Arbtirary thoughts on nearly everything from a modernist poet, structural mathematician and functional programmer.

Monday, November 5, 2007

On Revolutions

There are certain authors (more properly, writers) who never cease to amaze me: Dostoevsky so clearly pierces the human soul; Hammes can fit a novel's worth of emotions and ideas into 20 lines of poetry; Cummings absolutely breaks poetry in every way possible, only to rebuild it stronger and more convincingly; Kierkegaard can read my mind; Carrol creates surreality that is more real than Zola or Balzac, Blake sums up all of human folly and wisdom in 69 proverbs; And Milton's brilliance, beauty and education are absolutely clear through the duration of his epic.

I picked up Only Revolutions today, and Danielewski refreshed his status on this list.
The book is absolutely fascinating. I've spent all day
just trying to figure out how to read it. I think I finally figured it out, but it is so busy, so deep that it almost hurts to actually resolve to read it. There's so much missed when you read it any one way, that I'm tempted to read it through, read it backward, read each narrative alone, and start reading random sections by themselves all at once.

I really haven't a clue how I'm to complete this book, it will need at least 4 reads, each in different fashions, to do it justice... and I do not have the patience to read 1200 pages of modern literature.

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