Such to the dead might appear the world of liv­ing — charged with infor­ma­tion, with mean­ing, yet some­how always just, ter­ri­bly, beyond that fate­ful limen where any lamp of com­pre­hen­sion might beam forth
–Thomas Pyn­chon, Against The Day

SO I have fallen behind with my Gravity’s Rain­bow read­ing. I don’t know exactly why, but it’s not ‘catch­ing’ me like Infi­nite Jest did. Not yet any­way. There have been beau­ti­ful pas­sages thus far: the open­ing (“a scream­ing comes across the sky” stuff) pas­sage, and then the longer extended Slothrop devel­op­ment, with fam­ily his­tory and then the {I am guess­ing} key para­noia about the bombs hit­ting before the sound…

But, when the need arose tonight, my hands reached for the clas­sic Walden, which I have now read 3 or 4 times com­pletely, and is very much like an old and well-known friend who man­ages to sur­prise you each time you meet — there is a com­fort and depth there, and then lit­tle mir­a­cles under the skin. I read most of the House­warm­ing chap­ter, since it’s almost Octo­ber here and I see all the pump­kin stalls and tents pop­ping up– which is really the vec­tor here towards fall, since South­ern California’s weather remains warm and of course we have the bit­ter and bone-dry, parch­ing Santa Anas ahead. The sym­bols do a lot to coun­ter­act the desert-on-the-shore real­ity behind the curtains.

Any­way, quite dif­fer­ent than Pynchon’s text, Thoreau — while no lush auteur — man­ages to evoke with sim­ple clar­ity the crisp taste and smell of autumn in New Eng­land for me. It is enough to carry me on to bed.