summer

Summer Vacation, Day 49: Two Thoughts

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

The first thought for today is what a tremendous sense of relief I feel knowing that, as of this evening, both soccer and baseball are done for the summer. Jodi must feel ten times more relieved, since my job was usually just to relieve her at one of the fields after work so she could head to the other. She’s been Supermom – she deserves our awe, my thanks, and her own comic book.

The second thought is that every time I read Hemingway, I want to go fishing, and every time I read about Spain, I want to go to Spain. So The Sun Also Rises is thus far making me restless. It also makes me want a drink every twenty minutes or so. They drink a lot in these books. Constant buzz. At one point, the characters notice that a busy French waiter has sweated through his shirt. The stains beneath his arms are purplish. The first assumption is that the waiter must drink a lot of wine …

Summer Vacation, Day 48: Greenish …

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Scrawny chili pepper plants with no buds. Bushy little tomato plants with lots of green, but midget, romas. Bean plants, but no beans. Cucumbers just starting to bud. No sunflowers to speak of. Everything’s struggling a bit this year. The spring was cold, and I started late, but still – hope we get some veggies soon!

Summer Vacation, Day 48: Melville

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

So I’m well off the pace now for reading 15 classics in 15 weeks. Ah, well. The Sun Also Rises is next. Far shorter, and the sentences should require less untangling. But first – here at long last – 3 Things to Love about Moby Dick:

  1. Call Me Ishmael. Seriously – a romantic lubber like me, who becomes enamored with the odd details and intricate histories (useful or not) of whatever he is engaged in (useful or not), whose imagination runs away with him even as a grown man, who loves to share what he knows and run long in the telling, and who finds a somewhat sad but universal humor in the strange spinning of the world, has found a kindred spirit in this narrator.
  2. All Hands On Deck! Ishmael is surrounded with characters colorful, sorrowful, raging, noble and tragic – Stubb, Pip, Queequeg, Starbuck, Flask, and even Ahab. Each one spoke to me in a different way. There were no extras to speak off, or rather, no named extras …
  3. Above All, Wit. This I did not expect, given the general groaning I’ve heard thus far about the book. There is wit and humor throughout, but take a moment to (re)read the scene in which Ishmael lies silent in unwitting Queequeg’s bunk, too frightened and entranced to say hello … and the scene in the morning, in Queequeg’s embrace. How many movies and TV shows have used this? And I laughed harder here, because I wasn’t expecting funny!

Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I loved it. I’d also note that again, the author toys with the reader, all but giving away the ending. You know it ends badly – he tells you throughout – but he makes you wait. Keep in mind that Melville’s contemporaries couldn’t google “sperm whale” and get a fair rendering and specs. All the whaling history and detail the reader wades through enables a quick three concluding chapters in which the White Whale comes in a rush, and no excess explanation is necessary. The end is all froth and fury, as it should be.

Summer Vacation, Day 46: Ill Tidings?

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

I woke this morning to a dull grey sky and great cacophony of crow voices shouting from just beyond the trees. The din continues even now. To what end? I don’t know. If flocking crows are called a “murder,” then this is the most audacious, persistent and outrageous murder I’ve ever encountered. Does this bode well for my writing? In truth, it may be just the thing …