CHAPTER 1
How cool are we that we have a book club? I mean, seriously.
Please go to the "comments" section of this post to share your thoughts on Chapter 1.
*NO SPOILERS*
*Please do not talk about anything that happens after Chapter 1*
*Thank you*
Please go to the "comments" section of this post to share your thoughts on Chapter 1.
*NO SPOILERS*
*Please do not talk about anything that happens after Chapter 1*
*Thank you*
posted by Erik at 8:33 PM
5 Comments:
This is awesome that you're actually doing this...a couple of friends also recommended the book so I bought a copy on Monday and finished the first chapter last night!
Unfortunately I was sleepy, so it was a bit of a struggle, but I love the main character's switching from the NYPost to The Daily Worker. And his visible tumescence. Funny stuff.
I still haven't started the book yet, but the phrase "visible tumescence" is a really great phrase. I mean seriously. The word "tumescence" just doesn't get used enough these days. We should really bring it back.
i'm all, where's sophie?
and i need to keep a list of words i never knew the meaning of but successfully avoided up till now. i'm bringing smarty back.
lindsay
This is, like, a really literary book. I can tell because my paperback is really dense with type and it's really small type and there are so many fucking words.
"My japery may have contributed to my downfall."
Never heard of a japery before, but now I know it's joking/humor--because I looked it up. I love learning new words. I love reading good writing, and this is really good.
We're taking a journey through Styron's fertile brain, and it's going to be a great ride.
Not much to say about the first chapter, except that I'm hooked. It's a slow windup and we get to know Stingo, who is very horny and kind of lost and just starting to feel his oats. He's a young writer who hasn't lived enough to have anything to write about. But he's about to change that when he meets two very troubled people. This chapter gets us ready for what's coming, makes us care about he person who will be telling the story. We know enough about him after this chapter to like and trust him, so we're ready to believe the story he is going to tell us. And we are prepared to care about how meeting Sophie and Nathan and hearing their troubled story is going to change him.
My japery will never contribute to my downfall because I don't jape.
Never works to look up words unless you use them. Otherwise, I forget them and get stuck using my normal vocabulary--words like poop and totally. (Sorry, I was just reading the OTHER blog.)
I like how the chapter builds up to Stingo saying that he's about to experience both sex and death for the first time. I agree with Kyle and PAM that Stingo's horniness is funny. It reminds me of Irving's Garp, actually. Not the writing style, just the level of horniness.
"I had the syrup but it wouldn't pour" (page 3) is the most succinct and vivid description of writer's block that I've ever read.
I identify with Stingo's description of his love for reading. "So excitable that it verged on the erotic." (page 13) It makes me miss those college summers when I used to read a book a day and still seemed to have time to have a life.
I underlined the word "antipodean" to look up, but I haven't looked it up yet.
The story of Farrell's son is so sad, and the contrast between his experience in Okinawa (and preceding) and Stingo's experience in Okinawa (and afterward) is nice. I feel like the story pushes Stingo to take action and actually *write* instead of always talking about wanting to be a writer--like, he's always wanted to do it for himself and now he has the added incentive of doing it for this kid who wanted to but never got the opportunity. I realize that he says the story of Farrel's son "struck so deeply at [Stingo's] heart that for the first time in [his] life [he] was aware of the large hollowness [he] carried within [himself]" (page 27), but I still think there's a feeling of it's-time-to-shit-or-get-off-the-pot going on here. Stingo could either embrace that hollowness he's feeling or he coulddo some living that's worth writing about.
I'm intrigued. Ready to read more.
(By the way, I'm reading the Vintage International paperback version of the book, as far as my page numbers go.)
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