11/15/25 I had some serious misgivings about A Little Life. Someone had recommended it to me, so I went to GoodReads to see what My People thought about it. One reviewer said that it was the best book he'd ever read, but that he couldn't recommend it. Say what? A review from "Thomas" said, "Highly recommended to anyone who wants their heart both filled and destroyed." Well...that's not me. So I scratched this one off of my Must Read list. But I didn't stay away for long. After a little persistent searching, I found a copy of the book on Internet Archive...and I began to read.
On page 19 I was delighted to find this: "One of his earliest memories had been a trip with her to the Museum of Modern Art, where he clearly remembered staring at One: Number 31, 1950, dumb with awe, barely listening to his aunt as she explained how Pollock had made the painting." I was delighted because just a week before reading this, I'd been in New York City's Museum of Modern Art, looking at "Would he someday have the courage to give up, and would he be able to recognize that moment, or would he wake one day and look in the mirror and find himself an old man, still trying to call himself an actor because he was too scared to admit that he might not be, might never be?" (48) Ouch.
🛑57
Got the one volume paperback version of this book from the library today (11/17/25). Pages are different from the Internet Archive version, so now I'm on page 58.
"...he needed to feel that something lay beneath their imperturbable calm, that somewhere within them ran a thin stream of quick, cool water, teeming, with delicate lives, minnows and grasses and tiny white flowers, all tender and easily wounded and so vulnerable you couldn't see them without aching for them." (58)
"...his childhood might well have been spent in the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first, for all he had apparently missed, and for how obscure and merely decorative what he did know seemed to be." (106)
"In those moments, he wished, perversely, that he had never met her, that it was surely worse to have had her for so brief a period than to never have had her at all." (122)
That's a tune quite familiar to me. To have loved intensely and to have lost is decidedly not better than not to have loved at all. It's like being a star football player in high school, then going on to a tedious and humdrum life. You can't help but think back on your "glorious" past and feel that the rest of your life has been a waste. It allows sorrow to seep into every moment.
Jude asks himself, "How much of who he was was inextricable from what he was unable to do?" (163)
🛑 174
When thinking about his love for his child, Harold opines, "...it is a singular love because it is a love whose foundation is not physical attraction, or pleasure, or intellect, but fear. You have never known fear until you have a child, and maybe that is what tricks us into thinking that it is more magnificent, because the fear itself is more magnificent. Every day, your first thought is not "I love him" but "How is he?" The world, overnight, rearranges itself into an obstacle course of terrors. I would hold him in my arms and wait to cross the street and would think how absurd it was that my child, that any child, could expect to survive this life. It seemed as improbable as the survival of one of those late spring butterflies--you know, those little white ones--I sometimes saw wobbling through the air, always just millimeters away from smacking itself against the windshield." (186)
I don't think that's 100% true for me. But it is well over 50%.
🛑 229
11/22 I'm actually having to force myself to stop reading this book so that I can give a little attention to Tom's Crossing, which is (ostensibly) my current DDR. The character of Jude is so puzzling, so pitiful....
🛑 280 (8 days, 35 pages per day average)
11/23/25 🛑 351 for mass, which was when I started reassessing my current DDR. I'm still thinking that Tom's Crossing might be a book worth reading, but I'm really drawn to A Little Life, and I'm thinking about jumping 🚢.
Day 10 (DDRD 2,943) November 23, 2025
Read to page 351. Yep, 🌊🌊🌊🌊
Day 11 (DDRD 2,944) November 24, 2025
Read to page 411. 60 pages. And yet I still want more. And will, indeed, read more after some dad duties.
ADDENDUM: When I was dating Patty, I'd sometimes run into a friend of hers, a work colleague. I found this woman attractive, so I tried not to talk to her very much or even look at her too often. (I am a loyal fellow, and have never cheated on any of my romantic partners.) Also, she was quite a bit younger than me, and though I wasn't averse to that (at the time; I've since learned my lesson), I wouldn't have felt I had anything to offer to a young woman. She had a limp. Nothing extreme, but something you would notice. Once Patty told me that "Lisa" had gone on a blind date with a guy, to a restaurant. Before their meal came, the guy said he had to use the restroom. He was gone for a long time...and then Lisa got a text. It said, "I don't go out with cripples."
