Critical Questions

When you tell the same story through the eyes of different characters, you have not only a different novel but a different reality. I think I could sit down today and write "The Deer Park" through Charles Francis Eitel's eyes, and if I changed the names and the place, no one might know the new book had anything to do with The Deer Park.

-- Norman Mailer at The Paris Review

This could be the basis for a writing exercise. We could call it the Rashomon exercise, I guess. You change the focus onto another character and rewrite a scene from there. The idea can also be used for critical reading, consciously asking yourself how the other characters are experiencing a scene. This can be second to the basic question of 'what if you changed this or that in the story?' Why did the writer do this? What if he had done this instead? Did the writer make the best of his characters and scenes?

Sunday Morning

I don't even get the buzz of seeing the list of visitors checking out my Saturday night porn post. Nothing there. I mutter to myself, "LJ is never going to be fun." Like this is news. Of course, with a face like this, fun was never a real option, and now I am old, which makes fun completely out of the question. I needed to have taken care of that by this point in my life. The only thing left now is to slowly die. Well, I have my books and Internet porn, right? Old age takes some of the pleasure out of these things, though; when you are young you at least have a little hope that something wonderful and even pornographic might happen to you yet. In old age, I find that books and porn can still make life bearable, but it is not fun.

Pop

Pop sings so ... gustily? ... so loudly in the shower. He is just a pretty happy man these days. That's pretty good. Is there a chance that I could be happier in my 70s?, happier than I have ever been? I doubt it. He has had a rather full life, and even now, he is carrying on with a girlfriend, running about and going to weddings. He is also gifted in not being intelligent enough to see through his illusions. In his mind, he is a great man, as great as any, greater. I don't want to knock it or puncture any balloons. He is the one providing for our reasonably comfortable lifestyle, and I only hope it goes on. As unhappy and mopey as I may be, I really do want as many more years of this reading and journaling as I can get away with. I can live with being unhappy, but I do want to live, so long as I can live to read and think and write.

Politics

"Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate."

-- Mark B. Cohen

Pop

Cripes, Pop's meal-time prayers get longer and longer. But maybe they are working, considering his longevity and health. I wouldn't want to push against a working formula.

Celebrities and Stuff

"Taylor Swift - Shake It Off" (Watch on YouTube)

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