It's so dense that no matter how many times I dip into it, I manage to find something startling that I have totally forgotten. The fascinating digression, a signature mannerism of Garc a M rquez, is ideally suited to the literary snacker. I love Nabokov, but I'm not even sure I like this book. I've read it through three times and each time suffered transports of rapture and bouts of severe irritation. But somehow none of those novels lends itself to the nosh in quite as satisfying a way as this one.
Graves is a solid, elegant writer.
Impossible not to stumble on some forgotten bit of erudition on the subject of Minoan ritual dismemberment that is just the ticket for a stalled moment at the keyboard. Maybe it's partly because I'm writing a book set in the New York of the '30s and '40s, but the atmosphere and style of Joseph Mitchell's sentences, along with a reportorial wealth of facts and information and the finite nature of the essay form, make him ideal for a quick bite. All rights reserved.