Sunday, August 07, 2011

Episode 1049: It's Tedious When People Withdraw A Submission!

Someone withdrew a poem, so I just spent about 15 minutes bumping all the scheduled posts up by a day, all the way from the end of August. Before that, I finished reading David Mamet's Romance, a play that I bought for $5 at the warehouse sale yesterday. I also picked up Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing, which I got because I figured I might as well start building my paperback collection of his novels, having read and loved The Road and all. I also bought Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, which I'd blindly written off because of how Zadie Smith eviscerated it here in favour of Tom McCarthy's Remainder, which is admittedly, excellent. Thought it was only fair that I pick up O'Neill's critically acclaimed novel and read it for myself, in order to judge if I actually agree with all of Smith's assertions. From what I've gathered online, I think I'm quite likely to disagree with her. I must confess I find the idea that Netherland is somehow in dialogue with The Great Gatsby, that great New York novel of the last century, really intriguing. Anyway, I've decided to embark on a project of reading an issue of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern every single day. Probably won't last long, but hey, I need some sort of goal, or I'll never read all these issues that I've bought...

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