Mute?

7.5%/2666

I recently downloaded this wallpaper, because I think the best place for a calendar in this day and age is on your desktop. One of the first things I thought when I saw this was: "I like my bun toasted or grilled a little." This is a minor point, and I should've kept it to myself. I guess.

Bolaño continues to water-down superlatives unless they're trapped inside the critics' minds. It doesn't get old because superlatives these days need watering down. Superlatives should be felt, they don't need to be sloganized and piped into the sky. He delivers a dream-sequence in this section and a few random explorations. All of these arrive via the physically mute Morini. There's the principled London bum and the Messianic painter who cut off his hand to create the ultimate self-portrait.

I love the exposition of a "stilted" conversation between two intellectual acquaintances, neither of whom had much of a sense of friendship or loyalty but had fallen deeply in love with a younger, dumber, scholar who appreciated the mysterious Archimboldi by rote — an odd breed of passion that neither of her suitors give much thought to. Here's just a bit:

The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man...

He uses phrases like "or whatever," expands on how cruel and extreme the mind can be while the body is timid and restrained (Espinoza's fiery plane crash), compares Morini to Eurylochus, and includes a list of Italian desserts attributed to one Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a nun.

And in a small amount of writing, he's done the love triangle, the thoughtless woman as a stained-glass vessel for two middle-aged friends' base desires, the juxtaposition, the thoughts, the hopelessness, the attempt at normalcy, discussion on how long it takes each of them to come, and their pathetic abandon of basic manners in the face of what certainly feels like selfish attraction. He's done all this radically, and in a way I hope he turns it on its head even more, not because turning things on their heads is what gets me off or what I think should get me off, but because so far I'm getting a waft of splendidly fragrant sarcasm about their behavior, about their thoughts, and about the whole situation. This is an attractive aroma because really, is there a better option when you're ninety-ninth in line to take-off into the hellhole airspace of real adulthood, than irony? (which reminds of a conversation I had with a chess player in a chat room, see below).

wellredbaron73: you just didn't think during that match. i knew your 3rd to next move before i made my first. i would recommend sitting in silence and concentrating on something.
z911: haha, no i didn't. what is that like an exercise?
wellredbaron73: i guess
z911: that's a good idea i should try it, do you do that?
wellredbaron73: no, i don't need to. my attention span is fine, see my rating?
z911: yes sir, that's very good
wellredbaron73: well, nice playing with you, best of luck, and remember, try to focus and really think ahead
z911: ok

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About form, I was sure, the author had paved his own path (or in less cliché terms, the author had employed a style all his own, not mimicking anyone else). It makes an interesting read, as it's fresh, and these days, unassuming freshness is hard to find, easy to detect, and frankly, difficult to reproduce. The style keeps you on your toes (or in less cliché terms, this unpredictable quality makes the reader quite attentive).

He also does this thing where he states something about a character, and then immediately after, he completely undermines it with a straightforward rebuttal to the initial statement. Well it's not really a rebuttal — it's not black and white like that. It's more of, here's some hot soup, oh wait let me throw an ice cube in it. Nothing is as extraordinary as it originally sounds, how the character wants it to sound, or even how the author first said it. Everything's kind of muddled, or, if not tempered entirely, exists in an extreme, useless state hidden inside the thoughts of a character, or in the ultimately subordinate, descriptive language of the story.

How do you begin to praise the 4-page sentence? It's unmistakable, when you turn to that spread of fully-justified type, it dawns on you that you've already been reading this weed of a thought for a page and a half, and that's the best way to describe what he does with the sentence about the Swabian. It's not a "stream of consciousness," which is the shit I try to do, it's a purposeful ramble. It's the exploration of a branch to its terminus, a steady retreat...repeat. It's a masterful stroke by a talented artist. I can't even identify the purpose yet, but overall I just don't see this guy as someone who does things for a reaction, or is experimenting — he's not. It also contains a story of a story about Buenos Aires in the 20s, the phrase "meat emporium," the phrase

...words that to the little gaucho sounded like the moon, like a slow storm, and then the little gaucho looked up at the lady with the eyes of a bird of prey, ready to plunge a knife into her at the navel and slice up to the breasts, cutting her wide open, his eyes shining with a strange intensity, like eyes of a clumsy young butcher...

(how good is that!), and all of this a discussion that happened in the past, over a sparse German meal of sausages, potatoes, and beer. Good god Roberto, you've done it! Persist me to the 96th percentage, carry me Furiously onward! To the house.

I wanted to write a story about an urban professional who walked along the sidewalk late, late one night. Leaves rustled and the last lamp on the block went dark. A smallish man jumped out of the hedge and put a knife to the yuppie's neck and said, "give me your wallet." The miserable man quickly realized he only had $7 on him, so he gave him the wallet, crying, and then said, here, I have an iPod and a phone. The mugger thumbed the three bills and then caressed the shiny hard disk - content. He began running off in the direction the yuppie had just come from. The yuppie yelled after the man, and said, "Hey!" "HEY!" The guy turned around. "Hey come here. Can you do me a favor?" The mugger was twenty feet away from the yuppie's urine-stained slacks. The pathetic man rolled up his sleeve and said, "can you slice my arm?" The mugger ran off.

Taxi 2

One organization, the Rapture Fund, is offering a "Rapture Will" that provides terms by which a Christian can transfer his or her estate to the Rapture Fund in the event of the Rapture. The organization's website indicates that funds are to be used for publication of the Gospel during the Tribulation. Stop and go all day long, I see some old friends, I see my brother. Some have phones and some plain don't. It is a white cloud connection to into a foggy realm growing foggier with each denunciation. Both these worlds, one that no one inhabits and the one where I live, one where a few people make money and one where my value is similarly ludicrous, I am enchanted by the lures of the former. They are huge and romantic, in the sense that they are ego-driven. The core of our Earthball must be so stressed out these days - too much pressure. I am a half-step from the door. I have my left foot in a warm tub and my right foot is an inch from the outlet. I'm just trying to step through, I said. So I ran with copper armor clanking and a sense of dignity misguided. I am a karate kick away from having the abandon I wish I had. Death and war and loss and pain, I know them in abstract. I don't have a shortcut because I don't know the address. I wonder if I would even take the shortcut, and I feel I wouldn't. But it would be nice to get there.