Good times, good times

So now that the latest round of interviewing is out of da way, I can plunge headlong into stuff again. Like reading. It's fundamental, don't cha know?!

I picked up a copy of the newest translation of Swann's Way the other day. Lovely. It is indeed superior to Moncrieff's version. Now, that particular brand of snobbishness out of the way, we can proceed, dear reader. I'm going for a kind of parallel histoical biographical kind of thingy. In 1996 I was fired in the hot, nasty month of June (in Tempe, it is truly an evil time of year). Spouse was in Portland at an internship. So I was adrift. With no income besides unemployment benefits, and a library card, and without air conditioning. It was not a highlight of my life. Between watching late night Star Trek re-runs and daytime Telemundo soap operas, there just wasn't much going on.

So, I devised a plan. I read classics. Like they were going out of style. I read War and Peace (great but for the last 100 or so pages of recap- Tolstoy seemed to kind of go off on a rant for a while- where was his editor, exactly?), The Brothers Karamazov (just didn't make me all that happy- in fact made me want to put a bullet in my temple- let's not relive that unpleasantness), Gravity's Rainbow (Pynchon is one fucked up dude- seriously...), and finally, Remembrance of Things Past volumes 1-6. I found that I really loved Proust. Beyond all others. And I have always loved to read. Many books have had a profound impact on my personal zeitgeist at certain stages in life. And this was no exception.

It was a long, somewhat unhappy summer- and despite my fascination for Erik Estrada in the Two Women, One Road soap opera, there just wasn't a lot happening.

So- now that I'm still unemployed, I thought it would be kinda cool to re-visit my hero, Marcel. And see how it goes. So far, it's like a warm bath. Delicious. I love the man. Pity he's dead.

And I'm far from miserable this time around. Bored, certainly, frustrated by the lack of job offers, absolutely. A tad miffed about it all- well perhaps. But not desolate. Lots of water under that particular bridge makes it all much easier to handle.

Enough. I'll not go into the whole mysticism of the Madeline cookie kind of thing. I'll save that for another time. Bet you can't wait!