Insomniac Librarians Why sleep when there's field literature?

So, I'm innocently emailing to and fro. The other end of the line is much heavier on the IQ than I, so I'm trying to put a little spit shine on ye olde reader's advisory.

(Is it easier for you to book talk in bytes? It is for me.)

Here I go, posting stuff I oughtn't. This is the stuff born of flattery.

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This seems to be a year where I've been able to settle down and face some heavy duty books I've put off for an inordinate amount of time. (I finally got to Black Boy, for instance. I had picked it up a five years back or so only to abandon it quickly.) After page 80 or so in Middlesex, things picked up for me.

Even though the work hasn't been out that long, it's highly praised within the gay community and has taken on the aura of being a classic. So I've been subject to the "Oh, you need to read that book, girlfriend" catty huffiness when admitting to my career with certain crowds many times over. (How great was the euphemism describing Sourmelina as one of those women the Island was named aftter!) I think there's a tendency for Family to cling to any book with a gay protagonist. Despite the biographic feel to this, Cal is an archetypical lost boy and is held as a sort of post modern hero almost every time I've heard the work discussed. Perhaps he's a fuschia Holden Caufield, forever trapped between protagonist and victim of his own circumstances.

I can see where someone who's straight would have issues with the gender identity and sexual problems Cal encountered. However, for me the text lit the fires under the cauldron of my memory and sent some long buried sediment bubbling on up to the top. The Obscure Object was far too close to my Sentimental First. I can't count how many times some Untouchable has uttered the death sentence - "Why can't you be a guy?" I think he under develops the Julie Kikuchi relationship, with the effect that it can seem to be an interloper when it's not woven into the tapestry of things as deftly as he manages with other threads. I liked having that strand present, but there were times when it wasn't as seamless as the transition he made with other relationships.

The immigrant experience definitely permeated much of the book. I enjoyed the historical snippets; the imagery of Smyrna burning, the night amphibious assault on American soil, the sneaky transition we're all destined to retrace as we become the parents who bore us despite our generational identifications.
At just about every point past the dread 80 page mark I found myself envious of his writing style. Imagery bonded with plot and tugged at pathos to take on the oak of complexity. No merlot this read. Now if I can climb out from under budget proposal junk to make time for one of your Ondaatje's I might be able to feign Librarianship a little longer.