Wednesday: I am hoping the novel picks up in intensity soon. We are getting ready for our trip to Thailand and I am just not so into this book yet. Perhaps I have read too much Bernhard, Erpenbeck, and Walser of late. I feel like I am reading some kind of Jonathan Lethem novel or even any other minor I did this and then I did that sort of writer. The writing is not too sophisticated, and I am surprised and disappointed so far. I hope I am proven to be wrong in my initial assessment.
Thursday: OK, I came to a sex scene, and not a very good one at that. Recently I read a sex scene in Jenny Erpenbeck's "Visitation" that was extremely gifted, powerful, and erotic as hell even though I admit it being a sort of rape scene, though I am not exactly sure of that. But this Michel H. is sort of hokey and juvenile if you ask me. I will give the book a few more scenes before I abandon it. I am working my ass off here just reading what I have. I am not at all interested in his lifting from the tourist brochures. What I don't get so far is how anybody can call this guy a great writer? Has the bar been lowered so far that even another fellow like Robert Bolano and his pitiful "Savage Detectives" should be recognized as a work of the highest rank?
Thursday PM: I quit. I cannot take another word of it. I am so disappointed in both the book and myself. I feel I let this guy write his crap all over me, and I do not take that offense lightly. It was the worst sex I ever had, real or imagined. Oh my god, this is when I almost wished I still believed so He or She could lift me and wash away my sins.