I’m still encountering obstacles and I am in despair. This is ridiculous. So I pulled out my blog files again and I’m going to play for a while: just tidbits, scraps and morsels, maybe even some orts, and all just for fun - my kind of fun.

I keep coming across reviews that I saved, not because I want especially to read the book being reviewed but because I have been intrigued by the techniques the writer has used to tell the story. I found a couple of reviews with a list of these gimmicks - and that’s what most of them are - to show you what is meant. Here’s one, and I don’t even know the title of the book. It purports to be the facsimile of a novel published in 1949 that contains “marginal annotations, postcards, newspaper clippings and other objects. Two of the annotators are students who flirt and spar and begin to decode the novel’s mystery.” Oh- I found the title: S (by Doug Dorst.) No wonder I overlooked it.

Here’s another one, Dangerous Admissions, by Jane O’Connor, the first adult novel by a children’s book writer. “She punctuates the novel with an array of textual gimmicks, including instant messages newspaper articles, cellphone transcript, e-mail message, and a growing number of invitations to memorial services.” (From the review in TLS by Chelsea Cain)

That sounds like fun. Some day, perhaps in my Next Life, I could try writing a book using some of those methods of communication.

But maybe another book of poetry first. I keep writing down names of poets I want to read, and good lines (whose? - mine or theirs?).

I can’t go on. I’m browsing too much and not telling you about it. And I am so tired. I won’t go into my day, no details. But i’ve had enough of it.

I’ll have some more tomorrow.