October is a good month to watch horror movies and read scary stories, but I read my scary stories over the summer and my cohabitants do not permit the freedom to watch scary movies when I like (which actually isn’t that often—I’m too scared of them).
In other news, I did begin a “Short Story Month” project in which I vowed to read a story each day and write a blog post on each. The first part I was almost able to completely fulfill. The second part was a little too ambitious, although I’ve certainly written more this month than I have in the past few months. Most of the stories that are marked as links can be followed to corresponding posts.
Undoubtedly, the best film that I watched was Synecdoche, New York. I’m disappointed I hadn’t watched this before. Charlie Kaufmann and Philip Seymour Thomas. Hot damn!
10/1
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 5 pp.
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 20 pp.
10/2
Great British Baking Show, 8.2 (hereafter GBBS): This is the episode in which perpetual straight man Paul Hollywood joins Noel Fielding (not Redding) and Matt Lucas to enact a hilarious joke about the handshake, albeit one that offended some viewers.
Sidereus Nuncius, 5 pp.
10/3
Troy (1994), 30 minutes: I wonder why I decided to watch some of this, when this film is so laughable at its best moments and at its worst … I wanted it see the scene at the beginning when Achilles takes on the Thessalonians solider and dispatches him easily and then I skimmed foreword to the scene where the Myrmidons storm the beach and raid Apollo’s temple.
10/4
GBBS, 8.1: That is not a mistake. I watched the second episode before I watched the second.
Chiang, “The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling”: The first of several stories read for the sake of Short Story Month, as celebrated on this site.
Machado, 10 pp.
10/6
Hebel, “An Unexpected Reunion”
Chiang, “The Great Silence”
10/8
Donald Barthelme, “Cortés and Montezuma”
Natalia Ginzburg, “The Mother”
Machado, 20 pp.
10/9
James Baldwin, “Going to Meet the Man”
Troy, the remainder
Aeneid, 10 pp.
GBBS, 8.3
10/10
William Trevor, “Beyond the Pale”
Angel of the Skies (2013): Direct-to-video, for sure. My son really liked it. His credentials as an aesthete are clearly lacking.
Machado, 10 pp.
10/11
William Trevor, “Beyond the Pale”: Read it a second time.
Michel Tournier, “Death and the Maiden”
Machado, 30 pp.
10/12
T. Coraghessan Boyle, “Greasy Lake”: He looks like the kind of guy that would write a story like this, albeit in jest.
Wolfgang Borchert, “Do Stay, Giraffe”
Kuhn, 15 pp.
10/13
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Kuhn, 20 pp.
Chiang, “Omphalos,” 5 pp.
10/14
Kuhn, 40 pp.
Chiang, “Omphalos,” finished
Second meeting of the Structure of Scientific Revolutions Reading Group
10/15
Keller, “The Little Dance Legend”
GBBS, 8.4
10/16
Chiang, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom,” 30 pp.
10/17
Chiang, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom,” rest
Fontane, “A Lady of My Years,” 10 pp. both German and English
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
10/18
Fontane, “A Lady of My Years,” finished
Machado, 10 pp.
10/19
Finished Machado
Wolfgang Borchert, “Do Stay, Giraffe”: After reading about Borchert on Wikipedia I decided to give this story another read.
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 5 pp.
Color Adjustment (1992)
10/20
Merleau-Ponty, 10 pp.
Arthur Schnitzler, “Blind Geronimo and his Brother”
NYRB on bad hero returns book
Emil Lasker, Chess Strategy, 15 pp.
10/21
Merleau-Ponty, 5 pp.
10/22
Tolstoy, 20 pp.
10/23
Notorious (1946): While reading The Philosophical Hitchcock, among the films to which Pippin referred was Notorious, which I expect I have not watched since the 1990s. The frequency of references made me think I needed to consider this film again, which my intellectual posterity had not revisited.
Thomas Mann, “A Difficult Hour”: As if Schiller needed more hero worship!
GBBS, 8.5
10/24
Back to the Future (1985)
Julio Cortázar, “Bestiary”
Merleau-Ponty, 5 pp.
Tolstoy, 15 pp.
10/25
Merleau-Ponty, 10 pp.
Ingeborg Bachmann, “Everything”
Ben Lerner, The Topeka School, 20 pp.
10/26
Kafka, “Before the Law,” “The Gate at the Manor House”
Lerner, 20 pp.
Merleau-Ponty, 10 pp.
10/27
A DAY OF NO CONSUMPTION …
10/28
Kuhn, 50 pp.
Kafka, “A Little Fable,” “A Commentary”
Bachmann, “Everything”
10/29
Finished Kuhn
Chinua Achebe, “The Sacrificial Egg”
Ilsa Aisinger, “The Bound Man”
The Queen’s Gambit, 1: Did I mention that I play chess?
10/30
The Empire Strikes Back (1980): Progeny.
Lerner, 35 pp.
Merleau-Ponty, 5 pp.
The Queen’s Gambit, 2
10/31
The Last Jedi (2017): Kinder, Kinder, Kinder.
Heinrich Boll, “The Railway Station at Zimpern”
Lerner, 30 pp.: I’m done with this book. 90 pages is enough.
Merleau-Ponty, 5 pp.
