I suppose occasionally books and movies should be experienced in a particular order.

--In addition to my theory that there are certain times when you could read the best book or see the best film and not be in the mood to experience it, I have a theory about the ordering of the experience of films or books. (And I know, I sound pretentious) Like sometimes there should be an order to them. And am not referring to book series where you discover something terrible if you read them out of order. No, I mean that if you read an author's third book and then go back to his/her first one, you have a different response to the book than if you read the first one first and then progressed in a vague sense of order. The problem being of course that I usually start somewhere in the middle and go backwards. I do this with tv. shows too. I got hooked on Buffy in third season and had to go back.

The most recent example is David Sedaris's Barrel Fever. I started with his stuff around Me Talk Pretty One Day after hearing "Youth in Asia" on NPR while driving around the Vestal Pkwy. So, I think I read Me Talk and Holidays on Ice mostly back to back December of 2001. And then in 2004, Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim. Haven't read the most recent one as it's hb. and all my others are pb. I finally get around to reading Barrel Fever and discover that it's mostly odd short stories that are a shade too dark even for me and it only has a few humorous essays. Like three. And they're ennhh. So this leads me to the statement that if you're going to read Sedaris, either start with Barrel Fever and go that way or if you start at Me Talk, go only as far back as Naked. Unless you accept that it's not going to be as good.

Sometimes, it's good to go back before you go forward. I read Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier and Clay a couple of years ago, so I just read Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which is his first novel. In case you haven't read them, Kavalier is a very good, but EPIC, novel that starts in the 30s and goes up to the late 50s/early 60s. It addresses pretty much everything, high/low art, comic books, gay identity, jewish identity, suburbs, war atrocities, and so forth. It's very, very good, but it's very exhausting. So, when I read Mysteries of Pittsburgh which deals with one's twenties, gay identity, mob stuff, and Pittsburgh, it was nice to read something that was lighter. I don't think I could've read another novel like Kavalier. And when I say mob stuff, I don't mean Godfather; I mean his dad is a mob boss. It's hard to explain. He doesn't use quite as many words that I feel like I need to look them up. And he wrote it in his 20s, so it is refreshing to know that you don't land up at Clay-level writing at 26. Well, it is. If one was teaching an intro. to creative fiction, Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Ethan Canin's Emperor of the Air aren't bad ways to go. It's not like assigning some author who has a completely different style than you do you. So I'll read the Final Solution (and others) at a later date.

And while we're here, a word about Charles Kauffman movies. If you're going to be watching Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, watch Being first since Eternal builds upon nicely what Being does. Watching Eternal first and then going back to Being doesn't work since it's not as cool.

And does anyone know what is the rule regarding italicizing titles and then using a shortened version later? Do you then italicize the shortened version or is if by italicizing once you don't have to do it anymore? Look over my entry. It's all over it.