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08 January 2013

After a lengthy silence, during which both men eyed each other searchingly, the man from Szolnok County declared that he had been preparing for some time to write on a few pages and send the pages to the young woman in America, but he was afraid that if he wrote on too many pages someone in America might bind the pages into a book with his name on it, after which the people of America might well suppose he was dead.[More:]

At this, the writer of books leapt suddenly to his feet, drained his glass with a flourish, and strode purposefully to the glass door of a bookcase on a shadowy wall. Gesturing passionately towards the hundreds of volumes, he announced:

‘You are dreaming of yourself writing in the library of a manor-house, in Szolnok County, but while you were dreaming at your table I was writing on pages of books.

‘You are dreaming of yourself writing to a young woman in America, but in all the years while I was writing, no young woman wrote to me from America or from any other country.

‘I am a writer of books. I have died. I never saw, nor ever could have seen, the land of America, but I wanted to breathe with ecstasy, through the curtain of the falling rain, the scent of invisible yet enduring dream-prairies.

‘I am a writer of books. I am a ghost. While I was writing I died and became a ghost. While I was writing I saw ghosts of hundreds of books that I have never seen, nor will ever see, in libraries where ghosts of men that I have never seen, nor will ever see, dreamed of writing to young women in America. I saw ghosts of my own books in ghosts of libraries where no one comes to unlock the glass doors of bookcases. I saw ghosts of men staring sometimes at ghosts of glass panes. I saw ghosts of images of clouds drifting through the ghost of an image of sky behind ghosts of covers and spines of ghosts of books. I saw ghosts of images of pages white or grey drifting through the same ghost of an image of sky. And I went on writing so that ghosts of images of pages of mine would drift over ghosts of plains in a ghost of a world towards ghosts of images of skies in libraries of ghosts of the ghosts of books.’

Inland, by Gerald Murnane
It amuses me that the book review I linked calls it "tedious." Hardly a selling point.
posted by Hugh Janus 08 January | 18:07
At first I was nonplussed by this song but by the end I really dug it.
posted by Hugh Janus 08 January | 23:06
Yeah, might be trying a bit too hard (the book, I mean). No story. Very circular, vague. No one to care about. Some linguistic flare there, though.

I have many the unborn book myself.

(Happy New Year, HJ, by the way! : )
posted by Pips 08 January | 23:11
Yeah, it's certainly a weird book. In truth, I typed out that passage because I thought hacking it into Notepad would help me parse it, and then figured I might as well post it here and see what came of it. My dad gave the book to me for Christmas, along with a promising history/travelogue, Spartacus Road by Peter Stothard.

Also, happiest of new years to you, too, Pips! I miss you guys.

I happened to hear a great recording of an Ignaz Pleyel symphony concertante in my dad's car on the way to a BBQ joint, and having no idea what I'd heard, thought it must be some kind of Mozart I was unfamiliar with. The performance was stunning. So after pulled pork and blues music with dad, I got on my brother's computer and looked up the WETA playlist for that afternoon and, surprised to discover that it was actually Pleyel, ordered it from Amazon. It's great! He was an amazing and underappreciated composer and entrepreneur. Forty-one symphonies, 70 string quartets, several string quintets and operas, a bigtime music publishing house, and a pianomaker that continues to this day. Plus he survived the Terror with his head and shoulders connected, no mean task for a guy whose clientele was almost entirely made up of nobility.

And finally, since I know you love tennis... enjoy!
posted by Hugh Janus 09 January | 09:54
That is truly hilarious... thanks for that, HJ. Really hit the spot (so to speak) after a long, long day. Racket nunchucks. Who knew?

I haven't heard of Pleyel either. Sounds impressive. I'll have to give a listen when I'm not near comatose. Mozart's clarinet concerto's deceptively hard, but gorgeous.

We've missed you, too! (Jon's waving : )
posted by Pips 09 January | 21:10
Music to drive former DJs insane, or what I call Lipstick Bubblegum: || We Never Look Up.

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