the interweaving of solemn respect and gossipy irreverence

"Nevertheless, and although he himself did not seem to notice it, those letters of recuperation and stimulation were slowly changing into pastoral letters of disenchantment. One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, they they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end." -One Hundred Years of Solitude

After a month and a half of enduring willfull anchorage to this book, I've finally reached its melancholy, tragic finale. It was great. Wonderful. Spectacular. A truly fine, incomparable work of literature. I'm going to enjoy letting the ending sink in all day as I go about my preparations for my trip.

Which brings me to the next issue: what book do I bring with me? I hate having to begin a new book on an airplane, and I'd hate to be stuck halfway across the world, trapped in the solitude of the Pacific in the summertime with some book that I really just ain't jivin' with. I've been reading The Collected Stories of William Faulkner for the past week or so.. I really am loving the collection--it's a fantastic display of Faulkner's stylistic versatility--but I think we've all learned from experience that he isn't necessarily the ideal vacation read. I foresee myself spending a good portion of today trying on novels, in between lending myself almost entirely to the Twilight Zone marathon (the apparently revived mid-'80s version) on television and facing the mountain of laundry sitting idly in my closet.