And when I thought of reading more of this novel, I got really excited. Late last night finishing a cigarette on the fire escape, inventorying the bitter, dark, stinking thing that's my life these days, I tried to think of promising reasons to wake up in the morning, to drink literal coffee and walk out the door. It's been awhile since I've started anything that felt this good.

And yeah, I'm only fifty pages in, but seriously, he writes like a dream. Maybe that's a gross metaphor, just wrong or too dumb. It's like smooth white gold, a dream mouthful, delicious. I am holding my mug underneath the cow's teat here, I guess, while Farmer Alan squirts this magical substance in. This man's writing is like cream you only get at the farm. I'd put this on my to-read list ages ago after pillaging a beloved professor's Amazon reviews, and reviews by terrifyingly-literate-Eric-of-the-drink-and-wide-smirk have recently pushed Hollinghurst back into my mind. But it doesn't taste good.Īnyway, riding back home half-drunk from a novelistically bad party, I opened The Line of Beauty, and started to read. I keep drinking this shit because I have to. That Martin Amis is like some synthetic creamer, with an artificial flavor that's kind of alluringly disgusting. It might take the edge off, but not nicely, and with some of this stuff I think I might be better off drinking the coffee black. But for some reason everything I pick up lately's been unsatisfying, like skim milk or soy. So lately my life does seem like a pot of thick, scalding acrid coffee I read books in the hope that they'll help me choke it down. I started this last night, heading home after one of the most dreadful evenings in recent memory.

Book the line of beauty