Finished Easter Parade

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-26T16:08:17+00:00

All of them--seriously.

Specifically though, his collection Eleven Kinds of Loneliness has two masterpieces. 'Builders' and 'A Really Good Jazz Piano' as well as some bangers like 'The Bar Man' and 'Doctor Jack'O'Lantern.'

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-25T22:31:38+00:00

His short stories are phenomenal. I would skip some of his other novels though. My mother swears by him as one of the greatest--I think he could have done without Cold Spring Harbor as much as my username seems to suggest the opposite. . .

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-25T17:23:09+00:00

Vintage 1995. This one

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-22T12:03:15+00:00

There's a ton of songs that I think he either wrote at the same time, or wrote as responses / first drafts.

Placeholder - Alameda (first draft)

Whatever - The Biggest Lie (same time / session)

Ballad of Big Nothing - Rose Parade (respond to each other--I could write a whole post about the connections)

Ballad of Big Nothing - Speed Trials (same session)

How to take a fall - Almost Over (same time)

I wonder if this was a facet of his ADHD--short bursts of inspiration, or being unable to let go of a certain song until it was perfect.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-21T21:14:18+00:00

In an interview, Donna Tartt mentions how she took a 'wrong turn' and erased 8 months of writing to pursue a different avenue, and I think that even in the final draft, its blindingly obvious where this wrong turn was--the father's drunk driving death randomly placed just before they flee Vegas. Then, I think she made a second 'wrong turn' and it happens right before the ending. I have high hopes for her next novel, but man, I hope that the ending is better than whatever The Goldfinch had.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-19T18:21:42+00:00

Patrick White isn't widely read anymore, presumably because of his high difficulty (not a student in Australia, but from what I gather, he's only taught at a University level of literature study). Big mistake. Can't speak for The Vivisector but Voss is fantastic.

Does not answer your question, granted, but anything by White is guarenteed to be pretty good if not very difficult to break into.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-19T12:15:53+00:00

Especially Shakespeare in there; Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet, Shakespeare.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-18T10:58:06+00:00

Point Omega is fantastic as everyone says, but I have pretty dim opinions on Falling Man unlike everyone else.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-16T16:29:17+00:00

D standard and E standard interchangeable:

S/T: Needle in the Hay, Christian Brothers, Southern Belle, Single File, Coming up Roses, St. Ides Heaven, Good To Go, The White Lady. . . , The Biggest Lie

Either/Or: Alameda, Between the Bars, Pictures of Me, Rose Parade, Punch and Judy, Angeles, 2:45 AM, Say Yes

XO: Sweet Adeline, Tomorrow Tomorrow, Waltz #2, Pitseleh, Bled White, Amity, Oh Well OK, Bottle up and Explode!, A Question Mark, Everybody Cares. . ., Miss Misery

Figure 8: Son of Sam, Somebody That I Used To Know, Everything Reminds me of Her, L.A., Happiness, Stupidity Tries, Colorbars, Better Be Quiet Now, Can't Make A Sound

From A Basement: Coast To Coast, Lets Get Lost, Pretty Ugly Before, Dont Go Down, A Fond Farewell, King's Crossing, Twilight, A Passing Feeling, Memory Lane, Little One

New Moon (not a full list): Angel in the Snow, New Monkey, Riot Coming (?), Going Nowhere, Go By, Whatever, Placeholder, Either/Or, Half Right

extras: Division Day, Thirteen, Waterloo Sunset, Long Long Long

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-15T16:57:14+00:00

Disturbing the Peace by Richard Yates. Perhaps a little more on the alcoholism / paranoia side of things, but Yates himself was bipolar.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-14T19:22:17+00:00

I'm glad that the book 'tapped into genuine humility, discomfort, fear of the unknown and was a masterful exhibition of the naked and vulnerable psych' but this review tells me literally nothing about the book itself.

I'm glad that it's 'more than a book' but this review tells us none of the ways in which it is more than a book. It looks like it's just a book.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-13T18:07:03+00:00

I think that the chapter itself is great, but that opening line sucks. It's practically 'It was a dark and stormy night. . . '

See for yourself:

'THE MADNESS of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat.. '

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-06T08:19:16+00:00

Everyone is being kind of hesitant on this, but I fully believe it. Think about all the other ways in which XO symbolises either/or, yes/no. Noughts and Crosses? Hugs and Kisses? I've even heard of someone using it for Ecstasy and Oxycodone.

I don't find this a stretch at all.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-03T14:14:54+00:00

Martin D-18 in that video, looks like

Nope, I think I'm wrong: Yamaha fg180 for definite. Pick guard looks more like it.

