manic episodes on the post post proust goals find

It shouldn't be a secret I don't like making resolutions. I marginally like making plans, so the idea of making a promise to myself that I'm supposed to adhere to on the passing of an arbitrary calendar date has never fueled my inspirational fire. Frankly, my moods/desires are based more moment-by-moment, much like a certain person acknowledges a hunger and sates it with, say, mcdonalds. Sadly, yes, mcdonalds.

But I have a goal today. And I might succeed with it. As some have seen, I've picked up the reading yen since living on subway lines, and, having spent my waking subway hours chasing John Banville with Saul Bellow, I've decided to go to their bastard, three-way love child with Jose Saramago: John Gardner.

I knoww, this will sound odd. I don't like American authors. In fact, the cult of narcissism being the only real legacy of the great (small 'g' intentional) authors from the 60s and 70s, I have no real lust for them. But for anybody who has ever taken a writing course, Gardner is a ghost that must be dealt with. Why? He wrote probably the best how-to books on what a novel, what a story, is. And, thoughts on Grendel aside, he represents something apart from it. Frankly, that represents the last novel I read that just gave me absolute, unequivocal joy. But his books are impossible to find.

So now, my quest, and I do choose to accept it, is to find him. One of his books (not Grendel). Any one.

But first, I shower. And maybe pick up some socks.