Mirror Images

I read The Lazarus Project straight through to the end yesterday afternoon in the quietest room of a quiet house. The book has a surreal invincibility about it—you don't argue with its premise; you don't quibble with its construction; you surrender, and you surrender willingly. There's an implied hysteria in the tone—a desperation that goes comedic, even slapstick in places. There's the smashing about of a marriage, a ditintegration and then rebirth of the word 'home.'

Two (favorite) books came to mind as I read—Colum McCann's Zoli, in which a contemporary author (a quasi McCann) goes in search of a Gypsy poet of the mid 20th century, and Michael Ondaatje's Coming through Slaughter, which brings to life Buddy Bolden, the legendary horn player of New Orleans. All three books are engined forward by authorial quest. All of them yelp with sheer alivedness. The you, the I, the them become, at one point, indistinguishable.

Oh, to write a book like that. To be here, where I am—nearly a dozen books in and still a novice.