Some fabs

For a second I felt a slight panic. After my engrossment with Grapes and the Joad family - after feeling like I had to savor every morsel and pinch a penny for my grim, jobless future- Thank the skies I didn't have to live through the Great Depression - I felt like I didn't have any reading to turn to. What can possibly follow up such a wholesome, but despairing classic?

I flipped through my piles of books, just a handful of pages at a time and had to put them down. Bend Sinister, Empire of the Sun, Downstream, Blood, Bones & Butter... plus the patient sitting of M.R. James' Collected Ghost Stories, which was loaned to me a month ago and the awful book borrower I am, don't have the patience, nor motivation to read things that are purposely made to scare. (Oh the suspense!!!) I promise to read it eventually...oye

After a recommendation from my bookseller comrade, and the perusal of the fiction stacks (a job which I am happy occupy) plus a memory of online book spiels; I am satisfied and for the mean time fulfilled.

A Giacometti Portrait (sounds like Ja-ko-met-tee) is the record of an 18-day sitting of an old friend, James Lord who modeled for Alberto Giacometti. Readers gets to tap into Giacometti's creative process and painterly insight, which is foremost humble and fervent as the portrait constantly develops and regresses under his brush. What I like the most about this is that even as a successful artist, Giacometti approaches each piece as it is his first time seeing and creating - this also proves to be defeating, possessive, and adverse at times. With each day/ chapter, there is a photo of the portrait... my one peeve is that the resolution is horrific (its more like a bad b/w photo copy of the artwork).





Yea the next book is a head turner, but only cause its such a hippie-esque title. As a fan of novels about the quintessential American, this is a quiet classic about an English Professor that was born in the poor farm land of Missouri in the late nineteenth century. He leaves to college to study agriculture to prospectively return to the farm and help his parents, but later becomes interested in English, Philosophy, and the likes. As an appointed scholar, he embraces the University and is deemed a life that is resembles nothing of the one he left.

I'll admit that as I am writing this, I am only a third of the way through but I did gleefully get through 50 pages in a sitting. The words flow graciously, in a way that reminds me of Yates and Orwell - I know that its not a cheerful story (I realize that I despise things cheerful), but as a 7-year old customer said while purchasing Lemony Snicket's last books in the series, "Not all good books have to have happy endings."


Lastly, because of my minimally employed arse, I have been taking a figurative painting course every Friday and have been painting a bit more than usual-- but far from any state of satisfaction. It may be just me, but I am finding that the more I paint, the more I am discontent with myself. Jesus! like it gets worse by the day... whatever. I can't quit. I've recently came across a lovely artist Chelsea James, who I turned to in my hasty attempt to paint something new to submit for the student art show. We'll see if they will even like what they see, but a bookstore blues piece is what came of the idea to create something from the mundane.