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“If denton still owns 3Par, he’s buying drinks next Thursday!!!!!”
If I still owned it, I couldn’t afford drinks! But I sold it at first bid… I’m not an arb and don’t have the knack to be one. Still, this must be the best one since the old DBL days!
I could probably afford a coupla pina coladas for you guys tho…
In Timbuktu Paul Auster tackles homelessness in America using a dog as his point-of-view character. Strange as the premise seems, it’s been done before, in John Berger’s King, and it actually works. Filtering the homeless experience through the relentlessly unsentimental eye of a dog, both writers avoid miring their tales in an excess of melodrama. Whereas Berger’s book skips among several characters, Timbuktu remains tightly focused on just two: Mr. Bones, “a mutt of no particular worth or distinction,” and his master, Willy G. Christmas, a middle-aged schizophrenic who has been on the streets since the death of his mother four years before. The novel begins with Willy and Mr. Bones in Baltimore searching for a former high school English teacher who had encouraged the teenage Willy’s writerly aspirations. Now Willy is dying and anxious to find a home for both his dog and the multitude of manuscripts he has stashed in a Greyhound bus terminal. “Willy had written the last sentence he would ever write, and there were no more than a few ticks left in the clock. The words in the locker were all he had to show for himself. If the words vanished, it would be as if he had never lived.”
Paul Auster is a cerebral writer, preferring to get to his reader’s gut through the brain. When Willy dies, he goes out on a sea of words; as for Mr. Bones, this is a dog who can think about metaphysical issues such as the afterlife–referred to by Willy as “Timbuktu”:
What if no pets were allowed? It didn’t seem possible, and yet Mr. Bones had lived long enough to know that anything was possible, that impossible things happened all the time. Perhaps this was one of them, and in that perhaps hung a thousand dreads and agonies, an unthinkable horror that gripped him every time he thought about it.
Once Willy dies and Mr. Bones is on his own, things go from bad to worse as the now masterless dog faces a series of betrayals, rejections, and disappointments. By stepping inside a dog’s skin, Auster is able to comment on human cruelties and infrequent kindnesses from a unique world view. But reader be warned: the world in Timbuktu is a bleak one, and even the occasional moments of grace are short lived. –Alix Wilber –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Gem – great point. If you know that you’re going to be a contestant on Hells Kitchen – it might make sense to practice making a risotto and a welllington.
Some are talking about Manny Ramirez for the Yankees. Ha ha. That should get my brother foaming at the mouth. I used to think he was “cute” when he was on the Red Sox and since he is originally from the Bronx, wouldn’t it be great to have him on the Yankees? I asked my brother. Eyes bulging, my normally calm brother pointed out that Manny R. has the worst history of tantrums, bad sportsmanship (not running out grounders to first being one of them) and that basically he was a creep who had no place on the yankees.
Could he cut his dreads, act like a normal human being, wear normal sized clothing (not prison pant sized uniform) and bring his good hitting to the Yankees? Would Derek and co, be able to slap him around enough to fit it?
I wish I was a lawyer
my friend is a lawyer(she’s 35) inside an advertising firm and she probably gets paid $150K and does NOTHING
I mean NOTHING all day – maybe she works 2 hours a day at her office – she also takes a record # of days off and vacations AND is only working a 4 day workweek b/c she asked to as she had a baby in Dec
meantime she leaves at the same time EVERY DAY – 5:15pm and NEVER takes work home with her – EVER
what a life!
What I find weird about Gordon Ramsy’s TV shows is that he always makes the contestants make the SAME MEAL OVER AND OVER – it’s always some damn Risotto and salmon and I wonder to myself after the 6th episode man oh man are these people idiots or what – when will they be able to just get the damn risotto RIGHT! – you are supposedly cooks for crissakes!
“If denton still owns 3Par, he’s buying drinks next Thursday!!!!!”
