The Sheila Variations

Speaking of reading:

-- finished Bleak House yesterday morning. My God! What a book!

-- started and finished The Road yesterday. Could not put it down. What a horrifying story. Scary, too: there were 2 moments in particular when I literally gasped out loud in terror.

-- had very bad dreams last night. I blame Cormac McCarthy. Michael was a big part of one of the dreams. I'm kind of haunted by the whole thing, and very haunted by him in particular. Not on an everyday basis, but just after a dream like that. I love him, and I miss him and he feels very far away to me right now. The Road made me feel almost unbearably lonely.

-- I think I'm going to move on to Anne Enright's The Gathering next. (Allison and I, on Saturday, went to the bookstore across from her apartment - one of my favorites in the city. We both bought 3 books - it's been a while since I bought a new book! I bought The Road which I read in one day, in one sitting, practically. Also the Schickel critical biography of Elia Kazan which I'm psyched about (Schickel is great - he wrote the critical study of Cary Grant that I have quoted from on the blog ad nauseum). And then I bought The Gathering which just won the Booker. I've been mentioning her here and there as well, she fascinates me. I don't know - The Road was so intense and so depressing that I am hesitating to pick up The Gathering at this moment in time.

-- Oh, and I saw The Hoax last night - the movie about Clifford Irving, the dude who wrote the "authorized autobiography of Howard Hughes" without ever having met Hughes - he hoaxed everybody. FASCINATING. Richard Gere was fantastic - perfect part for him, and I'll write more about that later. I really recommend the movie. I want to read Irving's book now - not the one about Howard Hughes (which was never actually published, I don't think - although they did do a print run of it) - but the one Irving wrote about how he made up the whole thing. Fascinating!!