Blow me over

 11 November

News today that David Szalay's Flesh won the Booker Prize.  I just put it on tope of the bag of books to take to the dump only a few days ago.  A few weeks ago I said here that I had read it and found it good-ok.  Or ok-pretty good.  Roddy Doyle quoted as saying they had never seen anything like it.  Is Doyle now in his mid-sixties?  He had not read Murnane and never has read any sort of minimalist anything, I suppose.  Perhaps he's never read plays?  Or screenplays?  Some production company must be starting to shoot Flesh by 9 am tomorrow.  

Had to find this on search: Sarah Jessica Parker pleaded on Instagram in 2023 to become a judge for the prize.  She has her own publishing imprint and other claims for which they brought her on board for this year's decision.  

chatting with the maids by the edge of the pool drawing secrets out of the giraffe

Antunes 206. more of Handke which is far superior to Flesh even if that book zings these few seconds of the zeitgeist for the time being.  every page of Lentz's Motherdying amazes every day  

Imaging yesterday with Tasha revealed arthritis.  Rachel pulled over for speeding this morning at that notorious spot in Rumney.  Sand hill road.  

Few pages of this and that every morning, like popping vitamins and supplements.  Deanna called from Portland last evening.  Nancy Sue said this morning Mark in a lot of pain with prostate cancer, first stages we think.  Seattle.  

Gray this morning and colder.  Might still schlep some front porch decorations to the compost corner, the branches and piled chipped branches archive.  

this body Why is it suddenly so serious that it no longer works as it did.  

But what can you do.  Everything in the world finds a catastrophic understanding somewhere in the world.  

Lentz 67 

Heroic morning project complete.  Wore the hemp Czech chuka boots. Carried flowers and pumpkins back into the edges of the trees and tossed them.  Pulled down the fountain and separated two pieces, laying them sideways, water emptying, basins on their sides ready for snow.  

Burger with Swiss and Mushrooms at Cman roadside deli.  Phone call. Drive to Bristol. Carrot cake and mocha latte.  

Finished The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick.  Could read it again with pleasure.  Would not re-read Flesh.  Seems by removing everything possible Szalay has ended up with what Sheldon Sacks would have termed a moral fable rather than a true novel or fiction.  Handke's work so much more strange and rich.  Murnane removes everything, sort of, and is crazy in a good way like Antunes is crazy in a good way.  Handke not as extreme, perhaps, but even stranger for that reason.  Strange in a more profound dislocation, disquiet, disorientation.

"His perceptions of movements and things but of sensations and feelings, and he did not remember the feelings as if they were from the past but relived them as happening in the present: he did not remember shame and nausea but only felt ashamed and nauseated now that he remembered without being able to think of the things that had brought on shame and nausea.  The mixture of nausea and shame was so strong that his whole body started to itch."

115-116   Brilliant

Rachel left me a slice of her dad's pear and almond tart!  Starting Woolf's Orlando---I remember the opening from years and years ago.  And Guyotat's Idiocy.