I couldn't help but notice a grammatical error on the first page, "I don't belong, none of us does." That could just be his southern-ness coming through but it nonetheless nagged me. He word choice throughout has so far been beyond exceptional, more than likely due to one thing most successful artists have in their arsenal...practice. He did so without the intention. He didn't practice writing because he wanted to be a successful writer, he wrote because writing in his journal "began to supersede every aspect of his life." (pg 49)
He also suffered the typically symptoms of an artist, uncertainty and inability to accept his own quality:
"Come on, Jahi. I don't even write good letters."
"You don't know it but you will. You'll reach a point where you will have no choice."
"Yeah, and I can be president too." (pg 34)
I also enjoyed the little quips he threw in throughout the book. "Another guide, less technical, informed me that male orgasm fired an armada of three hundred million soldiers upriver to invade the cervix."(pg 15) I would love to read this guide, though based on the rest of his writings, I doubt such a book exists. I'm lead to believe it is actually of his own mind. I couldn't help but laugh when he said: "I began making outlandish statements passersby simply to provoke a response worthy of logging." (pg 49) I imagine Texts From Last Night to have appealed to the same mindset on many an occasion.
Finally, my favorite examples of exceptional word choice:
- This flood is nothing compared to the coming deluge. (pg 43)
- The Minnesota winter lingered deep into spring, encasing the sky in a sunless gray. (pg 48)
I also found this quite compelling: "I have to accept that a baby's in there. As with God or black holes, one goes by the surrounding evidence." It consequently implies that he believes in God, but previous evidence suggest he is not of the common monotheisms found today but rather seems more in tune with the Deism of Thomas Paine.
-Mark
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