Dear Reader,
I began reading The Historian this morning, but I didn’t get very far because I had to stop and examine the opening pages to see what Kostova was doing. I thought for a long time, questioned how it might interweave with the whole novel, tried to visualize it, and interrogated my own writing process versus hers, which, of course, I can’t possibly know.
Word Raccoon and I spent at least half an hour on the opening 15 pages. Seriously.
(I chose my friend’s copy of the novel to read, though it was the smallest print, both because it has her name in it, and because the yellowed, well-loved copy seems perfect for the plot of the novel.)
After lunch, I returned to the novel, but not for too long. While I didn’t suffer many ill effects from the flu shot, yay, I was feeling restless, so you will be shocked to hear that I returned to fine-tuning the house, this time sorting my tea collection. Word Raccoon howled when I threw some of the older tea out, saying it was perfectly fine. I shushed her with a cupcake.
(A quick aside – my EMG is scheduled for late January, so until then, we wait, I guess. That was the earliest appointment they had available.)
WR had all of these poem ideas before and during our reading time, one idea including a scratch-off poem (don’t ask; she was trying to figure out how to make it happen but I think she was overcaffeinated at that point)
She also has a poem collection idea that she hasn’t begun but that she thinks some of her poet acquaintances would write stunning poems that would fit this: Pentimenti. (If you write one, please send it to me, Dear Reader!)
A refresher for those who might need it: a pentimento is a visible trace of what a painter later changed and painted over, a ghostly image. It’s fascinating to imagine what might hide just under the surface, hiding what the painter first intended and then tried to hide but ultimately couldn’t as the first elements make their way to or through the surface.
It might be lying dormant, so to speak, for years until one day it starts bleeding through. Maybe some things can’t, shouldn’t, remain hidden, but then is that fair to the painter if the artist’s intent was to cover it up and never let it show? Is it fair to the world to keep it painted over, though, when it might lend something unexpected to the world?
Is it heroic or dastardly when art historians use X-rays to plunder secrets the painter wanted to keep?
Well, I’m not very far into this book and so far it doesn’t have much if anything to do with art, but the secrets aspect fits it very much.
Maybe it’s because it’s October and spooky season, but would that make a great chapbook or what? WR is opening the Notes app as we speak, though I wish she’d remember we’re writing a blog post right now.
We are sitting beneath the light cast by the fall garland that Woolf rejected. We repurposed it on the stair rail, and WR and I like it.
Drema