A few quick bits...
- I found The Ruins to be sorely lacking in any kind of character development or scary (as promised!) intrigue. I know many of you out there loved it. So, what is wrong with me or what is wrong with you?
- I missed the Zadie Smith reading on Friday at UCLA. Yes, for once, I was actually writing instead of pretending to be writerly by attending other writer's events. I was conflicted, but when one is writing I find it best to tamp down those "I really should do it for my blog" thoughts and write on through. Did anyone go? Thoughts?
- I'm finally getting around to reading Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise. I wonder if it is more powerful if you know her history? Or equally powerful if you know nothing of her at all? I'm almost finished. I've just spent approx. an hour looking through my blogroll to find the blogger who recently posted a very interesting article about some new information we have on Nemirovsky. I cannot locate it for all my searching. Anyone? Help?!?
...and a bit about LA:
- Here's the thing. I'd like to add a weekly post (I'm not bold enough to say column...yet!) about downtown Los Angeles. I already cover literary LA...in a sense. Yet it feels remiss of me not to cover what is happening all around me in downtown LA. There is so much change, so much turmoil, so much gentrification and not. There is a real ability to create the kind of community that we want here...there's certainly no one else here to do it. Yet with that comes so many other problems. Displacing the homeless...a crummy thing. Graffiti...a crummy thing but then also not. The filming of explosions and gunshots so that when actual explosions and gunshots occur you assume it's also a movie. These things need to be covered.
- So. I don't want to create a separate blog for them -- it doesn't make sense.
- Also. I don't want to create a silly name for the posts, yet I also want to differentiate them from the other bookish/writerly/counterbalancy stuff so that readers can seek them out or ignore as they prefer.
- Then. The question remains: what shall these posts be called? And, more to the point, would you read them or skip them?
More when I've recovered from my five day hiatus and the shaking, trembling joy I experienced upon returning back home to find that MICHAEL REDHILL found my blog and commented. Twice. My heart is still racing and I'm so afraid to say something silly in response that I'm paralyzed. Honored and humbled and wow does not begin to explain it.
Update: EscapeGrace pointed me back to the Nemirovsky link! In the Friday Marginalia, TEV noted a new biography about Nemirovsky that has been higlighted by Paul La Farge for Nextbook. It raises some interesting questions about why Nemirovsky characterized the German occupation the way she did (no mention of Jews, all Nazi soldiers are "nice chaps") and what that says about her own views. Very interesting and raises some of exact questions that have been popping up in my mind as I'm reading. You?
