Air Time
Off to Milwaukee again today. 7:00 am flight from Seatac meant my shuttle arrived at 4:30, which meant that I got up at 3:30 to finish packing after being up til close to 1:00. The shuttle company errs on the side of caution, so I was at the airport before the gate agents opened their kiosks. It was kind of strange to stand in front of the checkin monitors and watch the Windows 2000 logos flash on them as they booted up for their day’s work. You forget that the myriad devices in your life are made of the same mortal clay as your trusty laptop.
I caught an hour or so of sleep on the flight to Minneapolis - I find it’s possible for me when I have a window seat and can prop my head against the window or fuselage. Later, I perused the latest New York Review of Books, which hit the house on Friday and I whisked away from Mrs. Perils’ literery clutches. There are some advantages to being up and out the door while the rest of the house is asleep. I’ve been using plane time lately to read (I’m going to hate it when cell phone and email service inevitably invades that remarkable lozenge of time in the air), and a couple of hours spent with the NYRB is always such a learning experience. Each issue is a series of kaleidoscopic peepholes into books and culture. Yesterday, for instance, I read from the current issue:
- A review of Cormac McCarthy’s latest book by Joyce Carol Oates. I’ve often liked her reviews, but, considering how prolific she is, I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read one of her works. It seems she publishes a full-length novel every other month. As is customary with NYRB reviews, this one ranged far from the book in question - there was a nice biographical sketch, a discussion of the apparent fault line between Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy, from which sprang All The Pretty Horses. (It seems some view Blood Meridian as great writing and the Border Trilogy as popularized pandering. I’ve only read Horses, and seen the Matt Damon/Penelope Cruz movie).
- A review of Joan Didion’s latest, TheYear Of Magical Thinking, a non-fiction sort of journal dealing with the year after her husband, novelist John Gregory Dunne, pitched over dead as they sat down to dinner, a year during which her daughter also died. I read a lot of Didion in the 70s - her “New Journalism” works The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, plus a couple of her novels, but I wasn’t compelled to follow her into Salvador or her other work in the 80s, and lost touch. It’s interesting to be reacquainted, and be informed of your youthful misapprehensions of an author’s work.
- Another reviewer took on two books about the evolution/creationism debate that crystallized many of the political and intellectual issues surrounding it.
All of that in 2 - 3 hours. I still have articles from the same issue on judge Roberts, Richard Feynman, E. L Doctorow and the Five Books of Moses to peruse over the week and on the way home. I think it’s going to be a good week.
