Reading Russo

Ah, the luxury of spending a morning lost in a good book! I turn my back on the cold and wet outdoors and hunker down on a comfy sofa with a cup of hot tea and a book, just a book, no pen or paper, no need to take notes or keep track of testable concepts or think about how to incorporate the book into a syllabus, just read without regard for the passage of time until I suddenly find myself at the end of the book and it's lunchtime. 

Luxury, I tell you, especially when the book is as good as Richard Russo's Elsewhere, his witty and moving memoir of his life with a complicated mother. The chapter describing the adolescent Russo's cross-country road trip with his mother in the shotgun seat is worth the price of the book (even in hardback), and his meditations on his genetic heritage are by turns compelling and disturbing. And then there's a long paragraph about novel-writing:

[N]ovel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Feeling your way around in the dark, trying to anticipated the Law of Unintended Consequences. Living with and welcoming uncertainty. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming chatter. Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five, or maybe never, without caring much. Putting one foot in front of the other. Taking small bites, chewing thoroughly. Grinding it out. Knowing that when you've finally settled everything that can be, you'll immediately seek out more chaos. Rinse and repeat.

Good advice, that. Worthy of sharing with students. Except I would have to get up out of my warm, comfy nest to find a pen and make a note, and just for today I refuse to interrupt the pleasure of reading, just reading, simply reading and reading and reading until I am well and truly done.