Digging a Hole

Reading is like digging a hole, and some books get you in deeper than others. The Philip Roth book I've just finished had me up to my neck, up to my fucking neck. The problem with the hole is you have to dig yourself out of it, and when I finished that book today, I just sat in silence for a while nursing a thick drink. Notwithstanding what I've said earlier, for there are many kinds of holes, even tracks, that mark your reading progress through this world, 'The Human Stain' has the sense of epic about it, or perhaps our disquieting lack of epic quality reflected back at us, and it is tremendous. It features a professor of classics caught in the morass of contemporary 'rules' which pretty much might be summed up as 'the classics are too difficult these days'.

It's so good I'm out of the house back in this bar listening to Cure records and watching the unceasing passage of mums, soon to be mums, buggies and babies once again for light relief. Apparently this place, this spot, has the highest percentage birthrate in Germany