Do you suppose it's possible to write a really terrific, nearly perfect book by accident? I always thought that Brideshead Revisited was an Ishiguro-esque masterwork in terms of a not only unreliable but downright assoholic narrative voice but I found out the other day when I was reading the preface that Waugh seems to have "meant" it. I'm not convinced though. You can't have Anthony Blanche walking on three times and saying such devastatingly skewering home truths about what jerkoffs everybody is and not have some idea what you're doing, surely? Julia is stupid, Sebastian is duplicitously weak, and Charles is ruined by charm.
I thought the whole point of the book as a "Catholic" novel was that everyone of note in it is such an utter ass, so parasitic and useless and cuntish and atomized and miserable despite being surrounded by Baroque aesthetic excesses and pots and pots of money that in the end they have nothing - certainly not even each other - except God. Not a "panegyric", surely? But according to Waugh, it was. What the fuck, I ask you.
In other news, this morning as I wiped a long trail of regurgitated breastmilk off my back, I noticed I'm getting my figure back. Running and breastfeeding will do that, I suppose. That's nice. I've also started doing a couple of hours of Pilates a week so I won't be incontinent when I grow up and that's having an effect too, round the waist.
It's interesting. I broke my knee in a jeet kune do class, oh, twelve, thirteen years ago, and that was when I first got some awareness of myself as a physical person, and started enjoying exercise. And now, after packing on 60 pounds and tearing my asshole open bringing Godzilla into the world, I have a different attitude again. Not to looking good but to having exercise as a bit of get-mummy-brain-back-in-order-time so I don't lose my shit with Godzilla (especially now; my precocious little prodigy is being precocious about teething, which is awkward since he's too young to be handy with a teething ring), and also to being as healthy as I can manage. That's down to realizing how much this munchkin depends on me, and also to Mum almost dying round the time he was conceived because of a thing that was really down to her lifestyle. No granny for Godzilla. How awful a thought. Well, fate may choose to rub me out while he still needs me and before I see his children but I don't intend to help it.
I thought the whole point of the book as a "Catholic" novel was that everyone of note in it is such an utter ass, so parasitic and useless and cuntish and atomized and miserable despite being surrounded by Baroque aesthetic excesses and pots and pots of money that in the end they have nothing - certainly not even each other - except God. Not a "panegyric", surely? But according to Waugh, it was. What the fuck, I ask you.
In other news, this morning as I wiped a long trail of regurgitated breastmilk off my back, I noticed I'm getting my figure back. Running and breastfeeding will do that, I suppose. That's nice. I've also started doing a couple of hours of Pilates a week so I won't be incontinent when I grow up and that's having an effect too, round the waist.
It's interesting. I broke my knee in a jeet kune do class, oh, twelve, thirteen years ago, and that was when I first got some awareness of myself as a physical person, and started enjoying exercise. And now, after packing on 60 pounds and tearing my asshole open bringing Godzilla into the world, I have a different attitude again. Not to looking good but to having exercise as a bit of get-mummy-brain-back-in-order-time so I don't lose my shit with Godzilla (especially now; my precocious little prodigy is being precocious about teething, which is awkward since he's too young to be handy with a teething ring), and also to being as healthy as I can manage. That's down to realizing how much this munchkin depends on me, and also to Mum almost dying round the time he was conceived because of a thing that was really down to her lifestyle. No granny for Godzilla. How awful a thought. Well, fate may choose to rub me out while he still needs me and before I see his children but I don't intend to help it.
2 commenti:
That's the delightful thing about Waugh...it's a little messy. Like an actual human's mind.
This must be a mother thing. Obviously I want to be around for the Big Man but, my level of commitment was questioned at one point by Martha. After he was a year old, she just couldn't understand why I hadn't quit smoking. Just like that.
I can't imagine having to give up smoking on command; I could only stop as suddenly as I did back six years ago now because my body started rejecting them. But you know you're still a mug, right? If nothing else just imagine all the reefer you could buy for the price of an average tobacco habit.
It's also Waygh's other books that make me wonder, at least 'Vile Bodies' and that first one in the 'Sword of Honour' trilogy since I haven't read any others. They're not 'Brideshead Revisited'. At all. Makes me wonder if the latter's brilliance is a case of a million monkeys at a million typewriters sort of thing.
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