Currently reading
Hieroglyph: Stories and Blueprints for a Better Future
Ukraine: Zbig's Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated
The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Our Souls at Night: A novel
Above the Waterfall
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
The Homicide Report: Understanding Murder in America
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
The Gods of Mars
The Sportswriter: Bascombe Trilogy (1)
Frank Bascombe published a book once. He just never got around to writing another, veering off into the world of sportswriting. The Sportwriter shows us a week in Frank’s life in which he confronts the choices he has made as parts of his life are pared away and we are shown what has already been cut. He is divorced, with one child having died. His girlfriend is clearly inappropriate for him and that ends as well. A sort-of friend comes out and on to him, ending badly. We see his semester as a teacher and the complications that ensue.The above really tells nothing about the book. It is one of beautiful language, tone, self-inspection, how one lives one’s life in the world. Much resonated. It is not an action adventure tale, but things do happen, dramatic on an individual scale, if not a global one. It is about expectations of life and of ourselves. Not a quick read, but very good stuff.
P 24
All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life.
P 24
My own history I think of as a postcard with changing scenes on one side but no particular or memorable messages on the back.
P 27
It may be just the fate of boys whose fathers die young never to be young—officially—ourselves; youth being just a brief dream, a prelude of no particular lasting moment before actual life begins.
P 97
What’s friendships real measure?
I’ll tell you. The amount of precious time you’ll squander on someone else’s calamities and fuck-ups.
P 183
I’ve quit becoming, is what it feels like. Only I stopped at the wrong time.