A HUNGER TO CONNECT?

The sky was a pale lemonade yellow this morning. I had never seen anything like it. It was as if there was too much white mixed into the sky, or nearly an absence of color. When I opened my eyes again, a while later, it was the same intensity of hue, but blue, milky blue. And by the time I actually got up, the sky was grey and the rain was here.

As I was dashing out the door to head into an appointment in Manhattan this afternoon, I noticed that both my New Yorker and New York Magazine had arrived on a Tuesday. Something must be up. At any rate, I grabbed the New York as it is easier to read and I always like to check out The Approval Matrix.

I flipped to a review of David Foster Wallace's posthumously-released, The Pale King. I had no real plan to try to read Infinite Jest as I had failed to get through anything remotely like it (no Gravity's Rainbow, no The Recognitions, no Underworld). The review, written by Garth Risk Hallberg, caused me to at least consider putting The Pale King on the (quite long) to-read list.

Wallace seems to have been concerned with some subjects I natter about.

"As Wallace writes at one point, though, in what amounts to an ars poetica, “almost anything you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting..."


A comment not entirely unrelated to some of the Jane Hirschfield comments I quote early on in this blog. (11/17/10). 

Even wastoids, it seems, are hungry to connect.

I’d like to advance the idea that the true heart of Wallace’s enduring appeal is that we share that hunger ...

Much to my surprise, the half of a sleeping pill I took a little while ago has kicked in fully force, so I will have to end this one here.