anyways- this one hit like a ton of bricks. and brought back that kind of grief that I experienced as a very young man in a new and acute way.

stirring, powerful stuff

and when she died I lost faith in everything- and suffered a wound that has never fully healed.

i wandered in some dark places for way too many years- and lost so much more that can never be recovered.

now look, the Brontës are the moody goth girls of classic lit. it's why we read em, it's why we love em. but thank fucking christ this one is a bildungsroman- because if jane didn't grow a goddamn spine by the end, I was gonna lose it lol

again- you don't have to finish something you hate, and far be it from me to shame anyone for that.

but I will absolutely shame you for getting on a high horse and announcing to the world that you couldn't be bothered to read something.

why? because it's fucking stupid.

but why brag about not reading a book? good for you?

i always felt that a lot of "book posters" were over-compensating for a real lack of literary engagement- but now they're just being brazen in claiming they can't be bothered to, yknow, read.

which is fucking weird.

The only piece(s) of art that I can compare it to is 2001 (Kubrick/Arthur C. Clarke). Truly unique.

DL then went off and made "The Return" while Frost went off and wrote those two books.

A rare moment of lit and expressionist filmmaking approaching the same ideas, clarifying each other, and deepening the mystery.

But also if you haven't mucked around with Mark Frost's "Secret History of Twin Peaks" and "The Final Dossier" i highly recommend them.

Early in the production for the revival, Frost and DL had a series of meetings about the "bigger" statement they wanted to make with Twin Peaks

You've done the hard part- having a recent viewing of FWWM under your belt is the key to "unlocking" the return. Strike while the iron is hot!

so, never be hesitant to pick up once more, the literary relics of your distant past.

when they stand in relation to the literary life you've lived since your last encounter- they tend to find unique ways to surprise and enthrall you

i picked this one for the first time since i was a teenager (it got name dropped HARD in Richard Powers' "the echo maker" - which i read last year), and after an ocean of digging into Stein since then, I was struck my the power and expressiveness of Ántonia's plain prose.

Yeah episode 8 of the return gives the BIG answer to this

so yeah- fucking life changing. the man has had his share of bad takes in recent years. but I'll forgive him forever bc of that night.

which, coming from the person who taught me to venerate emotional vulnerability in all ways- meant the world to me.

throughout the evening, whenever someone else had a question about isolation and "the struggle" he would call back to me as "my friend back there" and would gesture towards me

it's all sort of a blur these days. this was just before the pandemic and I was barely a year sober and feeling disconnected from everything then.

he looked straight at me. he called me by my name more than once. and said what amounted to "this will get better/easier"

Oh "new testament" nick is absolutely why I am still alive, and when he spoke to me when I asked about addiction, isolation and sorrow during his red hand tour- it shook me to the bone.

but his finest album is "your funeral..." by a solid fucking mile in my book