Saturday, March 15, 2008

The End of Middlemarch

I am less than 70 pages to the end of Middlemarch and trying to figure what to read next.I might add I always have 3 or 4 books next to my bed to choose from.Usually two fiction a travel and a History book.Right now there is no History but the second volume of Jack Kerouac's letters.It took me seven years and two attempts to get through his first batch.I just picked it up one day last summer and it clicked.I've never been much into books of letters but maybe now that it is an endangered species I have an attraction.As for Middlemarch I have enjoyed it much more than I thought but can't help think these English class novels are nothing more than soap operas on a literate scale.A friend suggested reading"Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James next which I have but some of the James ghost stories I have read put Faulkner to shame for saying in fifty words what could be said in ten and just not any words.The forty extra words are usually the kind one would hear I imagine if you watched"Crossfire" back in the day and listened to William F. go on unless he was threatening to put out Gore Vidals lights.(Would have been a great fight).Anyhoo I was at B&N today where I browse now that my local bookstores are gone and looking at more George Elliot I saw "Daniel Deronda"It was the oversize paperback B&Noble classics edition like "Middlemarch" but the cover besides the pic is Pink!.Granted it's a light pink the shade I wore an Izod of on Cape Cod with a good tan but now it seems and odd color for a book.I do have a Polo shirt that color I haven't worn in several years.I wore it to my Doctors once back then with matching pink Polo socks for a physical and my Doctor said"If you're wearing pink Polo underwear I'm out of here" So pink is a sore subject with me like pooka shell necklaces.

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