anja

Check out the spectacular menu we wrote for the next two weeks:
Linguine with Tomatoes, Arugula, and Pecorino *tonight's dinner
Parsnip and Rosemary Risotto
Mushroom Crepes with Poblano Chile Sauce
Roasted Carrot Sandwich with Hummus and Braised Romaine
Millennium Carbonara
Stirfry
Israeli Salad with Pitas and Hummus
Strawberry Salad with Walnuts and Goat Cheese
Chana Masala *already eaten
Gnocchi with Veggie Sausage and Marinara *already eaten

I tripped upon the big book sale today, when I was technically at work. I purchased the following books for only $16: V. and Vineland, both by Pynchon, Generation X by Coupland, Frisk by Cooper, Foucalt's Pendulum by Eco, Lynch on Lynch, and three by or about Anais Nin, D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study, which I think might be first edition, Diary 7 (finally that set is complete!) and A Casebook on.

I've been reading three books. Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace is the one I like the most and will surely finish before I even turn back to either of the other two: Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet and Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos by Nelson George. Our Lady is very enjoyable, but particularly taxing, so BBBB is mostly just an exuse to take a break from it. Lobster, besides eliciting the same lame joke from practically every passerby, is exceptional. It has probably the only passage about 9/11 that I can imagine ever being moved by (call me a heartless bitch, and actually it's about 9/12):

"The overall point being that on Wednesday here there's a weird accretive pressure to have a flag out. If the purpose of displaying a flag is to make a statement, it seems like at a certain point of density of flags you're making more of a statement if you don't have a flag out. It's not totally clear what statement this would be, though. What if you just don't happen to have a flag? Where has everyone gotten these flags, especially the little ones you can fasten to your mailbox? Are they all from the Fourth of July and people just save them, like Christmas ornaments? How do you know to do this? There's nothing in the Yellow Pages under Flag. At some point there starts to be actual tension. Nobody walks by or stops their car and says, "Hey, how come your house doesn't have a flag?," but it gets easier and easier to imagine them thinking it. Even a sort of half-collapsed house down the street that everybody thought was abandoned has one of the little flags on a stick in the weeds by the driveway. None of Bloomington's grocery stores turn out to stock flags. The big novelty shop downtown has nothing but Halloween stuff. Only a few businesses are actually open, but even the closed ones are now displaying some sort of flag. It's almost surreal. The VFW hall is obviously a good bet, but it can't open until noon if at all (it has a bar). The counter lady at Burwell Oil references a certain hideous KWIK-N-EZ convenience store out by I-55 at which she's pretty sure she recalls seeing some little plastic flags back in the racks with all the bandannas and NASCAR caps, but by the time I get down there they all turn out to be gone, snapped up by parties unknown. The cold reality is that there is not a flag to be had in this town. Stealing one out of somebody's yard is clearly just out of the question. I'm standing in a fluorescent-lit KWIK-N-EZ afraid to go home. All those people dead, and I'm sent to the edge by a plastic flag. It doesn't get really bad until people come over and ask if I'm OK and I have to lie and say it's a Benadryl reaction (which in fact can happen).

...And so on until, in one more of the Horror's weird twists of fate and circumstance, it's the KWIK-N-EZ proprietor himself (a Pakistani, by the way) who offers solace and a shoulder and strange kind of unspoken understanding, and who lets me go back and sit in the stockroom amid every conceivable petty vice and indulgence America has to offer and compose myself, and who only slightly later, over styrofoam cups of a strange kind of perfumey tea with a great deal of milk in it, suggests construction paper and "Magical Markers," which explains my now-beloved and proudly displayed homemade flag."

10:42 PM. The D.H. Lawrence book by Nin is indeed the first American edition, making it worth a humble $30. Plus, the last reader's bookmark from Vineland was a $1 bill. Best purchase, ever.