Fits and Starts
Dear Lori –
I’m sorry it’s been so long between letters. I continue reading and enjoying Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, but my progress has slowed significantly. You are far ahead of me again, and I don’t have much to add to the conversation by way of specific plot points. At the moment, I don’t have much to say at all. You and Anthony warned me this is a book of repetition and involutions, and I understand now what you meant. There is so little plot that I find it difficult to orient myself.
I think it was Paul from the Mookse & the Gripes podcast who said he was reading along in fits and starts – picking the book up and putting it down – engaging and disengaging with the text. It seems as good a way to read as any. And it’s how I’m approaching my reading of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, though not intentionally. I wonder how many others are reading in this roundabout way. Maybe this is how Young intended it to be read? It all fits what you wrote in your January 15th letter about the possibility that the endless bus ride might signify “a seamless circle in which life and death, past and present, dream and reality, all exist simultaneously and without differentiation.”
I enjoyed the Paul West article IN DEFENSE OF PURPLE PROSE you recommended and perhaps will write more about my thoughts on it in my next letter. For now, I want to say that I admire the pace you’ve set. I am convinced it is you who will drag us all to the end of this project, which I (for one) greatly appreciate.
Running at a snail’s pace,
Tara