"The Polysyllabic Spree"

Amazingly, I still remember the scary my-lungs-and-liver secondhand clothes merchant in "David Copperfield" from my reading well over a decade ago, now that Hornby mentions it. And Maxim Gorky! I don't think I've ever run into him in English before this!

More head-nodding:

• I am... a relatively passive reader, when it comes to fiction. If a novelist tells me that something happened, then I tend to believe him, as a rule.
• Sometimes, when you're reading the stories, you forget to breathe, which probably means that you read them with more speed than the writer intended.
• All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. *
  
• I don't reread books very often; I'm too conscious of both my ignorance and my mortality. *
  
• We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too.
• Being a reader is sort of like being a president. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III.
• What one wants to read, most of the time, is something that bears no reference to one's life and work.
• The completion of the book ("D.C.") has left me feeling bereft.
  

Of all his riffs & rants, I like best the idea of having the National Biography Office issuing Page Count Permits. "Liars and Saints" sparked a discussion about sex with cousins, followed by speculation on the prospect of Roth and Fielding co-authoring a book. ('Cigarettes - 23, attacks of Weltschmerz - 141, etc.')

• If you were looking to fly from Dickens to Martin Amis with just one overnight stop, then (Patrick) Hamilton is your man.
• (Indignant on behalf of "Random Family":) you should be compelled to have your literacy surgically removed, without anesthetic.
  

mefi quote, no. 6

I have Rock Balls the size of grapefruits.

posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:58 AM PST on April 5
_________________________________________________
"The greater strength of wild mice makes it impossible to subject them to some behavioral tests designed for the comparatively feeble lab mice. For instance, a standard test of muscle endurance is called the cord drop. The test is quite simple: a mouse is dangled from a taut cord by its front feet—your basic pull-up position—and scored according to how many seconds it can hang on before dropping to the ground. A robust young laboratory mouse is doing well to hang on for thirty or forty seconds. When we tried this test with our wild mice, they simply pulled themselves up onto the top of the cord and walked off. We didn’t actually see them sneer with contempt, but they may have."

posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:22 PM PST on April 1