Despite my recent declaration that "Nothing is Revolutionary Road" (a phrase that seems destined to be on a t-shirt, no?), I soldiered on by reading Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances. This worked for me as a follow-up to RR mainly because it is zany and brainy and science-y in a way that it can't be compared to RR. (Although I got impatient near the end of AD and the final summation left me both groping for more and missing Scarlett Thomas...)
But that book is now finished and I'm casting around for something else to read. Something that will match the depth...nay, the protein-laden meat paired with a gorgeously sophisticated Burgundy...that was RR.
I've opened & closed many books in the past few days. Cookbooks (too spot on with the meat & wine bit, eh?), manuals, photographic retrospectives and a longish essay on Wong Kar Wai (My Blueberry Nights remains in the DVD player, mid-film, and the monotony of it is breaking my heart. Whither the perfection of Chungking Express? In the Mood for Love? And all the films in between?) that did nothing to placate me in my post-RR quest.
It came to me in a flash (really) this morning: I must now read Human Smoke. What tome could distract me - wholesale - from the merits of Revolutionary Road if not Baker's massive WWII tome that has been quietly intimidating me ever since I learned of it? I will dip a toe in today and let you know.