The Deathmarch to the Lighthouse, Week 6

| What do you think? (11)
Category :

Congrats to the many who've made it through or are on the verge of crossing the finish line! (oh math, from hell's heart, we stab at thee. For hate's sake, we spit our last breath at thee.)

If you haven't already shouted out, or you have last thoughts to share that you were holding back for fear of spoiling endings and such, you've come to exactly the right spot. Thanks to all for an excellent 'march and most especially thanks for your high patience with me, and my, well, let's just say imprecise posting habits this time around. I should be much more on the dime when we tackle The Monster aka Thomas Pynchon's brand-new book, Against the Day. Deathmarch to start in mid-January. And may God have mercy on our souls.

Next week: Can you hear it? That sound? The whirring of machines, the gathering of magnetism? Watch this spot for...a magnet preview....

-Cecil

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://cecilvortex.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/3723

11 Replies | Add a Reply

 
  • i've already pynchon book and look forward that pie eating contest.

  • my comment didn't make any sense. meow.

  • Sorry to sit out the Wooofl march then jump in with Pynchon talk, but...

    I've read the first few pages of the Pynchon last night. I'm in awe of the size of this thing. I mean, I've read Ulysses, DQ and all of Pynchon's other novels, but this just looks daunting on a great level (might be the hardcover - but my Mason & Dixon is hardcover). I'm pretty sure this will be the longest work of fiction I've ever undertaken (but that's because I avoided Clarissa in grad. school).

    I'm a little worried about committing the march too. I'm teaching Pale Fire next semester for the first time (the Death march strikes again!) and I will have to reread it to do so. I'm doubting that I can read Against the Day and Nabokov simultaneously without inducing insanity (although I may induce it in my students & family rather than myself).

  • a few things about "to the lighthouse" before we move on to the next march. “a psychological poemâ€? her first reader (leonard) called it....the layers and loops and rhythms, especially the prolonged note of lily's painting, make the novel (the creative act) itself a character, as welty wrote in the foreword: "to an extraordinary degree the novel seems to partake of its own substance, to be itself a part of this world." brevity, precision, deep yield--"poem" seems apt in many ways. i'll miss this book.

  • Pynchon! Brings back some not so fond memories of The Crying of Lot 49 and my junior year in college. It's the first and only of Pynchon's books I've read. I won't lie about missing Ms. Woolf. Towards the end I felt as if I were walking in thigh-deep quicksand each time I opened the book.

  • Minta: Have you found your brooch? Is it in the quicksand? I've finally finished Virginia, and found the last part much speedier. One does get used to the language, doesn't one? Looking forward to the Pynchon.

  • I've started reading a book by Aldous Huxley and it's remarkable how fast and easy the reading is. I'll give Virginia credit for making just about anything this side of Chaucer seem like a walk in the park.

  • Don't know about the Pynchon--looks like an overwhelming task from here.

    I ended up liking TTL a lot. What interested me most was the minute, contradictory swirl of any given person's thoughts--and what importance we put on all this mental activity--juxtaposed to the section where time passes. I found that description of the effects of time, war, disease, childbirth, etc. to be breathtaking. Woolf succeeded in portraying life and time from both the long view and the split-second fragment of thought, and I'm in awe. Will I pick up another any time soon? Probably not. But I've been glad for the company and the magno-motivation.

  • Well, now I've had enough family dysfunction; I think I can just skip the Christmas season altogether after this march of passive-aggressiveness, internal drama-queening, and inherited psychology.

    I won't be buying the new Pynchon; I have a long list of things that would be healthier for me to spend $40 on, let alone the half-year it would take to read it.

  • RaptorMage: I know it seems like a good idea right now, but in the long run, $40 worth of marshmallow peeps won't be nearly as helpful to you as a brand new hardcover book.
    -Cecil

  • Quicksand is so high-drama, I just love it. This book wore me out. Pynchon is going to wear me out. I barely survived The Crying of Lot 49 and that was when I was in school as a lit major so my homework was basically to read books. I have enjoyed him on the Simpsons.

    A really bad deathmarch holiday tune:

    Here we come a-deathmarching
    Among the de-con-struct-ing,
    Here we read about millions of characters
    from an author never seen.

Leave a comment

Subscribe

 About-Creativity.com
 CecilVortex.com

About-Creativity is a series of interviews with artists about their creative process.
Cecil Vortex has those interviews along with my own writing and tunes plus the occasional group-read of a challenging tome.

Archives

Good Stuff



The Bands-I've-Seen Project

Air
Baez, Joan
Bauhaus
Beach Boys, The
Bears, The
Beastie Boys, The
Beat Rodeo
Beck
Beirut
Belew, Adrian
Belly
Berlin
Beulah
Big Star
Billy Nayer Show, The
Black Flag
Black Uhuru
Black, Frank
Bottle Rockets
Bowie, David
Bragg, Billy
Brannigan, Laura
Breeders, The
Burrell, Kenny
Butthole Surfers
Buzzcocks
Camper Van Beethoven
Cake
Chilton, Alex
Cleary, Jon
Clinton, George
Costello, Elvis
Coulton, Jonathan
Court and Spark, The
Cracker
Dead Kennedys, The
Dead Milkmen, The
Decemberists, The
Dickies, The
DiFranco, Ani
Doe, John
Dr. John
Eskimo
fIREHOSE
Flaming Lips, The
Fountains of Wayne
Franti, Michael (with Charlie Hunter)
Funky Meters, The
Gabriel, Peter
George, Inara
Gone
Grass Roots, The
Grateful Dead, The
Grizzly Bear
Guthrie, Arlo
Harding, John Wesley
Heat, Reverend Horton
Heron, Gil Scott
Hitchcock, Robyn
Husker Du
Iguanas, The
Jarreau, Al
JayHawks, The
Jazz Butcher, The
Kelly Jones
Living Colour
Lobos, Los
Lovett, Lyle
Marsalis, Wynton
Marley, Ziggy
Mike Viola
Minus Five, The
Morphine
Movie Stars, The
negativland
Newsom, Joanna
Old 97s, The
Oranger
Osborne, Anders
Overwhelming Colorfast
Pavement
Pee
Pere Ubu
Pixies, The
Plays Monk
Polyphonic Spree
Prince
Ramones, The
Redman, Joshua
Reed, Lou
Replacements, The
Residents, The
Richman, Jonathan
Rollins, Sonny
Roy Hargrove
Seagal, Jonathan
Seeger, Pete
Semisonic
Shocked, Michele
Shriekback
Silver Spun Pickups
Sioux, Siouxsie
Sippy Cups, The
Sisters of Mercy, The
Snappin’ Box, A
Squeeze
Stone Temple Pilots
Sugar
Sutton, Tierney
Television
They Might Be Giants
Thinking Fellers Local Union 282
Throwing Muses
Trip Shakespeare
Tyner, McCoy
Uncalled For, The
Uncle Tupelo
Vega, Suzanne
Violent Femmes
Voice Farm
Wailers, The
Wainwright, Loudin III
Waits, Tom
Wilco
Wolfgang Press, The
X
Yellow Man
Yo La Tengo
Young, Neil
Zircus

Twitter

    T R B p o t d

    I run a lil' mailing list featuring short poems by a variety of fantastic poets. For example: Richard Brautigan. To join or learn more, just drop me a line.

    Legaleso

    Various and sundry, copyright Cecil Vortex.