It was only a couple of months ago that I read (re-read?) Wind, but it left such a light trace on me that I found I wanted to read it again. There is something very disconnected about it, and all the spaces around which it's built, well they could be artful or artless and it wouldn't much matter.
* * *
The Rat could see that she was trying to establish a kind of perfection in her small world. He was well aware that required an extraordinary degree of determination. She wore only the most modest yet tasteful dresses over fresh, clean undergarments, applied an eau de cologne with the fragrance of a morning vineyard to her body, took great care in choosing her words, asked no pointless questions, and appeared to have practiced smiling in the mirror. Yet these things only added to the Rat's sadness. After a number of meetings he guessed her age to be twenty-seven. That turned out to be spot on.
* * *
Pinball, 1973 is similar. It has the same air of perpetually interrupted - deferred, perhaps - bildungsroman, in which there's no evident progression and the structuring motifs appear to be both circular and transient, and at the same time inescapable. The separation of the narrator and the Rat removes one of the particular charms of Hear the Wind Sing, but there are other encounters - some extended - to take its place. The attention to rain calls forward, as does much else.
* * *
I undressed and got under the cover with the Critique of Pure Reason and a pack of smokes. The blanket smelled of the sun and Kant was impressive as always, but the cigarette tasted like soggy newspaper on a gas burner. Shutting my book and closing my eyes, I was half tuned in to the twins' voices when the darkness dragged me down.
* * *
The Rat could see that she was trying to establish a kind of perfection in her small world. He was well aware that required an extraordinary degree of determination. She wore only the most modest yet tasteful dresses over fresh, clean undergarments, applied an eau de cologne with the fragrance of a morning vineyard to her body, took great care in choosing her words, asked no pointless questions, and appeared to have practiced smiling in the mirror. Yet these things only added to the Rat's sadness. After a number of meetings he guessed her age to be twenty-seven. That turned out to be spot on.
* * *
Pinball, 1973 is similar. It has the same air of perpetually interrupted - deferred, perhaps - bildungsroman, in which there's no evident progression and the structuring motifs appear to be both circular and transient, and at the same time inescapable. The separation of the narrator and the Rat removes one of the particular charms of Hear the Wind Sing, but there are other encounters - some extended - to take its place. The attention to rain calls forward, as does much else.
* * *
I undressed and got under the cover with the Critique of Pure Reason and a pack of smokes. The blanket smelled of the sun and Kant was impressive as always, but the cigarette tasted like soggy newspaper on a gas burner. Shutting my book and closing my eyes, I was half tuned in to the twins' voices when the darkness dragged me down.
