The Goldfinch... holy shit. I savored the last 20 pages of pure writing gold, dog-earring page after page with passages to revisit and savor again. I would copy each sublime paragraph here if there was enough room or enough time in the day. But I will settle for this bit:
"And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about suffering here, or at least my understanding of it--although I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand. What's mysterious, ambiguous, inexplicable. What doesn't fit into a story, what doesn't have a story. Glint of brightness on a barely-there chain. Patch of sunlight on a yellow wall. The loneliness that separates every living creature from every other living creature. Sorrow inseparable from joy.
... And--maybe it's ridiculous to go on in this vein, although it doesn't matter since no one's ever going to see this--but does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end--and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with some kind of joy?"
What are you reading now?
3 comments:
LOVE. Those last pages were some of the most beautiful I have EVER read! This is the part I copied:
http://trustknot.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/bloom-out-and-out-and-out/
Thank you thank you thank you for bringing this book into my life!
xo.
ak.
three day road by Joseph boyden
“The extraordinary richness of Boyden’s prose and his material, both in the forgotten history he’s recovered and his electric metaphors, make Three Day Road one of the finest novels in an already rich national tradition.”
Anners, I am so glad you're blogging! That passage was another I've gone back to again and again in the last week. Love, love, love you. xoxo
I'll check out Three Day Road. Thanks for the recommendation!
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