Sobriquet 42.24

The following post was originally published on 5/23/08.

So, despite today being a rather busy day, I did manage to read a bit more of Diary of a Bad Year. There are times when I am really into it, and other moments when the book strikes me as having hit a false note, where Coetzee's alter-ego seems to resemble Joseph Heller's Eugene Pota, the fictional author struggling to write one last novel in Portrait of the Artist as An Old Man. Like Pota, the fictional Juan Coetzee realizes that he hasn't the time left to write everything he wants to put on paper and, consequently, crams as many half-formed ideas as he can into his strange little book. Then, at other times, the novel seems to shine with the sort of energy and insight only a true master could produce at the zenith of his powers. So, yeah. It's a weird one, that's for sure.

Just for fun (especially since I was so glum-sounding yesterday), and since one of the more entertaining essays in Strong Opinions is Juan Coetzee's screed on grammatical and linguistic entropy, I'll leave you with a grammatically terrible Coca-Cola slogan I found painted on the side of an old soda machine this evening:

For tomorrow and Sunday: Read.