nudle

20,085.

That's how many words I have in my twelve chapters. Two more chapters to go, I think, then the book will be first-drafted.

I'm re-reading Charlotte's Web. What a beautiful book. Mr White, please send your spirit into the fingers of my right hand when I write my book again.

Addendum: Make that 20,801.

Today, both kids, in unison.

Dear Iona,

I feel like I should be writing a letter to your brother, because I haven't yet, but I want to write to you. I carry a lot of guilt lately about how I feel (and don't feel). I don't know how to shake it yet, but I'm going to shake it, the guilt. It makes me angry, which is bad for everyone.

Tonight we were reading a book we've been enjoying, Holes, by Louis Sachar. I suddenly realized I should have read it first, because it is too old for you, by perhaps three years. There is a part about racism that knocked me flat on my ass, only since this is a letter to you I will replace that word with bottom. I cried when I read ahead a little (thank you, foreshadowing, my trusty ally) and cried when I closed the book. I want to shield you (and your brother) from the ugliness in the world.

I want to shield you and your brother from the ugliness in me. Which brings me to...

...this letter is partly for Han after all, because what I want to write is that I think I have a touch of Post Adoption Depression. Which is why I'm up at 1:30 in the morning when I need nine hours of sleep every single night. I spent the past four hours researching PAD (its snappy acronym). So, sorry I've been a bit of a nightmare lately.

Maybe this letter is for me.

I do want to say to you that I love you, and I expect to love your brother just as much as I love you, soonish. If I push you too hard to be something you're not, or good at everything because I know you can be, or old enough to read the books I want to read, I'm so sorry. I love you just the way you are, sweet and wise and innocent; seven years old.

Any minute now, I'm going to let go of guilt.

love,
Mommy

David Foster Wallace: transcription of the Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

More fodder for my obsession with the late David Foster Wallace.

McSweeney's.

I woke up to bad news today.

But this is a fascinating article about David Foster Wallace.

Addendum: here's another.

Farewell, Madeleine.

Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday. She's been one of my favorite authors since I was a child. I wish I had met her.

The 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.

Below is a random list by Random House of 100 best novels. I found it on this site I discovered just five minutes ago, bibliophil.org, a free site where you can keep track of all your books and rate them -- then share your library and ratings.

The thing I was thinking was, what if I read all these books and reviewed them here? Would anyone care? Would I care if anyone cared? Could I do it before I died?

....................

The 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century
Written in the English Language

Compiled by the editorial board of Modern Library,
a division of Random House

1. Ulysses, James Joyce
2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
7. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
8. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
9. Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
11. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
12. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
13. 1984, George Orwell
14. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
15. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
16. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
18. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
19. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
20. Native Son, Richard Wright
21. Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow
22. Appointment in Samarra, John O' Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy), John Dos Passos
24. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
25. A Passage to India, E. M. Forster
26. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James
27. The Ambassadors, Henry James
28. Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T.Farrell
30. The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
31. Animal Farm, George Orwell
32. The Golden Bowl, Henry James
33. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
34. A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
35. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
36. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
38. Howards End, E. M. Forster
39. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
40. The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
41. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
42. Deliverance, James Dickey
43. A Dance to the Music of Time (series), Anthony Powell
44. Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
45. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
46. The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
47. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
48. The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence
49. Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence
50. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
51. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
52. Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
53. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
54. Light in August, William Faulkner
55. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
56. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
57. Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford
58. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
59. Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm
60. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
61. Death Comes to the Archbishop, Willa Cather
62. From Here to Eternity, James Jones
63. The Wapshot Chronicles, John Cheever
64. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
65. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
66. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
67. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
68. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
69. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
70. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell
71. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
72. A House for Ms. Biswas, V. S. Naipaul
73. The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West
74. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
75. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
77. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
78. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
79. A Room With a View, E. M. Forster
80. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
81. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
82. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
83. A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul
84. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
85. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
86. Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
87. The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett
88. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
89. Loving, Henry Green
90. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
91. Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
92. Ironweed, William Kennedy
93. The Magus, John Fowles
94. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
95. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
96. Sophie's Choice, William Styron
97. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
98. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
99. The Ginger Man, J. P. Donleavy
100. The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington