ugh. finally finished reading Justin Cronin’s THE SUMMER GUEST, a soppily sentimental history of family and guests over the decades at a remote fishing camp in NW Maine. i must be a really bad person. this is just as prettily written as the sensitive crap that gets in the New Yorker, but i have no patience at all for this. i’d read his MARY AND O’NEIL with pleasure, and ill-advisedly bought this one and the 20lb-bound crap that was his soporific post-apocalyptic dreck THE PASSAGE.
never again.
i’ve not felt so relieved since finishing on a trans-Atlantic flight some garbage by Louise Erdrich only to find a bracing book in my computer bag (probably a Christmas present) from my brother, Matthew O’Riley: William S. Burroughs’ EXTERMINATOR!
similarly, i have already started a book sent by new friend, Larry McCaffery, his collection of short pieces by a writer by whom i’ve read (almost) everything, William T. Vollmann, EXPELLED FROM EDEN. Larry’s introduction is already better than all of that monosyllabic Down East pseudo-philosophy.
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