Thursday, June 2, 2011

Today and Tomorrow

"I'm doomed to want things that aren't things," Ofelia Hunt writes in Today and Tomorrow.

There are plety of things that aren't things in the book. Actually, there isn't anything that is something. There is only ever nothing. Lisbon, New Mexico, Bill Murray are like mantras that are not real that get said to placate reality.

Ofelia Hunt, if she existed, wrote something about metaphor and meaning. She hates them. Metaphors are fake things because they make everything more meaningful than it is. And meaning is meaningless unless it is a lie. And a lie is a metaphor for things that aren't true. And so on.

I felt more strongly about some parts of the novel than others. I wasn't sure about the thin man. And at certain points as it went along it felt more arbitrary than necessary. In her blog, Ofelia often says that she writes and rewrites. And usually that editing process is obvious with precise word choice. But in her novel, she seems to get away from that process. Just a rush of words, a waterfall of sentences. Sometimes.

I felt overwhelmed by it. I wanted to stuff it all inside my brain, but it wouldn't fit. I tried to make a flow chart, but everything flowed into everything else and then into nothing and then into a trash can.

A lot of other reviews like to give a little plot outline about the things that puport to happen in the novel. They are wrong. The trick of the book is to create something out of nothing and vice-versa.

No comments: