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My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.

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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Doubling Down on "The Making of Americans," or Life Imitates Art

Loyal readers will know that I am attempting to read Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans. Reading two pages per night, that leaves me about another 450 days. I'm up to page 26. Only 900 to go. I should have a little counter.

What comes across my desk today? Nine-hundred-page family history.

Yessss.


10 comments:

Karl said...

Good morning Czar,

The you do have a counter, right at the bottom of the page.

The Time Tunnel was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid.

Buzz Kill said...

I'm with Karl. I loved that show as a kid. Irwin Allen had a lot of good tv shows and movies, but this was one of the best.

czar said...

@Karl and Buzz:

I don't remember anything about the show's plots and characters, but the image of the guys running into the tunnel and beginning to float through the air sticks with me still.

And Karl, you're right about the counter. I was thinking of one that I'd manually post to indicate how many pages were left in my quest to conquer Gertrude's beast.

Hmm. "Quest to conquer Gertrude's beast" is seven syllables. I'll have to work it in somewhere.

Very pleasant chatting with you in Russian, thanks to Google's fine translator on my end. Much better than Babelfish. Don't know a word of Russian myself, although my brother's probably learning a lot. His Russian mother-in-law just moved in with them, which is interesting, as I thought my brother's long-term plan revolved around tending goats at some dacha. Whether there are actually any goats or any dacha, I don't know that either.

moi said...

Ooooo . . . and I bet it's not a "fun" family history like the Addams's, Manson's, or Partridge, either.

czar said...

I'd love a good new Manson family history. I broke the spines on Sanders's and Bugliosi's first work years ago. I think Bugliosi came out with a follow-up, but I never bothered reading it.

Sanders's The Family is a classic.

Answer to a trivia question I can never quite phrase properly: Bob Zimmerman and Vincent Bugliosi both left the frozen tundra of Hibbing, MN, to find their success elsewhere.

Paisan said...

Czar, when it comes to pleasure reading, I have always had my one good eye on the Law of Diminishing Returns.

czar said...

@Paisan: You are the only person I know on Earth whose eyesight might be as bad as mine, although with your recent ocular difficulties, I have to cede you the lead in that category. Point being: I have ultimate respect for your one good eye.

Having said that, I'd have to categorize my tackling of The Making of Americans as taking one for the team, although what team that is, I'm uncertain.

I did manage to read four pages last night, and I found some passages endearing.

Then again, I'd spent the previous six hours dealing with three chapters from a book on worldwide care for orphans, with chapters translated roughly (and I do mean roughly) from the Chinese, Russian, and Portuguese. Stein's work was like a warm bath in comparison.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Czar.

Theme is up for Haiku Monday. COme play.

http://serendipitouswildmoments.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/haiku-monday/

Serendipity

Anonymous said...

Dang I just tried to comment with my open ID and after entering 7 sets of security letters used anon and got right in. Geeze!

S~

Aunty Belle said...

Well, now. Huh. I'se a fanatical reader of all manner of stuff, but admit I ain't read this tome. Havin' a time sloggin' through McCullough's
The Greater Journey--idea bein' the makin' of prominent Americans is due in some measure to the French.

Hope the new work is interestin'--we'll be waitin' to hear.