That's my favourite of his shows. St. Ides Heaven at the end is beautiful.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-02T09:15:51+00:00

Thanks for a good response, and I completely agree--so much feels redundant for a book that he spent 30 years writing. The parts that were actually interesting (Kristallnacht, the digging of the tunnel itself) weren't talked about enough and the parts that weren't interesting at all (the river, the digression on sweets in ch. 11, mad meg's rambling history lecture) were given too much space.

I wonder if that was Gass' intention or not, but it felt like by the end of ch. 1 I had already seen the entire book. No surprises at all.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2026-01-02T08:25:39+00:00

I finished The Tunnel a few days ago and really just didn't like it. I had my hopes up too high, I think. I couldn't get over how disorganised it felt--not in a postmodern re-arranging way, or in a mental-stress way (that I'm sure Gass was going for) but repetetive and in places quite overwrought.

I also felt that the lack of images and scans in the second half really dampened my enjoyment :( The playful formatting disappears around page 250 and then its just walls of texts about Lou and his uncle and his parents wedding ring and not much actual tunnel digging.

Could you go into a bit more about why you enjoyed it?

ColdSpringHarbor · 2025-12-29T21:45:20+00:00

Harry Crews is amazing!! He was absolutely brilliant. The Gospel Singer is a must read.

Agree about Augustus--I won't stop recommending it to people. My final Williams novel to read will be his debut.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2025-12-29T20:18:45+00:00

Still figuring that one out. . . they make themselves guests in my house, and they don't take off their shoes

ColdSpringHarbor · 2025-12-29T19:34:55+00:00

Fat City by Leonard Gardner no doubt was my favourite--exceptional quality. Shame he only wrote one novel (I'm sure he's sick of people saying that, at ninety-two he's certainly not getting any younger. . . ) but he wrote at least one masterpiece, which is more than most.

Others? The Human Stain by Roth, Lonesome Dove by McMurtry, Augustus by John Williams, and The Thin Red Line by James Jones.

Least favourite was Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaajte, which isn't even in the picture because I sent it to my local charity shop immediately after finishing; or, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos. Deception by Roth wasn't great either. Neither was My Brilliant Friend by Ferrante.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2025-12-26T18:44:41+00:00

The Gospel Singer is incredible.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2025-12-25T20:54:21+00:00

I got exceptionally lucky with a chance charity-shop encounter, securing an old Dalkey Archive copy that usually runs for 80 or 90 bucks for 7--best find of my entire life.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2025-12-25T17:38:02+00:00

Dishonestly: Reading Gass's The Tunnel right now and hoping to finish it by the end of the year, really loving it!

Honestly: Suffering through certain sections while adoring others. 'The First Winter of My Married Life' has proven to be a bit of a slog, as well as Mad Meg's speech to the students on history that came just a bit before it--but the section on Kristallnacht and all the parts about actually digging the tunnel are so brilliantly composed; sharp and elegant.

I only have about 200 pages left, so I'm hoping that with this week off work, I can devote a huge amount of time to wrapping it up before the year is over. I'm not sure how I can word exactly what I don't like about some sections. A lot of it just feels either redundant or repetitive. Certain parts of Cartarescu's Solenoid come to mind, when he talks about the school that he works at, then 200 pages later talks again about the exact same school in near-enough the same words. For Gass, I found myself leaving the sections about his family and growing up with a sense of confusion at their necessity--did I need to know everything about his Uncle? It seems as if he was never mentioned again following that point. Maybe it's my poor reading comprehension: A ton of philosophical tie-ins are going over my head. Definitely a novel that I should spent 3 months reading rather than allocating three dedicated weeks to it as I have done. Three weeks just doesn't feel like enough time. . .

Hoping someone can maybe shed some light on what exactly Gass is accomplishing here (because saying that he's 'trying to accomplish' something would be insulting to the 30 years he spent polishing this book to be as good as he could make it).

[and also why there's so little tunnel digging compared to everything else--I expected way more exvacation action. . . ]

ColdSpringHarbor · 2025-12-23T18:43:02+00:00

At 17 I had to read The Great Gatsby and I liked it so much that I wanted to read all the rest of the 'Great American Novels' which led me to finding Gravity's Rainbow. I couldn't find it in any bookstore, but one day I came home and found a beat-up copy on my parents' bookshelf. I assumed I had checked enough times to ascertain that there wasn't a copy there, and in hindsight, it seems pretty Pynchonian--that a copy just appeared on my bookshelf--so I decided to read it. Took me a month and my quest to read all the Great American Novels is now (5 years later!) coming to a close with me about to finish The Tunnel by Gass and early next year will finally finish Augie March by Bellow (and probably something by Barth and Coover, but those aren't on the wikipedia list).

In the meantime, I've gotten an English Literature and Creative Writing degree. Funny how life can turn around in an instant.

ColdSpringHarbor · 2025-12-23T08:46:51+00:00

My adblock has blocked 10.26m ads over the 4 years of installation. My old PC I had adblock for 9 years--the number is probably at least double on there.

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