Reveling in Ravelstein / The World According to Hilary

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. 

Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." 

-Groucho Marx

Photo by moriza

One positive thing about commuting to work is that I get a good 10 hours of reading in every week on the subway alone. And burying my nose in a book helps distract me from just how close to my own face the nose of the person squished beside me is...

The endless possibilities of language never cease to amaze me — I'm constantly fascinated by words and their boundless combinations. And sometimes, while reading a novel, I find certain passages, sentences or even small phrases to be more memorable than the book as a whole. For instance, I recently read Saul Bellow's Ravelstein, and while it was quite the splendid piece of literature, for the first half of the novel I found myself reveling more in the book's sparse-yet-effective injections of humour than its philosophical musings. As evidence, here are two sentences from Ravelstein that made me chuckle like a crazy lady on the subway:

"He swore off contact lenses after he lost one in a spaghetti sauce he was cooking."

"You drank from your Coke bottle, and T.S. Eliot was watching -- with horror."

In other instances, I find myself predicting whether I will enjoy a novel or not merely by reading its opening line. Ok, that might seem akin to literally judging a book by its cover, but when I read the opening line of The World According to Garp, I just knew it was going to be a good read:

"Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theatre."

Talk about a hook.

Other times, I'm simply struck by creative imagery...:

"The woman at the mercado had dirty blond hair, like margarine full of crumbs." -Dave Eggers, How We Are Hungry

 ...or humourously relatable passages...:

 "I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone." -Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

...or just plain old humour:

"Buying clothes is always tricky. But when there's loud music playing, it really throws your judgment. You look at stuff like, 'Hey, if there was a cool party and I was a cool guy, this might be a cool shirt.' 

You get it home, there's no music, there's no party, and you're not a cool guy.

You're the same chump, 75 bucks lighter." -Jerry Seinfeld, Seinlanguage

This post could go on forever, but you get the point.  

Savour language. It's damn tasty.