Thrashing

Continue thrashing about trying to get a second screenplay going, writing a lot of disconnected trash but that's to be expected, keep thinking about that filmmaker I saw on Charlie Rose who said he did a year of research on Nazi extermination camps before starting to write, I wouldn't mind doing that, but it doesn't seem to be happening, wondering all the while whether I shouldn't be trying to start a novel instead, reading a bit of Mulligan Stew trying to find something to quote but running up against his (Sorrentino's) Godawful silliness page after page, such a waste; comedy is fine, wonderful (cf. M. LeClerc: "Laughter--orgasm of the mind.") but silliness (no matter that critics, outrageously, try to dignify it as "ironicized banality") is inexcusable; if you want a comic novel, something that will make you laugh, read Molloy or Malone Dies. I bought, for the first time in I don't know how many years, a mass market paperback, a crime novel (with a New Yorker plug on the cover that it doesn't deserve), for the trip home from Florida and I'm enjoying the feel of it in my hand; it fits so neatly into one's pocket that I've been using it for subway reading since I've got back; makes me realize how good Raymond Chandler was.