It is hot. I have no news in my life. So when I talk to you on the phone and like a polite person you ask me what is new in my life, what is going on, do not think I am lying when I say that nothing, absolutely nothing is going on in my life right now, nothing is new. Same old, same old.

I am sweating at my computer, and am about to go sweat in my bed. Today, I read Dave Hickey's The Invisible Dragon, which did not excite me nearly as much as I had thought it would. I did like the last essay, the sadist/masochist anaology to explain a viewer's relationship to art. It was a neat way to look at it, even if I did not agree with the underlying assumption of that analogy, which was that the institutional arrangement of art (museums) neuter art of its beauty because the works then become something that you did not choose - it is a sadist relationship, rather than a masochist relationship, wherein you, the viewer, possess the agency to choose your pleasure/pain. Blah blah blah.

Yesterday, I finished Matthew Sharpe's The Sleeping Father, which I also did not like as much as I had thought I would. It is something that I probably would have liked in high school, which seems to be what most new, "hip" fiction seems to be - it all seems very adolescent. The irony is also too heavy for my tastes these days. Next on plate to read: Mary McCarthy's Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood, then W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn (which I know I will love - Sebald is who I am going to start citing when people ask me who my favorite author is - he is what I am looking for - what I want from a book), and then when I get back from the road trip, Ulysses, which I will be rereading, or attempting to read again, along with Peter.

And that's what is new. I read books, and then I go to work at a bookstore. Ocassionally, I will go out and drink, but same old, same old. And I like it.