About Agaat and puppies

Three weeks old. Our two males, held by Steve.

This is a lonely business, blogging. I hope Ilovenotcamping is going to log on soon. However, here are my latest thoughts on reading. or not reading Agaat. Yes, I must confess, I have given up on Agaat. Sorry Trace. Sorry Karen. Sorry everyone. I tried hard. Perhaps its just not my time but I have been thinking that it's more than that. There is something unfinished about Agaat, something too raw and 'in your face' for my liking. While it's almost Joyceian in its flow, I couldn't actually admit to enjoying reading it. After bribing myself and performing other tricks, I have decided to shelve it for another time and gratefully fled to Exclusives yesterday to buy the final two volumes of Simon Gray, The Last Cigarette and Coda. Want a taste of him?
2005
I'm still in Suffolk, where it's a typical August afternoon, cold and damp, with England losing a test match in Birmingham, and things can't go on like this. I say that, but how can they change? Well, I can make them change by stating categorically -

that intend to give up smoking.
I've left out the 'I'. Do it again, with the 'I' in it.
I intend to give up smoking.
There. I've put it down. It's legible, in firm, blue ballpoint. There's no getting away from it because it's plonk in the middle of the page, and to tear it out would be cheating.

And so it continues, anacoluthically and quite wonderfully. Now this is what I call good writing. See?

Oh, and I also read Hotel de Dream by Edmund White, which I bought a long time ago for the Bookclub and gulped that down with gratitude. Magical stuff. You can keep the South African farm fiction.