I just finished Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke. I'm not sure yet what to make of it, though I'm compelled to place it in one of my favorite categories of fiction: post-apocaplytic. Johnson's Fiskadoro belongs there, as does McCarthy's The Road. Each is brutal in its hopeless beauty.
Anyway, I marked three pages because of brief little passages I found compelling. I do this all the time, but never do anything with it. So, for a change, at least I can share the quotes, completely out of context.
"There's no traveling side by side in the narrow places. In the narrow places you climb alone. It has to be enough to believe there's somebody behind you."
***
"What comes is the coming thing. I just look on it like whatever madness takes a dump on me, it must be a lesson, man, a lesson some random-ass sadistic Hitler-God wants me to learn. That's why I don't like it."
***
"Why must we have any legacy at all? Things are destroyed over and over, the good things and bad things. [...] The same thing for all of us--ashes, dust, poof, that's our legacy."
About Me
- Michael LeVan
- "--Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a Scotch accent. The tentacles . . ."
1 comment:
I like this idea of simply posting the passages marked. Every once in a while, I post a quote on my blog, or did when I was posting to my blog frequently enough that simply quoting something didn't feel like a cheat, but I only do so when I've got a pretty particular purpose behind it, even if I don't necessarily explain what the purpose is. So often I do the same thing you do, mark a line or two just because and then move on. I like this idea.
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