So it's not hard for me to believe how cruel people are to Jude. I don't understand the depravity, but I believe it. As Springsteen sang, "there's just a meanness in this world." Which is the main reason why I am barely hanging on myself. And wht I'll never allow myself to be pulled into another romantic relationship. Too much meanness. Too much sorrow. If it works for you, God bless you soul. I'm out, though.
Read to page 463. So 112 pages today. You can see why I didn't have room for Tom's Crossing.
Day 12 (DDRD 2,945) November 25, 2025
Read to page 540. And I'm taking Jacqueline to choir practice tonight, which means at least another 70 minutes of reading time. Also, I just found this on my phone:
...which I'd meant to post...yesterday? Day before? I don't remember. But when Jacqueline and I were in New York a few weeks ago, we stayed at
Hotel St. James
And we walked past (and into) that Barnes & Noble several times.
I'm beginning to think I was meant to read this book.
ADDENDUM: read to page 567.
Day 13 (DDRD 2,946) November 26, 2025
Read to page 607. Then had chores. Done with them. Going to read some more now.
"After he had eaten, he went
downstairs with the book and sandwich and lay in bed, and he was reminded of how much he had missed reading, of how grateful he was for this opportunity to leave behind his life." (624)
Well...ouch. Bearing in mind, however, that for Jude this means "a respite from the horror of my life."
One of the saddest lines I've ever read: "But he didn't cry: his ability to not cry was his only accomplishment, the only thing he could take pride in." (632)
Read to page 636. So a mere 69 pages today.
Day 14 (DDRD 2,947) 🦃November 27, 2025🦃
Read to page 717. Less than 100 pages to go now. 😔
Of late I've been thinking about some of the things I've read about this book...such as "it goes from dark to darker." Well...I've still got about 180 pages to go, so I don't know where we're going to end up, but at this point I'm thinking that despite all of the horror, Jude came through it...terribly damaged, but still capable of functioning, of succeeding, of falling on love. Which is what lies behind this thought in
Willem's mind: "The awe he had felt for him, then, the despair and horror, was something one felt for idols, not for other humans, at least no other humans he knew." (638)
Is this true? "...he was old enough now to know that within every relationship was something unfulfilled and disappointing, something that had to be sought elsewhere." (641) I hope not...but it would explain the high divorce rate and cheating, wouldn't it.
"Wasn't it a miracle to have survived the unsurvivable?" (650) At this point, I'm thinking that's a valid statement of theme for this novel.
I thought this was interesting:
The operation and the first months of recovery occur in the white gutter between these lines--not even any empty space as you might expect. Now that I think on it, this is a technique that
Hanya has used several times. It makes the climax of the scene evaporate, and yet it still seems very effective.
"Was that them, really, those people back then? Where had those people gone? Would they reappear? Or were they now other people entirely? And then he would imagine that those people were so much gone as they were within them, waiting to bob back up to the surface, to reclaim their bodies and minds; they were identities now in remission, but they would always be with them." (703)
Two thoughts: (1) I keep wondering if Jude is paying Andy for his medical treatments. There's never been a mention of it. (2) I really don't feel like going back to Tom's Crossing after I finish this book. Would I push myself to get over this or just let myself off the hook? (Try to think like an anal retentive, OCD nerd as you ponder this question.)
"...he needs the world to not come too close to him." (728) I know that tune. Know it quite well.
Day 15 (DDRD 2,948) November 28, 2025
Read to page 816, The End. And quite the journey it was. Compelling, for sure...averaging almost 55 pages a day, and it was only in the past sux days that I made it my main book. Horrifying at times, for sure, but none of the brutality seemed gratuitous to me. More later, I think. For now:
I really don't like the cover picture on this book:
(The A.I. tag is because I eliminated the cover copy.) I suppose that this picture is supposed to represent Jude's pain & suffering, but (1) it looks fake to me and (2) to me, this is a book about overcoming pain & suffering, not about succumbing to it. (Caveat: I still have 100 pages to go as of this writing.)
"...he knows now that he has to be careful: he has tasted anger, and he knows he has to control it. He can feel it, waiting to burst from his mouth in a swarm of stinging black flies." (775)
"Straight pork truck." 😋 Jacqueline was saying something as I was about to record, and this is how my phone interpreted it.
"...He feels...that his life is something that has happened to him, rather than something he has had any role in creating." (784)
