Reading and Watching

— 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. 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 – The Hoax – 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!!