Can’t echo what you can’t hear, can’t mourn what you can’t see. Or can’t you? Say it again. It’s all a big in-joke. The substance is unimportant; the signal is the noise. Too tall an order to take in everything, to make sense of it all. Understand what you will, all the same you’ll have to grieve blind. Everybody has to grieve blind.

Wouldn’t recommend Pynchon to just anyone, maybe not to anyone, not even really to me. A whole lot to follow, and the feeling it is all one big, godless joke. Toole and Vonnegut come to mind. But this is manageable, at least. You can gain some ground, if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. Feels deeply American, in an exhausting and disorienting sort of way, and maybe that is the appropriate tone for the time, for all the time. Doing my rainbow breathing exercises to settle down.

’I sometimes wonder,’ said William, ‘where the things we shed are — because they must go somewhere…’ They must; they are here, in fact, adroitly embodied at our summons. How sweet to recollect you.

From Lispector inspired to complete the catalogue of the second-most-surprising selector of words I can conjure to mind. Knight has not so much the pull-immediate of some others in his oeuvre, but reels things in fully by the half and carries on masterfully to the end. All this talk of chess and escapes and Luzhin must necessarily come to mind, but also some of the sweetness of Pnin. We can make much meaning and still love the ordinary. These things can stand for something and be themselves, too. Leaving a little mystery behind, as a treat.