The grim redoubt of Château Gizmo.

¶ Matins: Reading The Sun Also Rises, I feel that I’m looking over Colm Tóibín’s shoulder. Compare Chapter X of the Hemingway with the Compostela pilgrimage chapter of Mr Tóibín’s very interesting “travel” book, The Sign of the Cross. Not that the latter chapter involves Pamplona.

¶ Sext: So, it turns out that willpower is a muscle, after all. You’ve got to work you’re way up to the heavy lifting. Another way of looking it would be that willpower is a habit.

¶ Vespers: A look at this week’s Book Review, at Portico.

Oremus…

§ Matins. Here’s the truly, deeply, madly crazy thing about The Sun Also Rises: Jake Barnes talks just like my father! I can’t think of it the other, more obvious, way round: that my father talked just like Jake Barnes. I can certainly imagine his reading this novel, qua smut. But that he picked up a way of speaking from a book — no, not he.

Surely not he.

§ Sext. I’m not entirely comfortable about getting my cutting-edge neuroscience from the Op-Ed page, but they do make it go down so smooth. 

Out of grim necessity, I figured out the relation between Willpower and Habit a long time ago. I had to, because I had no Willpower at all.  I could not force myself to do anything; in fact, I developed a phobia about doing the things that I had to do. Needless to say, this made everyday life very taxing! Then I discovered Habit. Or, rather — because I’d never had any good Habits, either — I discovered that Habit has an anaesthetic quality. If you do something at the same time every day, it’s almost as much fun as not doing it at all! You may not even notice that you’re doing it! (Eventually.) 

It’s because I am not a Creature of Habit, therefore, that I hold onto my habits for dear life!

§ Vespers. This week, I asked myself: have I been doing this too long, this weekly accounting of The New York Times Book Review? Am I burnt out? Or have I just learned how crappy — there is really no other word to describe such indifferently-written coverage of mostly so-so books — the Book Review is at the moment?

And to put a review of John Grisham’s latest offering of pseud0-fiction for guys on the cover! Shame!

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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