Infinite Zombies

Hi everyone,  I’m Paul Debraski.  You may know me from previous blogging exploits like Infinite Summer, Moby Dick, Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow.  I used to read big books like this back in college but I had kind of gotten away from them post college.  But I’m back and happily in the midst of big, complicated books.  I’m unofficially posting here (Daryl says it’s okay).  I was really hoping to have more time to write my own posts and maybe even contribute here.  But man, time is fleeting.

So, here’s a few thoughts that I’ve been pondering while reading the book.

When you first start to read this book, you slowly get used to the idea that there is a ton of noise and you have  to pick out the important parts.  Of course, how are you supposed to know what is important?  I mean, I knew (from reading this before) that the book was about money and stocks, so I focused on the details of that.  And yet, as I get twenty page after a conversation I realize that some little blow off detail was actually really important too.

Surely not everything is important here.  (Can we assume that the porn jokes are just jokes and aren’t going to “mean” something in 100 pages?)  But what about that water leak?  Is that going to be significant, or was it just a way to get the kids out of the board room.  (Of course, something bad is bound to happen with Monty’s speech, right?  And yet, as far as chronological time, the section ends with the night ending, so did Monty even give the speech?

It would all be so frustrating if it weren’t so enjoyable to read.

So, if you like, I’m posting along at my blog.  Although as I found out, I got a pretty big detail wrong last week (which I have since corrected).  http://ijustreadaboutthat.wordpress.com/category/occupygaddis/