notes written in pencil in my copy of great plains by ian frazier
on the copyright page it says
Grateful acknowledgement is made to The New Yorker, where portions of this work first appeared.
the new yorker has been underlined and someone has written in tiny, cursive writing, pencil:
"a peculiar style of writing. Accumulations, accurate enough, of facts, observations, rendered as if the writer believes he can be, as scientists believe they are, objective. It cannot be. It reads like Anne Marrows' accounts-- never getting to any point [the last word is underlined]. The writer always unequal to his subject because he poses as an infidel. (Or is one). The account is sophisticated, but fades the conviction of the subjects. We do not care."
― dylannn, Saturday, 14 June 2008 05:28 (seventeen years ago)
on page 131 it says
We got out. Right next to the fence was a dead calf. Its lip was up off its teeth and its side was a metropolis of maggots.
maggots is underlined and in the margin is written "I don't think so." same cursive pencil
― dylannn, Saturday, 14 June 2008 05:29 (seventeen years ago)
Then there were flocks of birds--mountain plovers, mostly. They were olive and taupe-colored above, sooty white underneath.
taupe is underlined and written beside it is a question mark in pencil
― dylannn, Saturday, 14 June 2008 05:32 (seventeen years ago)
wait also on page 162
We have been the scourge of many Great Plains species, but we haven't made a dent in the grasshoppers.
"the scourge of many Great Plains species" is underlined and written in the margin is "how New Yorker mag!"
― dylannn, Saturday, 14 June 2008 05:33 (seventeen years ago)
on page 210 writing about nuclear weapons installations in the great plains
And in return we condense unimaginable amounts of treasure into weapons buried beneath the land which so much treasure came from--weapons for which our best hope might be that we will someday take them apart and throw them away, and for which our next-best hope certainly is that they remain humming away under the prairie, absorbing fear and maintenance, unused, forever.
written in very neat cursive faint pencil:
"You can look at it that way. But have you got a better idea?"
― dylannn, Saturday, 14 June 2008 05:35 (seventeen years ago)
I liked this book a lot when I was 22 and haven't read it since.
― Eazy, Saturday, 14 June 2008 05:37 (seventeen years ago)
Flashy style, though.
― Eazy, Saturday, 14 June 2008 05:39 (seventeen years ago)
it should be 600 pages, a crazy meandering thing. that's what it felt like. there was so much left inside that i wanted to see and i wasn't ready for a sudden ending at page 200something, with a half a book of notes left in my right hand.
Facts about nuclear missiles I learned from The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Rockets and Missiles, by Bill Gunston (New York, 1979)...
― dylannn, Saturday, 14 June 2008 05:50 (seventeen years ago)