Ordinariness and Sublimes
Stumbled upon a gem of a book in National Bookstore's assorted sale books racks. Matthew McIntosh's Well. It's one of those old US libraries copies. Actually, it's fairly new, published just this 2003. It used to belong to New York University Bobst Library. Yeah, NYU baby. I got it for just Php20, which makes it cooler. Hah. B)
Narratives from all sorts of characters and personalities weave in and out of the book, sometimes the characters even blend. Even if you don't do drugs, never was high enough, don't do promiscuous sex, are not a stripper, didn't get somebody pregnant, aren't doing groceries, etc. etc. you'll find yourself somewhere in this book. Somewhere. Sharing the same core as one of the many personalities. I recommend it even if your life is not a wreck. If you are, however, suffering from delusions or have an unstable mental/emotional state... Meh. Just read it.
"Moving... The sustained glide from voice to voice is virtuosic, and the writing is dogged - it never gets literary: it digs through the cliches and the usual inarticulateness of the stories people tell in bars and grocery store lines; and it stumbles on diamonds in the rough everywhere. [McIntosh is] an artful registrar of the heart's lower frequencies."
-Publishers Weekly
"In Well I find the necessary prose fiction of now. I remember a time in my life when I could not stop reading the words of Peter Handke, b ecause there, and only there, could I find the serious angels of the ordinary world in their extraordinary peril. How wonderful it is to me, then, that a contemporary American - Matthew McIntosh - has brought these angels home to our language and our own profligate ordinariness and sublimes."
-Donald Revell
"The humanity of the people sings off the page. They are not characters in a book, but rather living beings with all the hopes, dreams, fears, loves, hated, illusions and rationalizations that are part of the human dilemma. This book is a real joy to read and experience... and it is an experience, a wonderful human experience. A book that still resonates in my heart."
-Hubert Selby Jr.
---
Halfway through the book, I could've finished the whole thing in one mour hour but I'll save it for a few more days, I put it down and go back to routine wasteful consuming of time by staring into space. It's 7:00pm. Meh. Five more minutes and I'll start studying my Math. And then I realize that's another 5 minutes of my life wasted.
How many minutes, hours, days, weeks... years? Have I wasted? I don't want to waste any more. We all find ourselves saying that (to ourselves) only to find out we're staring into space and letting our thoughts go astray. Again. And again.
And instead of studying, I retreat into a void in space again, burning words off paper with my eyes. Again. Only this time the words I read plunge me deeper into reality. (And don't you find that even works of fiction have that effect? Something imagined, imaginary, does have the capacity to parallel reality so much you start to wonder whether you're seeing the world the same as everybody is.)
Narratives from all sorts of characters and personalities weave in and out of the book, sometimes the characters even blend. Even if you don't do drugs, never was high enough, don't do promiscuous sex, are not a stripper, didn't get somebody pregnant, aren't doing groceries, etc. etc. you'll find yourself somewhere in this book. Somewhere. Sharing the same core as one of the many personalities. I recommend it even if your life is not a wreck. If you are, however, suffering from delusions or have an unstable mental/emotional state... Meh. Just read it.
"Moving... The sustained glide from voice to voice is virtuosic, and the writing is dogged - it never gets literary: it digs through the cliches and the usual inarticulateness of the stories people tell in bars and grocery store lines; and it stumbles on diamonds in the rough everywhere. [McIntosh is] an artful registrar of the heart's lower frequencies."
-Publishers Weekly
"In Well I find the necessary prose fiction of now. I remember a time in my life when I could not stop reading the words of Peter Handke, b ecause there, and only there, could I find the serious angels of the ordinary world in their extraordinary peril. How wonderful it is to me, then, that a contemporary American - Matthew McIntosh - has brought these angels home to our language and our own profligate ordinariness and sublimes."
-Donald Revell
"The humanity of the people sings off the page. They are not characters in a book, but rather living beings with all the hopes, dreams, fears, loves, hated, illusions and rationalizations that are part of the human dilemma. This book is a real joy to read and experience... and it is an experience, a wonderful human experience. A book that still resonates in my heart."
-Hubert Selby Jr.
---
Halfway through the book, I could've finished the whole thing in one mour hour but I'll save it for a few more days, I put it down and go back to routine wasteful consuming of time by staring into space. It's 7:00pm. Meh. Five more minutes and I'll start studying my Math. And then I realize that's another 5 minutes of my life wasted.
How many minutes, hours, days, weeks... years? Have I wasted? I don't want to waste any more. We all find ourselves saying that (to ourselves) only to find out we're staring into space and letting our thoughts go astray. Again. And again.
And instead of studying, I retreat into a void in space again, burning words off paper with my eyes. Again. Only this time the words I read plunge me deeper into reality. (And don't you find that even works of fiction have that effect? Something imagined, imaginary, does have the capacity to parallel reality so much you start to wonder whether you're seeing the world the same as everybody is.)
posted by Byeong | 7:31:00 PM
1 Comments:
a book is an escape,especially when you're trapped in the world of math hehe. but then it's temporary.
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