Friday, August 10, 2007
Hocus Pocus
Ugly. Billy Wagner blew a save at Shea against the mediocre Marlins tonight & now the Mets & Yankees have identical records, 64-51.
Both Paul & Heather are vacationing in the Hamptons. Sez the gossips: "And having them both on Long Island is proving a nightmare for hosts who cannot have them at the same event." Let's see, one was a losing contestant on "Dancing With the Stars." The other is a Beatle, sings & plays the piano, & brings primo pot.
I'm struggling to the conclusion of Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen, which turned in on itself like Rococo picture frame about 100 pages ago. I prefer the later novel of his I've read, the even more whackadoo Sick Puppy. I'll recover with an old Travis McGhee by John D. MacDonald.
Also read Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus, published in 1990. He seems to have written it much like his fictional author, Eugene Debs Hartke, claims at the beginning, on scraps of paper of varying sizes. Not having read this novel before, or anything of length by Vonnegut in years, & because of his death last April, I can't say if Hocus Pocus is a good or not so good or in between Vonnegut novel, & I'm not even disposed to weigh the matter. It was an entertaining read, & I savored it very much. After seeing a statistic yesterday that African-Americans comprise 14% of Jersey's general population but 60% of the prison population, plus the scandalous, inhumane conditions at privatized prisons (aren't the government run ones terrible enough?), two basic premises of Hocus Pocus are true enough. Typical of Vonnegut, it's so bitterly funny that you can't laugh. Bought it for a quarter at a church rummage sale. There's more Kurt Vonnegut Jr. than John D. MacDonald in Carl Hiaasen.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Both Paul & Heather are vacationing in the Hamptons. Sez the gossips: "And having them both on Long Island is proving a nightmare for hosts who cannot have them at the same event." Let's see, one was a losing contestant on "Dancing With the Stars." The other is a Beatle, sings & plays the piano, & brings primo pot.
I'm struggling to the conclusion of Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen, which turned in on itself like Rococo picture frame about 100 pages ago. I prefer the later novel of his I've read, the even more whackadoo Sick Puppy. I'll recover with an old Travis McGhee by John D. MacDonald.
Also read Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus, published in 1990. He seems to have written it much like his fictional author, Eugene Debs Hartke, claims at the beginning, on scraps of paper of varying sizes. Not having read this novel before, or anything of length by Vonnegut in years, & because of his death last April, I can't say if Hocus Pocus is a good or not so good or in between Vonnegut novel, & I'm not even disposed to weigh the matter. It was an entertaining read, & I savored it very much. After seeing a statistic yesterday that African-Americans comprise 14% of Jersey's general population but 60% of the prison population, plus the scandalous, inhumane conditions at privatized prisons (aren't the government run ones terrible enough?), two basic premises of Hocus Pocus are true enough. Typical of Vonnegut, it's so bitterly funny that you can't laugh. Bought it for a quarter at a church rummage sale. There's more Kurt Vonnegut Jr. than John D. MacDonald in Carl Hiaasen.
Labels: what I'm reading
