...For The Time Being

This phrase. "For the time being."

It's all over literature. I first noticed it from the book A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki a couple years ago. Ever since, I think I've come across this phrase in nearly every book I've read. I thought this was just a coincidence at first. But it's almost like the real version of Stranger Than Fiction's "little did he know." As Hoffman's character wrote papers and taught a class on "little did he know," so too will I conquest to create a tundra-like database of "for the time being." There's so much I've lost. But I might as well start now, if not never.

Martin Amis - The Information

"Her mother was still around for the time being, fat and falling apart and still mountainously pretty somehow, in a bed somewhere."

So. Much like my Literary Chicago project, I'm going to try to keep track of this phrase being used and how authors use it. Do they actually reference what their 'for the time being' foreshadows? Or is it a throw away? A red herring?

Speaking of that other project, this novel is ripe with Chicago references. For a taste:

"He reread:

To recap: The itinerary is New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Boston, New York.

Denver. Why Denver?"

52 Books 52 Weeks

I recently wrote about both these books for Frontier Psychiatrist. One I loved, one was meh. Let's start with the meh.

9. There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband and He Hanged Himself by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (finished March 6th)

Obviously the title is what attracted me to this book. Ominous, morbid, bizarre, I figured it'd be right up my alley. Unfortunately, the collection of short stories by the celebrated Russian author failed to really grip. What few moments of perceptive insight (is that a redundancy?) were overshadowed by the failure to create well-rounded characters, offering only a sketch of disappointingly unfulfilling stories. I try to seek the good in every censored writer, as it is something I doubt I will ever have to encounter and it takes courage to write in such an oppressive society, but there just wasn't anything memorable to me in the collection.

(click here for the full, original review)






10. A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (finished March 12th)

READ THIS BOOK. RIGHT NOW. I've gushed about this enough on Facebook and Twitter and to anyone who has had the (mis)fortune talking to me while I've been drunk since I read this book because I've just been going on and on about. Please someone else read this so we can talk about it. Long story short: woman in Vancouver finds a diary written by a girl in Tokyo, woman tries to find out more about this girl and her family's history. Learn about environmental devastation, crows, Marcel Proust, "the half-life of information," meta-fiction, and the differences (or lack thereof) between Zen Buddhism and quantum mechanics.

(click here for the full, original review)