(in Princeton, NJ, at the heart of fictional Haddam)
Wondering, inner ramblings
"I wonder, driving again along untrafficked Pleasant Valley Road past the cemetery fence, if I mentioned to Ann about the bomb, or if I told Marguerite during my Sponsor visit, or did she mention it to me, and did I go past Haddam Doctors before or after my funeral home stop? I can spend hours of a perfectly sleepable night wondering if I've kept such things straight, getting it all settled, then starting the process over, then wondering if I've contracted chemically induced Alzheimer's and pretty soon won't know much of anything." (p.240)
This was one of the sentences I've enjoyed reading the most, it seems typical: physical action, mind wondering, dramatic conclusion, ironic outcome. It also conveys the insignificance of human ramblings, what we are about, what we do and how, our small worries, the mental distraction of an aging man. In Haddam, Ford's land, or anywhere in the world. And it also plays the trick of waking the reader up to a fact of writing: everything, from the beginning, has taken place in a single day that is still not over. We, as Frank, are compelled to sum it up and put it in order, what happened when.
Morning: leave Sea-Clift in the Suburban, Mike driving...
Other reading journals: an index
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a reader's journal (8)
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3 comments:
Which takes us back to Virginia Woolf and her thoughts on scene-making:
"That is, I suppose, that my memory supplies what I had forgotten, so that it seems as if it were happening independently, though I am really making it happen. In certain favourable moods, memories – what one has forgotten – come to the top. Now if this is so, is it not possible – I often wonder – that things we have felt with great intensity have an existence independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence? and if so, will it not be possible, in time, that some device will be invented by which we can tap them? I see it – the past – as an avenue lying behind; a long ribbon of scenes, emotions" [Moments of Being, 67].
...MAD
MAD, Moments of Being just got on my wishlist. Woolf não viveu as handycams nem as câmaras digitais, ou a avalanche de memória-lixo que nos proporcionam. Muito interessante mesmo... Beijo. meia
Para mim o melhor da colectânea é mesmo o "A Sketch of The Past". Parece ter sido escrito, ao contrário do que quer parecer, por alguém que já viveu tudo, já começou, acabou e deu a volta, e olha para trás... E o olhar fotográfico e fílmico esconde-se constantemente à espreita... ;o)
MAD
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