So the wife bought a new yard tchotchke over the weekend. It is a stone thing that supposedly looks like our dog curled up and sleeping. Our dog, however, is apparently offended by this analogy and barks at it with suspicion every time he passes it. I am in agreement with him. To me it looks more like the pig fetus that I had to dissect in 10th grade biology class. Every time I pass it I get a throwback wiff of formaldehyde and feel like barking at it too.
I finished reading the world's most depressing book the other day. Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I've always loved his prose, and this is the best of his that I've ever read... which apparently the Pulitzer's guys agreed with. They failed to mention however that it is the world's most depressing book. I wish I could have written the lines for the back cover... Mobius says, "Impossible to put down, harder to pick up." or Mobius says "Don't read without a large prescription of Prozac". But thankfully for those of you who don't want to read it, the movie will be out in a few months starring The King... from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Oh Boy! Just what we need in these days of depression... the world's most depressing movie!
Weird things are afoot in my town. The free world has come for a visit and brought along their various cadre of detractors. I suppose this is why they picked to do it here... since the world won't shut down if our city does. Literally... shut down. Unless you are head of state... don't try to get to work. My daughter was doing a report on one of the countries coming... she got France... and had to do a history of the country. So I helped her learn about Napoleon... and the guillotine... and trench warfare... and the Maginot line... and the 5th republic. Then I asked if she knew who Nicolas Sarkozy was... so we looked him up. Then I threw in a fun fact... "Did you know he is married to a supermodel?" At 12 she is accomplished Googler... so she Googled her. Oops. Um... Yes... well... the French also like to be topless. A lot.
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The Maginot Line is my fucking favorite:D I know it's wrong, but when I learned about it, I never thought I'd stop laughing.
ReplyDeleteMy copy of The Road is sitting about two feet away, and I'm not sure I want to read it. Especially not heading into winter... (I always want to kill myself in the winter, without the help of Mr. McCarthy.)
That book made me want to slit my wrists and die a slow painful death. Luckily I snapped myself out of it ;-)
ReplyDeleteas an allegorical tale, i've heard the book generally sucks. and it doesn't suck in the pop psychobabble way of say, the shack, but it is still depressing and instead of soul searching i just wanted a bottle of hemlock or whatever the philosophers are killing themselves with these days.
ReplyDelete@ML... You've got to love it when you base your defense on the idea that the other guy is never going to move. Winter is a definitely a time for discontent. Somebody said that once. Methinks.
ReplyDelete@Lindsay... I'm glad you did. I'm reading Dan Brown's new tripe to clean my head... kind of like sherbet between courses.
@char... I don't know that it sucked as allegory... it just isn't a happy allegory... we wander the wilderness of the world, protecting our young and trying to convince them that there is still good despite the fact that all around us people are eating each other alive.
ReplyDeleteI loved that book. It didn't depress me, I found it kind of hopeful. I considered it a happy ending too.
ReplyDelete@steamy... don't get me wrong...I loved the writing... and yes.. it surprised with the ending... but please don't tell me if you find a more depressing book... I'm still trying to catch my breath for that. there is a difference between hating a book and being depressed while reading it. it was a painful read.
ReplyDeleteI refuse to add anything to my life that may lend sadness. All I have to do is remember the past, and I have much fodder for that already!
ReplyDeleteWe are so prudish, are we not? Her photos seem "classic contemp" - my own term. Nude paintings were commonplace in say...the renaissance era, and her auctioned nude was like a current-day version of The Birth of Venus. If the trend didnt trash it up...the human body would still be seen as art.
@pc... i never said I minded... and the body can definitely be art... that doesn't mean I have to like hanging out in the statuary section with the kids staring at parts.
ReplyDeleteI can't get past the cement dog.
ReplyDeleteWe've known each other too long. I knew you wouldn't.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about depressing books in these hard times. I have been assigned by the family to research autism...and my heart breaks over and over again. I'd rather focus on barking at stone dogs, thank you very much!
ReplyDeleteOh man. I agree about The Road. It made me soooooo bummed out. Bleak. That is the word. But after about a week the despair dissipated and I realized it was more than horribly grim. It was good. I love when people weild language like a sword and he sliced it so thin it was nearly transparent. His words were more like a scalpel.
ReplyDeleteSo I made my husband read it and then he was all pissed off at me. He was like, "Do you like men who cry or is it just misery loves company?"
(It was misery loves company obviously.)
i just read that book about a month ago and feel terrible because i didn't really like it. i suppose it was well written, and there were a few scenes in which i was sufficiently moved or terrified or whatever. at the end i found myself saying "and then what?"
ReplyDeletemaybe that was the point?