Because I work nights, it's really hard to stay awake the nights I don't work. Last night was one of those, so I thought I would do some reading. I had already spent a few hours going through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Handbook of Bird Biology, so I went back to one of my favorite books, Vernon Birkhead's Victimless Crimes and Hard Plots to Follow. It's not Amazon.com, but you can suggest to Amazon here that you'd like them to carry it.
Last night I was reading the part where Pervis Sutpen has just escaped from prison and is trying to find his pet timber wolf, Jibjab. Pervis knows that if he doesn't get to Jibjab who has the antidote around his collar he'll never get back to the fishing ship where Captain Bulkington is about to unknowingly steer the crew right toward the Straits of Pound. Pervis, of course, is weighed down by the one-act plays that the prison guard who helped him escape had written and Pervis had promised to deliver to Timor, the traveling bard from the prison guard's home village, which Pervis doesn't yet know is also the home village of Rodney the blind arachnologist who prophecied that Pervis would never find love until he sees a hearse being dragged by a team of fainting goats. And the whole time Pervis is complaining that the prison guard didn't write on both sides of the paper.
As you can imagine, it's a pretty magical moment.
Last night I was reading the part where Pervis Sutpen has just escaped from prison and is trying to find his pet timber wolf, Jibjab. Pervis knows that if he doesn't get to Jibjab who has the antidote around his collar he'll never get back to the fishing ship where Captain Bulkington is about to unknowingly steer the crew right toward the Straits of Pound. Pervis, of course, is weighed down by the one-act plays that the prison guard who helped him escape had written and Pervis had promised to deliver to Timor, the traveling bard from the prison guard's home village, which Pervis doesn't yet know is also the home village of Rodney the blind arachnologist who prophecied that Pervis would never find love until he sees a hearse being dragged by a team of fainting goats. And the whole time Pervis is complaining that the prison guard didn't write on both sides of the paper.
As you can imagine, it's a pretty magical moment.
