HOW TO MAKE A DELICIOUS MEAL FROM WHATEVER YOU FIND LYING AROUND

having been reminded of patrick mccabe's breakfast on pluto in conversation on thursday evening, i went to powell's on friday hoping to find a used copy of winterwood, the only of mccabe's novels that i hadn't read, an economic opportunity cost decision that i made based on sad reviews at the time of the book's initial release. there were none on the shelves, used or otherwise, probably for the same reason that all of the author's other books were available at deep discounts: winterwood was probably just a rehash written at the less creative end of a once pertinent and well esteemed writer's long term publishing contract, and it probably wasn't very good. i remembered, however, that the current issue of the paris review included a new translation of a novella by péter nádas, and having also recently been in discussion about this other author's work after being returned the copy of love that i had lent to a neighbor, i consoled myself with taking the last copy of that magazine to the cafe to read another work of possible interest and justify my trip. whether it was the coffee or the frenzy of the bookstore on a friday evening was another night's distraction, but i was only able to finish about twenty pages of the novella. luckily there were other of nádas' works on the shelves for less than the twelve dollars i needed to buy that copy of the review (i'm an awfully hypocritical advocate of print culture), and, although i should have endeavored to tackle a book of memories for its seeming similarity with a french novel i'd recently appreciated, i left powell's with a lovely tale of photography, a lovely and much shorter book for seven ninety-five. it was short, yes, but just as difficult to read casually as love (which makes me anxious for ever tackling the several hundred pages of a book of memories), and i should now rightly be writing on my ideas on "the novel of perspective" as typified by péter nádas in the two works of his that i've read, but a recent dream about kyoto has me instead diverted to reading 『密閉都市のトリニティー』 by toba shin, a professor at the university of kyoto who taught the friend of mine that recommended me his book. a near future sci-fi about the quarantine of a city in the aftermath of a chemical attack that mars the afflicted with an std that shows itself in transmission as the mark of cain is wonderfully distracting, but it's no lighter than the burden of any other task at hand. but now the task is this one, and i'll abandon the more rigorous writing until another time, although it's true that the original task departed from just as casual a connection as the one that has me reading shin, and, as such, i shouldn't really see it as having been abandoned at all. tonight, for as long as i can stay awake, i'm living in memoriam.