Every year for the past decade or so I have set a weird reading goal for myself with varying results. The first year it was to read The Wheel of Time, then I decided I needed to kick it up a notch. One year it was reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. At the time, I thought it was a dud. I wondered why so many scholars mentioned that they reread it every two years. Well, now that some time has passed, I get it. It has stuck with me, and I want to read it again. Maybe next year.
Another year it was tackling the major Russian classics. This one came about in a perfectly normal way. I had disco hit Rasputin by Boney M stuck in my head. That lead to me reading a bio of the mad man himself, and it was downhill from there. So, Boney M, y’all were my gateway drug to Tolstoy.
During a fit of lockdown madness in March of 2020 I decided I would read every book that ever won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I managed to get through over half of them. This idea was sparked by that fount of all good things: Keanu Reeves. I watched an interview where he was asked what his favorite book was. He didn’t answer that question, but he did mention what he was currently reading The Overstory by Richard Powers. I fell over myself to get to my phone to order it. The book arrived with one of those stupid unremovable stickers (I hate those almost as much as movie adaptation covers) proclaiming that The Overstory had won the Pulitzer. In typical Wendy fashion, I thought, ‘I need to read all of these.’ I’m not one for half-measures.
Last year it was Ulysses by James Joyce. That was a big fat failure. It was so torturous that I realized life was too short to waste my time with this nonsense. I mean, I could be reading The Wheel of Time for the fourth time. Or scrubbing out my toilets. With the pages of Ulysses.
This year I’m going to tackle Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It is described as the latter half of the twentieth century’s Ulysses. Ugh. I am armed with a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow, a companion study guide, and the audiobook. I’m a bit worried about the audiobook after reading a review on Audible. The actual book is 792 pages long. A reviewer going by Jefferson left a glowing 793 page review. They described the narrator as, “(the narrator) reads the audiobook with a wry and moist enthusiasm……But he voices a great sneeze, American chuckle, perky band of Mickey Mouse fat cells, and every other outre job with aplomb.”
What does that mean? Is it a cipher? Do I need to get my hands on an Enigma Machine to figure out what you mean, Jefferson?
I think I can handle this book, though. I mean Lisa Simpson read it, and she’s, what, eight?
Either that or my toilets will be squeaky clean.
Happy reading y’all,
Wendy
Wendy is Reading 