Super Markson Day!

I've mentioned this on facebook and in private! email!, but I always meant to tell it to you first, baby, you know that, right? You know I love you.  C'mere—I got something to tell you.

Somewhat into the action, such as it is, of Springer's Progress, Springer (I gather, still not having, you know, read the book) attempts to goad himself into resuming work on his novel by exhorting himself to "Play a little. With luck a phrase or three worth a lonely pretty girl's midnight underlining.". And somewhat into his essay on Markson and allusion, which I cannot quote because the g-ddamn library would only check out the relevant volume of the Review of Contemporary Fiction to me for a week at a time and would only renew it twice (what is this, communist Russia?), Steven Moore implies or perhaps says outright that this is a somewhat modest, even trivial, ambition for a writer to have. But I disagree; I think that's a fine ambition and not to be belittled.  But I am more easily satisfied with such surface pleasures than your average professional hermeneut, I suspect, and this is perhaps one reason I am not a professional hermeneut.

I have read as much as the first page and thereon are many delightful phrases to be found but most of all the last of the below, whose precedents are included only because I feel they are necessary to set it up:

There's Springer, sauntering through the wilderness of the world.

Lurking anent the maidens' shittery, more the truth of it. Eye out for this wench who's just ducked inside, this clodhopper Jessica Cornford.

Girl's a horse, stomps instead of walking. Most sedulously ill-dressed creature's ever wandered into the place also. Remorseless. Blouse tonight's all archaic frill, remnant from a misadvised Winslow Homer.

Paradox there, however. Catch her in repose and that profile's patrician. Unendurable cheekbones. When she's not lurching after that cow.

Tall, she is, and Springer's particularly enamored of her neck as well. Springer's a writer. Neck's sensuously cartilaginous.

Springer also sanguine about good boobs?

(Entire book's so written. Telegraphic prolixity abounds.) There's so much that's so great about that last sentence, from the incongruity of "boobs" (though is "boobs" ever congruous?) to the hesitancy with which the proposition's put forward. Like, you know, don't hold me to it, or anything, but I've got half a notion that Springer's not entirely titwise displeased.  Just testing the waters here. (Funny how I always want to turn to "querulous" when I want something that means "with a questioning tone" (where "questioning" simpliciter wouldn't work, as no question's actually being put forward), as it were formed from "query".  But of course it isn't.)

Comments

[Kara]

Boobs! Finally you have included content to bring in your less erudite readers, such as myself. A million thanks. Also, I agree with you in re: your estimation of the writerly ambition. I, of course, am not a professional hermaneut, either -- but I am a "professional" "writer."

[ben wolfson]

I have long considered boobs one of my chief interests and part of the purview of this webbage. It's just that only rarely do I have the opportunity to make this plain.

[michelle]

On this occasion you have indeed unbosomed yourself? I submit inquiringly.

[ben wolfson]

My huddled masses were yearning to breathe free.

[Standpipe Bridgeplate]

1. Read Kara’s comment, having read nothing else of the page.
2. Scroll up to find “Springer also sanguine about good boobs?”
3. Imagine a post more awesome than this one in which “Springer” refers to Springer-Verlag GmbH.