in favor of parenthesis

It’s been one month since I last posted, but it feels like only a week has passed. Things have been crazy in Austin this “spring”, both for me and the community of people who also live here (SXSW was almost too much this year). Apart from school related studying my reading and writing has been almost non-existent lately, and I’m making this public confession in order to create  a little external pressure on me to live up to my idealized self-conception (Though, to be fair, what I’m really speaking about here is instead the internal pressure I put on myself to either live up to external expectations or influence the opinions other people have of me, which [I suppose] means this website is little more than some extraneous cog in the post-skull meta-construct my superego has created in an attempt to realize its “real-world” imperialist ambitions, the attainment of which has only recently become possible in the wake of technologically fueled breakdowns between “self” and “other”.)

I’m reading the penultimate volume of In Search of Lost Time, though I’d really rather be reading something else. It’s not that I’m not enjoying it per se, but rather that I’m in the mood for a different kind of book, maybe, I guess. I’ve been reading a lot of translated literature lately, so maybe something domestic this time. Maybe I need to read Freedom or Netherland, something both recent and American, which is what the little voice inside me is mumbling, I think. Maybe.

Mark Sarvas seems to have got things going again on his blog The Elegant Variation, and today he had a post promising several “lesson highlights” from the novel writing classes he teaches at UCLA. I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort figuring out how to write a Novel, and I’m always curious to see/read what other people have to say on the subject, especially when it’s in a classroom. I’m particularly looking forward to the ”The Many Dratfts of the First Draft” lesson.

general miscellany

I was at a friend’s house yesterday waiting for him to finish something on the computer so we could go somewhere when I somewhat absentmindedly picked up Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and began to read. Three pages in its hooks were set and I smuggled the paperback out in grocery bag. Though I’m only a quarter in, I very much recommend this book, and I don’t think that sentiment is going to be changed by anything I’ve yet to read.

I spent a lot of time today thinking about possible schedules for what/when/how I write, and in the coming weeks I’m going to be playing around with that. Exciting things are afoot.

In other news, there are a few pretty cool literary events coming up here in Austin. First is “Consider the Archive: An Evening of David Foster Wallace” at The Ransom Center on Tuesday, September the 14th at 7:00 pm (click here for more information). Then on Friday of the same week, also at 7:00 pm, Jonathan Franzen will be speaking (and signing) at Bookpeople as a part of his book tour for Freedom. Snazzy. And don’t forget: October is nearly upon us and that means it’s almost time for the Texas Book Festival. You can see the recently released list of attending authors here.

One more thing: check this out.