Sex, Don Q, and Rock n' Roll

Tuesday, July 31, 2012:

There's story, and then there's the story of story.

Which is a totally #vaguebooking way to say there's the book you're reading (just for the sake of argument let's call it DON QUIXOTE), and then there's narrative of your reading journey.

Yes, I totally just said "your reading journey" with a straight face.  This is what comes of dabbling in Literature.

My reading journey usually plays out something like this: wanttoreadwantoreadwantoYESGETTOREADREADREADREADOHYESMOREREADINGMOREMUSTFINISHohcrapI'mdone.

A pretty standard narrative shape, right?  Complete with set up, ramp up, climax, and come down.  An indubitably human narrative, the shape of sex, of hunger, of rock n' roll.

Except Don Quixote is different.  Today, July 31st, 2012, is the deadline before which each member of my book club agreed to be done with half of the 1,000 pages that are our purgatory.  We worried about this deadline, when we set it.  We reasoned, drawing on our previous experience with stuff like other books and potato chips, that we'd have trouble preventing ourselves from wanting more.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

I reached the halfway mark on Saturday.  Between Saturday and today I have finished two -yes two!- complete novels, neither of which bore the slightest resemblance to more of Don Quixote.

Book club meets tonight.  To utterly degrade Susan Cooper, Tonight I get wine, but tomorrow will be beyond imagining. 

The shape is wrong, see.  We've left the bedroom and are sojourning in the narrative equivalent of a bathtub.  There are gentle ripples of story, episode after self-contained episode, even episodes nesting within episodes, but nothing strong enough to rock the rubber ducky of our souls.

That's right. I said that, too.  Blame Literature.  I sure do.