If I still owned it, I couldn’t afford drinks! But I sold it at first bid… I’m not an arb and don’t have the knack to be one. Still, this must be the best one since the old DBL days!
I could probably afford a coupla pina coladas for you guys tho…
Gem – did your friend work her tail off before she got the gig at the ad firm?
quote:
Which Paul Auster book is his best?
TIMBUKTU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that is the best book i EVER read.
In Timbuktu Paul Auster tackles homelessness in America using a dog as his point-of-view character. Strange as the premise seems, it’s been done before, in John Berger’s King, and it actually works. Filtering the homeless experience through the relentlessly unsentimental eye of a dog, both writers avoid miring their tales in an excess of melodrama. Whereas Berger’s book skips among several characters, Timbuktu remains tightly focused on just two: Mr. Bones, “a mutt of no particular worth or distinction,” and his master, Willy G. Christmas, a middle-aged schizophrenic who has been on the streets since the death of his mother four years before. The novel begins with Willy and Mr. Bones in Baltimore searching for a former high school English teacher who had encouraged the teenage Willy’s writerly aspirations. Now Willy is dying and anxious to find a home for both his dog and the multitude of manuscripts he has stashed in a Greyhound bus terminal. “Willy had written the last sentence he would ever write, and there were no more than a few ticks left in the clock. The words in the locker were all he had to show for himself. If the words vanished, it would be as if he had never lived.”
Paul Auster is a cerebral writer, preferring to get to his reader’s gut through the brain. When Willy dies, he goes out on a sea of words; as for Mr. Bones, this is a dog who can think about metaphysical issues such as the afterlife–referred to by Willy as “Timbuktu”:
What if no pets were allowed? It didn’t seem possible, and yet Mr. Bones had lived long enough to know that anything was possible, that impossible things happened all the time. Perhaps this was one of them, and in that perhaps hung a thousand dreads and agonies, an unthinkable horror that gripped him every time he thought about it.
Once Willy dies and Mr. Bones is on his own, things go from bad to worse as the now masterless dog faces a series of betrayals, rejections, and disappointments. By stepping inside a dog’s skin, Auster is able to comment on human cruelties and infrequent kindnesses from a unique world view. But reader be warned: the world in Timbuktu is a bleak one, and even the occasional moments of grace are short lived. –Alix Wilber –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Gem – great point. If you know that you’re going to be a contestant on Hells Kitchen – it might make sense to practice making a risotto and a welllington.
Some are talking about Manny Ramirez for the Yankees. Ha ha. That should get my brother foaming at the mouth. I used to think he was “cute” when he was on the Red Sox and since he is originally from the Bronx, wouldn’t it be great to have him on the Yankees? I asked my brother. Eyes bulging, my normally calm brother pointed out that Manny R. has the worst history of tantrums, bad sportsmanship (not running out grounders to first being one of them) and that basically he was a creep who had no place on the yankees.
Could he cut his dreads, act like a normal human being, wear normal sized clothing (not prison pant sized uniform) and bring his good hitting to the Yankees? Would Derek and co, be able to slap him around enough to fit it?
I wish I was a lawyer
my friend is a lawyer(she’s 35) inside an advertising firm and she probably gets paid $150K and does NOTHING
I mean NOTHING all day – maybe she works 2 hours a day at her office – she also takes a record # of days off and vacations AND is only working a 4 day workweek b/c she asked to as she had a baby in Dec
meantime she leaves at the same time EVERY DAY – 5:15pm and NEVER takes work home with her – EVER
what a life!
Rob —
You should set up a dog pit and have your pooch and grandma fight for his birthday! It would be exciting for everyone!
Which Paul Auster book is his best?
What I find weird about Gordon Ramsy’s TV shows is that he always makes the contestants make the SAME MEAL OVER AND OVER – it’s always some damn Risotto and salmon and I wonder to myself after the 6th episode man oh man are these people idiots or what – when will they be able to just get the damn risotto RIGHT! – you are supposedly cooks for crissakes!