"She didn't have what one would call a 'profession,' but I didn't know why she particularly wanted one; it seemed like she'd been infected by a very American idea of identity, to think that who you were mostly consisted of what you did to get paid--that seemed silly to me. If I looked like Rema, if I had her ways, and if I weren't a man, I'd consider it profession enough to have streaky bleached hair, to wear a green scarf, to spill spicy teas, to walk (slightly) unevenly on high heels. What more is there to give the world than that?"
"We need to develop a better descriptive vocabulary for lying, a taxonomy, a way to distinguish the lies that the liar himself believes in--a way to signal those lies that could more accurately be understood as dreams. Lies--they make for a tidy little psychological Doppler effect, tell us more about a liar than an undistorted self-report ever could."
"I had removed myself--parts of myself--from the conversation; a few cells were listening to Magda but whole factions of me had been devoted for some time to the question of whether enough time had passed to enable me to graciously reach for one of the oddly tall chocolate-covered cookies."
from Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
What I'm Reading
Marisha Pessl: Night Film: A Novel
It promises much. Those kinds of promises rarely deliver.Robin Sloan: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel
I feel as if this will be a sort of End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas kind of thing. No idea why but if that's anywhere close to the case, I'm in.Fiona Maazel: Woke Up Lonely: A Novel
Have heard remarkable things about this novel. Have you?
LA Readings of Note
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