In the spirit of "If 11 doesn't take the taste out of my mouth, nothing will!"* I decided to supplanted my aborted reading of The Man Without Qualities with William S. Burroughs' Queer. It's short--42 + 150 = 192, though the novel itself is only 119 pages--and I've been wanting to read it ever since I saw the movie (several months ago, in one of my very few solo visits to the movie theater). And I definitely need something to wash the bad taste of The Man Without Qualities, from my mouth.
* A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender for eleven shots of whiskey. The bartender asks, "What's the occasion?" and the man replies, "My first blow job!" The bartender says, "Well hell, I'll give you a free one and make it an even dozen." The man replies....
Day 1 (DDRD 2,825), July 26, 2025
Read to page 11. (Also vii through l and 121 through 137.) After that The Man Without Qualities bullshit, this waspure pleasure.
By the way:
Budget for the 2024 film version of Queer: $56,384,353. Box Office: $7,000,000. So that's not good. It should come as no surprise that I thought the movie was great, and that Daniel Craig delivered an Oscar worthy performance. Sigh.
Addendum: read a bit more. To page 25. That's 83 pages. Looks like this won't take too long.
I'm going to have to rewatch the movie after I finish reading thus thing. I was going to do that anyway, but reading it now and picturing Daniel Craig's, motions is revifying and makes me want to plunge back into the visuals.
Hey, look, a sex scene:
"The boy smiled and lay down on the bed. Lee's body was moving in rhythmic contractions, every muscle caressing the smooth hard body of the other, the amoeba reflex to surround and incorporate. His body tensed convulsively rigid, sparks flashed behind his eyes and the breath whistled through his teeth. Slowly, his muscles relaxed away from the other's body. They both smoked a cigarette, their shoulders touching under the covers."(18)
Day 2 (DDRD 2,826), July 27, 2025
Read to page 70.
More: "In the dark theater Lee could feel his body pull toward Allerton, an amoeboid protoplasmic projection, straining with a blind worm hunger to enter the other's body, to breathe with his lungs, see with his eyes, learn the feel of his visara and genitals." (32-33)
Which of course evokes the scene late in the movie after Lee and his companion have taken the drug and changes start to happen. (Avoiding a spoiler here.) This also links up nicely with the words Bobo uttered to Lee to discourage him from committing suicide: "No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive." (36)
Today was a very busy day: 4 hours on the road to and from Indianapolis, 1 hour in church, 4 hours in the Indianapolis Children's Museum. But I STILL got my 30 pages in. A bit more than that, actually. (QUITE a bit more.)
No brag...just fact.
Addendum: read to page 80. Those last ten pages while a bit stoned on Delta 8 / 9, but the words still penetrated.
Day 3 (DDRD 2,827), July 28, 2025
Read to page 150, The End. That was a smooth read indeed. So smooth, in fact, that I think I'm going to stop at the library today and pick up Junky.
Also, think I'm going to watch the movie Queer again today. I was very interested to compare the book and the movie in my mind as I read. I think the movie did a very good job of interpolating material outside of the novel in order to make a complete story.
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