So - I'll make a ratatouille and a pork dish with peppers, and then I'll settle down with a large glass of wine and this book. Heaven, on a chilly damp September day.
And I'll wonder why the back of the book says, "In this utterly remarkable novel, Karl Ove Knausgaard writes with painful honesty about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death." Why is this called a novel? A novel is a work of fiction. This is a work of autobiography masquerading as fiction. Why not call it what it is, a memoir?
People so easily accept misnomers - the wrong name for things - and it drives me crazy. Like when they call female genital mutilation "circumcision," which is something completely, utterly different.
I like to call things what they are. So I am going to open some wine and read this best-selling memoir.
PS Normally, about 60 people or so check my posts, but for some reason, over 140 people have checked out the hot pink gazelle. I guess a 64 year old woman in running tights is more exciting than I'd realized. Or else there's some mistake and people think they'll be getting something else. So sorry.
Last night I watched PBS's fundraiser "Rock, Pop and Do Wop" - they pull together groups (and individuals) from the Fifties and Sixties and I guess encourage them to rehearse and then produce this event. I expected it to be painful, all these aging, very aging rockers, but many of them are still fantastic, and the music is sheer joy. Jay Black of Jay and the Americans - an amazing voice still. Though of course when a man that old sings that "My heart wants to die," it means something different than it did in 1959. My favourite: LaLa Brooks singing the classic lines, "Yeah, my heart stood still. Yeah, his name was Bill."
They just don't write 'em like they used to. And da do ron ron sha na na to you too. Happy Saturday.
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