This morning on the train I finished the Vinyl Caf\u00c3\u00a9 book I mentioned a few days ago. I could have torn that thing apart in about an hour, but I was pacing myself, because the stories made perfect transit reading, and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really want them to end. At lunch I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably march over to the bookstore and buy the next two in the series.<\/p>\n
The best thing about Stewart McLean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s writing is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not fussy. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conversational and relaxing. He gives a marginal and hilarious insight into the neuroses of his characters without tripping off into Woody Allen territory. Sometimes they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re purposefully uncomfortable, but thanks to his chosen genre – the short story – it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a pinprick of awkwardness and then you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re on to the next character, the next tale. <\/p>\n
After completing a McLean story, my brain has this buoyant, minty-fresh feeling. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot like the sensation I get when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read a book by Garrison Keillor or Stephen Leacock, or a poem by Ogden Nash or Heinrich Heine. No fuss, no muss, just a nice clean finish. Not like that sticky, gummy, tongue-fur-from-a-month-long-bourbon-binge sensation I get after taking another shot at Joyce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcFinnegan’s Wake\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. <\/p>\n
So I guess what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m saying is that, if he hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already, This morning on the train I finished the Vinyl Caf\u00c3\u00a9 book I mentioned a few days ago. I could have torn that thing apart in about an hour, but I was pacing myself, because the stories made perfect transit reading, and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really want them to end. At lunch I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably march over to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}