In the meantime we must try to occupy ourselves. Like many people who have unwanted time on their hands I have written a letter of complaint in response to a newspaper article, walked in pointless loops by the river (or to be more precise the "main drainage canal") and read all the books I have brought.
I have been trying to read some American fiction and began with John Updike's Toward the End of Time. The backdrop to this story, namely a devastating war between China and the US in 2020 and the breakdown of state organisations, is so interesting to me but makes very little impact on the story. The voice of the novel, a 66 year old whose journal it is, is a generally unlikeable man and the frequent sex is pretty unpalatable. And yet, while not exactly a fluid novel, it does carry you steadfastly through a keenly observed year with many quotable paragraphs and reflective moments. The heaviness of the prose is apt for a novel fixated, in addition to sex, on death and decay.
I much preferred Cannery Row, which casts its net wider and brings in many endearing characters. When I first visited California I raved about it and asked an American friend to recommend to me a book that would put me off it. Cannery Row was the best she could come up but it achieved no such purpose. The depressing fact of greed's extermination of the sardine stocks in a space of two years exists outside of the book. It is a good reason for taking a dim view of California, of the developed world generally, but on the other hand my dominant thoughts are of Doc collecting starfish and octopus at the Pacific's edge, of Mack and the boys in the model T and the insane stocklist of Lee Chong's store.
If Cannery Row cheered me my heart started to race with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. I had picked him out because I had recently read and hugely enjoyed Gentlement of Road before I came to the US. I am not yet a 66 year old ex-financier living in a world destroyed by war and I will never be a resident of Monterey full of working canneries but I have been a student gazing out on a long vacation, waiting for the next stage. It tells the story of a final year student's summer and his friendships and affairs with four others. It's such a beautiful story and awakened so many memories in me that to some extent I am now a bit deflated that it is finished.
I discovered that a film has been made to be released in 2009 and was horrified to learn that the relationship that meant the most to me, between Arthur and Art, had been removed. Apparently the director felt that having four characters and a love "rhombus" was too complicated and he proposed a simplified triangular structure by combining the important aspects of Arthur with Cleveland. Yes well, maybe whisky and wine is too much for a single meal but the solution is hardly to mix them in the same glass. This piece of celluloid idiocy I will not see.
So there we go. Now the book review is finished and still no word; time to find something else to do to pass the time that doesn't involve just slowly banging my head against the wall.
