I'm in way over my head here.
I'm supposed to be reading a page of The Little Kittens and the Gumdrop Garden by Norris Squee every day. For those of you who a) didn't read the last post and b) are too lazy to scroll down, I'm doing this in order to finish the book by the end of summer and get the same feeling that the people reading the 1000+ pages of Infinite Jest over the summer must feel.
But it's hard going.
The first page almost finished me off. I lost count of the number of times I had to read it in order to understand it fully. From what I can gather (and the depth of meaning here has left me with the impression that I'm missing some layers of interpretation), there were some kittens. And these kittens were little.
I will confess. This blew my mind. I was thinking that maybe I would be able to read more than one page on the first day, and possibly get ahead of myself, giving me some leeway. But now I see that this was optimistic bravado. I couldn't get my head to understand this first page, and I had to lie down. This could also have been partly due to the pictures in the book; many of them have so many colours that looking at them for any length of time is like pressing my eyes into an LSD-laced box of rainbows.
God, we haven't even entered the gumdrop garden, and I'm already thinking I've bitten off more than I can chew. I need a rest.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
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9 comments:
Stay the course! You can do it!
The trick is to remember that the kittens are an allegory for the Christ figure as interpreted through the lens of the Western Canon, supporting a neo-structuralist reading of the first paragraph.
And anyone who tries to sell you on a deconstructive analysis of the gumdrop garden itself is full of shit.
Slow and steady, TIR, slow and steady.
kittens.
little kittens.
hmm what could be the deeper meaning behind THAT?
you COULD be in over your head, it's true.
;-)
If I were you, I'd just say screw it and rent the movie.
Maybe it would be easier if you actually took some LSD?
I think an investment in the Cliffs Notes would be wise.
Perhaps if it was read to you at bedtime in a variety of funny voices, you could still make the deadline?
Yeah, I've heard it's a real bitch once you get into the Gumdrop Garden. Maybe you should just quit.
*scoffing behind your back, "Quitter!"*
Did you get to the part yet where someone puts all the kittens in a sack and tosses them into the Butterscotch River?
Oh, I hope I haven't ruined anything.
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