Description:"This is what Tom does"
Date: 5 December 2003
I like this one. It's short and funny. I doubt if I will ever comment on the Frank Waters book.
It seems like forever since I've written about a novel. As every illiterate knows, it takes time to read a novel, and as a poetry specialist, I have to use my precious free time to read them. I enjoy novels as much as the next somebody, so usually have one going which I read nights before bed, and maybe Sunday mornings. I had been reading Frank Waters modest-length The Man Who Killed the Deer for an improbably long time, but I finally finished it Thanksgiving Day. Shall I tell you what I think of it? Maybe, but not today. My week has been filled with end-of-semester chores, and in an hour I teach the last of what has been the most dreadful class I've ever taught. Immediately afterwards, Junebug and I are off for the weekend to celebrate our 5th anniversary. (That's wood, in case you were wondering.) In other words, I don't have time to craft one of the thoughtful and felicitously expressed essays that you are used to reading here, and what's more I don't even have time to write one of the hare-brained pieces of crap you are more used to finding.
As I've said, I don't have a lot of time to read novels, like for instance Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, but sometime I read about them. N. Katherine Hayles, famous smart person, recently wrote a short book called Writing Machines about the materiality of texts in the information age. That topic is of great interest to me, but I won't be writing about that either. Instead, I will quote from Hayles quoting from Danielewski: "'This is Tom. This is what Tom does best. He lets you down.'"
I have found my motto.
