Patricia Lockwood c/d

Still need to read that/pvmic

all real good writers are huge word perverts

recall don delillo saying he liked to compose sentences based on their shape

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy7SvZQfeBM

‘Can I ask you something?’ I asked the members of my Updike Support Group one by one. ‘Do you remember Rabbit Redux? Like, at all?’ What I really meant was: ‘Am I insane?’ Had I alone been entrusted with the burden of this book’s contents? Had we forgotten, as a society, that the 1971 sequel to Rabbit, Run contains a scene of Rabbit reading The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass out loud while a black man rapes a hippy girl who, earlier, spent several pages speaking entirely in rhyme? Don’t worry: she likes it, and then dies in a fire at the end.

I've never read more than fifty consecutive words written by John Updike for some reason. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, the reason I've never read more than fifty consecutive words is that each time I reached that threshold I put the book back on the shelf, knowing this was the wisest choice.

Might be worth trying his essays. His writing is about plot about as much as Vermeer's painting is.

her recent one about meeting the pope was possibly her best ever in my opinion, though the updike is hard to top.

i like the ashbery comparison upthread though it would not have directly occurred to me it definitely makes a lot of sense in a very internet way

Just started Priestdaddy yesterday, great stuff

Bonus: cover illustration by Lisa Hanawalt!