Today is a work day, inside and out, though I don’t know what jobs I will be tackling. Well, painting the fence, I think and maybe the deck floor – the little one right outside the porch door to the back yard. It’s an old-fashioned deck, grey, dontcha know, and one I put together myself because I was tired of the mud.
I need to declutter this porch, get it down to the bare bone – my kind of bare bones . . . in other words the clutter is hidden away. I don’t know what else I will be doing, but I suspect it will be dirty stuff, so I am glad my shirt is already dirty.
Cameron has got me reading The Idiot; I think again. But the first time was so long ago, I just don’t remember. I am not a fan of Russian literature. I keep thinking, “Will you get on with it . . . ” I have no idea how much the factor of translation influences my opinion, but I suspect it is significant. Of course, I often confuse literature and writing, the latter being, in the end, the words, the words that first linked you to others and thoughts. I guess the literature is the story and the symbolism – and crap – I sure do hate symbolism. Why don’t these high level authors write their own Cliff Notes: this is what I meant in three sentences instead of 500 pages? Essay exams would be so much easier.
Ha! Maybe an honest one would say, oh, it was just a story and people are drawing conclusions or hey, I was free associating.
Got to go – here comes Frank for his morning cola and foldover.
This reminds us of Rodney Dangerfield in “Back to School”. When asked to write an essay on the meaning of a Kurt Vonnegut novel, he hired Kurt Vonnegut to ghost write it. The instructor gave him an F saying that it was obvious that whoever wrote it “didn’t know the first thing about Vonnegut.” Mr. Dangerfield called Vonnegut and told him he was stopping his check.
Says more about English professors than literature.
What Russian book are you reading? I started a challenge with my son-in-law. We would both read the same book and then discuss it. He would read it in Russian and I would read it in English. The Brothers Kamarazov was only about 300 pages in Russian….. it seemed like four volumes in English. Translation….. an understatement. In my quest to learn Russian I have learned they are thrifty with their words. Where we have many words to describe a situation, they have one. Plus their language doesn’t have any articles so you save a lot of effort right off the bat by removing all the ands, thes, and a’s.
I read a fluff novel this week. I’m quite proud of that. Dick Francis and his racing horses…. just enough reading to calm the mind before bedtime.