The Outbreak
Gosh, I don't know. I'm a big fan of James Salter's. Did you ever read A
Sport and a Pastime ? It's a fantastic novel, fantastic, and I wonder if
anyone even knows about it. Last night, while wasting time in the usual online
fashion, I came across a chance to vote for the novel of the century, from a
list of ten chosen by other people wasting time in the usual online fashion,
and it certainly didn't include A Sport and a Pastime , which it should
have. Instead, Gone With the Wind was on the list. Of course, I loved
Gone With the Wind . And it certainly fits the definition of literature
that Salter put forth -"Literature … is really only writing that never stops
being read"-for which definition alone I salute him. The point is, I liked the
Salter piece, even though it left me feeling absolutely helpless. I mean, what
am I to do? Should I finally read Plato? Should I give more money to the public
library? Should I stop making movies? No, yes, and no; so much for that. And by
the way, I don't believe for one second that Shakespeare made up one out of
twelve of the words he used. Where do statistics like that come from? I mean,
just because a word appears for the first time in a book doesn't mean the
author invented it. (Did you read the book about the convicted murderer who
worked on the Oxford English Dictionary? It's amazing.)
I am berserk about The Sopranos , as is my husband. Nick's mother, in
fact, could certainly have been the inspiration for Livia Soprano.
I do not find the mosquito spraying quaint. Now that I am in the movie
business, I see everything as the beginning of a bad movie, and this one ends
with the population of Queens dying before a cure is found. One of the things I
always find so wonderful about life in New York is how oblivious we tend to be
to things like the possibility of natural disasters, but the encephalitis thing
made me happy to be leaving town for Los Angeles, where there are only
earthquakes to worry about.
What is a Moebius strip?
