Some notes on Nicholson Baker's Traveling sprinkler
One of the most interactive books I've ever read . . .
Few fiction books made so many thoughts pop into my head. It's as if, in this strange way, my own mind was participating actively in creating the novel. Truly a readerly text.
I immediately hunted down Debussy on Pandora and played that. Excellent.
Other snippets made me laugh or think of a memory from my own childhood or pause to consider the rhythm of a sentence or phrase. One line that i loved: "There was usually some flesh colored gum lying like a tiny naked baby Jesus in the drain" (p. 88) how evocative is that.
Also pieces of history that do not bore you but engage you. Made me think of Rings of Saturn and how boring I found that but how they are both similar in that they are simply a man ruminating on the thoughts, ideas and events that make up a short point in his life. But, for some reason, Rings of Saturn was so tedious as to make me feel a bit ill. Perhaps Sebald goes on too long in his rumination or is too disconnected. . .
One critic said Sebald's work is like a dream you never want to end but for me it was a nightmare.
In reading Traveling Sprinkler, I wanted to buy a traveling sprinkler and put in on my dining room table as center piece. They are really cute.
I wanted to start going to Quaker meeting and just sitting there and listening to the silence. Of course, it made me wonder how many people speak out of the pressure of filling the silence but maybe it teaches you to enjoy rather than abhor silence. . .
I did go to the link to the song, I don't want to know about evil, I only want to know about love song by Stephen Fearing. That took me on this rather strange rambling to Acadian driftwood and The Band and then to Springsteen and his new album. All roads lead to Springsteen. . .
This is what Jason McBride in The Globe and Mail says about the novel:
Roughly a third of the way through the new Nicholson Baker novel, Traveling Sprinkler, a curious compound word, usually used only in certain spiritual circles, appears: lovingkindness. In Buddhism, the term refers to a meditation practice designed to expand one’s compassion and equanimity. In Quakerism – Baker’s maternal grandfather was a Quaker and the writer has spoken about the faith having a “slow, time-release effect” on him – its meaning is not dissimilar. Here, Baker’s narrator, 55-year-old poet Paul Chowder, uses it when describing his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Roz, an exceptionally caring person he characterizes as “the opposite of selfish.” “She was, and is, full of this quality that I’ve come to take seriously,” he says, “which is lovingkindness.”
Isn't lovingkindness a great word? Just finished the book Wonder, which is another exegesis novel on kindness and its power.
Few fiction books made so many thoughts pop into my head. It's as if, in this strange way, my own mind was participating actively in creating the novel. Truly a readerly text.
I immediately hunted down Debussy on Pandora and played that. Excellent.
Other snippets made me laugh or think of a memory from my own childhood or pause to consider the rhythm of a sentence or phrase. One line that i loved: "There was usually some flesh colored gum lying like a tiny naked baby Jesus in the drain" (p. 88) how evocative is that.
Also pieces of history that do not bore you but engage you. Made me think of Rings of Saturn and how boring I found that but how they are both similar in that they are simply a man ruminating on the thoughts, ideas and events that make up a short point in his life. But, for some reason, Rings of Saturn was so tedious as to make me feel a bit ill. Perhaps Sebald goes on too long in his rumination or is too disconnected. . .
One critic said Sebald's work is like a dream you never want to end but for me it was a nightmare.
In reading Traveling Sprinkler, I wanted to buy a traveling sprinkler and put in on my dining room table as center piece. They are really cute.
I wanted to start going to Quaker meeting and just sitting there and listening to the silence. Of course, it made me wonder how many people speak out of the pressure of filling the silence but maybe it teaches you to enjoy rather than abhor silence. . .
I did go to the link to the song, I don't want to know about evil, I only want to know about love song by Stephen Fearing. That took me on this rather strange rambling to Acadian driftwood and The Band and then to Springsteen and his new album. All roads lead to Springsteen. . .
This is what Jason McBride in The Globe and Mail says about the novel:
Roughly a third of the way through the new Nicholson Baker novel, Traveling Sprinkler, a curious compound word, usually used only in certain spiritual circles, appears: lovingkindness. In Buddhism, the term refers to a meditation practice designed to expand one’s compassion and equanimity. In Quakerism – Baker’s maternal grandfather was a Quaker and the writer has spoken about the faith having a “slow, time-release effect” on him – its meaning is not dissimilar. Here, Baker’s narrator, 55-year-old poet Paul Chowder, uses it when describing his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Roz, an exceptionally caring person he characterizes as “the opposite of selfish.” “She was, and is, full of this quality that I’ve come to take seriously,” he says, “which is lovingkindness.”
Isn't lovingkindness a great word? Just finished the book Wonder, which is another exegesis novel on kindness and its power.
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