The Great Chipmunk

Josh Wilker has another couple of amazing posts up at cardboardgods.baseballtoaster.com

Listening: "Duets for One", Elton John

"He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a good deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought-frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of fundamental decenciesis parcelled out unequally at birth."

That's the third paragraph of The Great Gatsby. Someone (Kerouac?) wrote that they used to type pages of the classics, in order to feel what it felt like to write sentences like that. It does develop a rhythm of sorts, typing that kind of prose out.

I look at it and marvel at some of the constructions, every word seemingly exactly where it belongs. "A hostile levity", "intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon", "secret griefs of wild, unknown men"-you know exactly what he means. God, he was good. 

I went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks today. It was cute enough. David Cross was pretty good as the villain.