Sunday Salon

I live in upstate New York - I mean, way upstate New York, far beyond what dopey NYC people think of as "upstate" - known for its Arctic wasteland weather that usually stretches from November to late April. When we lived even further north, a mere two hours from the Canadian border, my siblings and I would walk 1/4 a mile to school in -20. After several weeks of -20, 20 above literally feels warm. I'm not kidding.

This year, however, has been a strange one. First, it rained nonstop all summer long. I mean, SHEETS and SHEETS of rain, like veritable walls of water. This ended in late August. Then things were normal for awhile, until these last two weeks. Shortly after Halloween, the weather became unseasonably warm - we're talking fifties, which we usually never achieve until June and certainly never after early September. Today, however, it is 60. I do not know why. Tomorrow it will go up to 62. Hmmm.

Yesterday, my copy of March Dugain's The Officers' Ward arrived in the mail. It's a French novella, a fictionalized account of Dugain's grandfather's experiences as a disfigured veteran of World War I. I read it awhile back but didn't think to actually buy it until now. (I did my review entirely from memory and a bit of Internet research.) It's not nearly as depressing as it sounds. Dugain had often wondered at the ability of his grandfather and his compatriots to be so full of life and happiness, despite the injuries that forever barred them from being a part of mainstream society. The Officers' Ward is a neat little book, and the perfect antidote to the oh-my-God-kill-yourself hot mess that is Johnny Got His Gun.

I ordered it second-hand from Amazon for $.30, plus $3.95 shipping and handling. I didn't realize it was the large print version, though. That makes it kind of annoying to read - my eyes keep skipping over the page - but that's my fault. I should've read the product description better.

I have also started Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. I'm not even 100 pages into it and I already love it. It is to Henry Miller's The Tropic of Cancer (the misogyny and disgustingness of which I absolutely loathed) what The Officers' Ward is to Johnny Got His Gun. But I probably won't be finishing it soon. I will be receiving a review copy of Gert Jonke's System of Vienna, an fictionalized Austrian memoir of Jonke's experiences in Vienna, from The Front Table. It will be my very first review for them, so I'm kind of nervous, especially since System of Vienna seems like a complex book. I've been looking at the other reviews on their site, and they're all really, really good.

So that's me for this week.

(I wish Henry Miller was still alive just so I could have the pleasure of slapping him.)