialism, but I think he's torn between either the nihilism or the humanism that can arise from the truth of a godless universe. Penny represents humanism, Horrible nihilism. Captain Hammer is totalitarianism, and he's dismissed, but I think that Joss is balanced between Penny and Horrible. Just because she dies doesn't mean that she wasn't equally as right as him. Chance tipped one way, but could have tipped another. if nothing we do in this world matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do.
(But, the Thorougbred of Sin?!)
The prettiest device in it is that the chapter titles are the first few words of the chapters themselves, isolated on a separate page. They form these lovely little koans, small discrete mediations on language and narrative. In the day's last light the glowing lake. At dawn the haunting sandstone palaces. On the road to Genoa the empty inn.
I've only got one more month to go before we head home to Illinois. I think I might have a decent lead on a possible graduate opportunity that I'm - tentatively - really excited about. I'm worried about money, because business has been slow. The recession mean that people are cutting back their expenses, and waitresses are the first ones to feel it. People can give up restaurant meals pretty easily, so they do. I'm still making better money than I would in any other industry, but it's a lot less than it could be. Oh, material goods, I need to learn that I do not need you.
Also, This may be the first time I've ever said this, but I actually kind of feel like folks are over-analyzing this one. Penny is just as well developed as Hammer, not quite as well as Horrible, but then again none of them are. They're all big walking symbols, it's just that since The Girl is always a walking symbol we get jumpy.
I loved it superficially - the hammer is his penis, yall - but wished that the camp could have been a little higher, more energetic. I have very little patience for emo boys in love, so maybe that's it. The Penny/Horrible duet in Act Two is stunning, the rest plain fun.
A thought on Joss' philosophy - he's taught us to read him through existentialism, but I think he's torn between either the nihilism or the humanism that can arise from the truth of a godless universe. Penny represents humanism, Horrible nihilism. Captain Hammer is totalitarianism, and he's dismissed, but I think that Joss is balanced between Penny and Horrible. Just because she dies doesn't mean that she wasn't equally as right as him. Chance tipped one way, but could have tipped another. if nothing we do in this world matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do.
(But, the Thorougbred of Sin?!)