The Weekly Digest is a weekly (no shit?) update that captures highlights from the week that was. At the end of each week, I share a collection of thoughts, recommendations, and links. Like everything else I write, it's awesome, but it may be too long for email so make sure you click through.
📖Living Up to the Name
I am in a liminal state at work where both I and my boss know that I’m applying for new roles internally and that I am likely to get at least one of them. My work motivation and current commitments are close to zero, and my boss just took off for a week and a half. I’ve been getting a lot of reading done.
I have a knock-off version of the Herman Millers Eames chair that is a required piece for people who make “mid-century modern” their whole personality. I’ve been using it as my escape from screens this week.
The photo above was taken from my desk, so it’s not exactly a world away but it provides just enough distance from my desk/screens/Internet1. I’m using that lapdesk in the foreground for my writing, notes and highlighting and there is a stack of books on the floor, partially obscured by the blanket (it’s still cold here in Vermont).
I didn’t understand the function of studying and learning when I was a student. I was raised in the good grades to good school to good job pipeline. Having the time now to explore the depths of literature (I’ll take about this more in a moment) is bittersweet. There’s a sense of making up for lost time; wishing I could send my intellect back in time to my younger body. Do you know how many times I’ve watched the first Transformers movie? At least enough times that I could have read Crime and Punishment and still seen Transformers too many times.
Alas, this vessel is mortal — and flabby around the middle — and such dreams are not to be. So, we make do.
📚Book Bits
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
I enjoyed this one, but a literary masterpiece it is not. This reads like Fear and Loathing for the Sierra Club. It’s fun, but the characters are a bit grating (especially the female lead). There is fun wordplay and good humor, but no real surprises. Not a bad first read for a budding eco-terrorist.
How Cormac Works by Bill Hardwig
This was great. Hardwig’s analysis made me want to drop everything else and pick up McCarthy’s works all over again. What’s special about this one, is that it is one of the few academic works that deals with McCarthy’s final diptych, The Passenger and Stella Maris. An analogy he uses is that these two novels function like Schrödinger’s cat: the protagonists of the alternate novel are alive/dead depending on which you’re reading (!). I know there’s a few Cormacians2 that are frequent/occasional readers of the Digest that might be interested in this one.
The Revenant by Michael Punke
The source material for the DiCaprio movie. Now that I’m thinking about it, I have the source material for a lot of Leo movies on my shelves (Shutter Island, Killers of the Flower Moon, and One Battle After Another spring to mind). Anyway, this is a fun read that I picked up because I forgot to toss a book in my car when I was heading out for lunch. I’m about 2/3rds of the way through and our boy Hugh Glass can’t catch a break.
Embracing Vocation: Cormac McCarthy’s Writing Life, 1959-1974 & Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period by Diane Luce
Luce is one of the foremost McCarthy scholars and reading her work is like trying to cram 100lbs of knowledge into my 1lb brain. I am at the part of Reading the World where she is starting to dive into Gnosticism; I’m planning to pair that with Aaron Gwyn’s “Cormac McCarthy’s Gnostic Conservatism.”
Recent Book Haul:
The Revenant by Michael Punke
Like I mentioned above, I picked this up from a used bookstore because I found myself with some time and a beer and no reading material.
The Lord by Soraya Antonius
NYRB book of the month
💡Substack Spotlight:
I am shouting-out Anthony Marigold’s TheGreatReader extension/app again, in case you missed it. I’ve been using this to save longer articles/stories from Substack and then making it a weekend habit to spend some hours playing catch up with this app.
I enjoyed this article from Magazine Non Grata and Alex De Lagarde on reading in the information apocalpyse:
Alexander Sorondo had a great piece on self-editing:
Using only the Sharpie in the first ten pages I realized that the solution for almost all of my narrative problems was to remove things I’d fallen in love with.
The rest of my Substack reading this week was mostly assorted Day of the ___ Writer articles.
📰Substack Headlines
My ability to advertise for you all was hindered this week by spending so much time away from screens/Substack Notes. As always if you have something you’d like me to promote, feel free to reach out.
If you’d like to be featured in this section, you know how to find me. And if you don’t, you’ll learn.
🖋️Writing
I am experimenting with different ways to break through my inertia/resistance to getting started. One thing I want to do is upgrade my desk to one with more surface area so I can have a “permanent” space for my typewriter as opposed to having it tucked away. I’d also like to have enough room to write in a notebook with needing to stash my keyboard somewhere.
I am well aware these are minor quibbles and should not interfere with writing, but every little inconvenience is an obstacle that needs to be overcome. One of the upsides of reading so many self-improvement books is that I’m keenly aware of things like feedback loops and friction points.
Another thing I’m considering is a fold-out desk for that lounge chair so that I’m also isolated from my screens. So many deck chairs to rearrange on this sinking ship…
One last thing on writing; thanks to Saint-Lazare (aka Substack’s Favorite Skeleton) for this wonderful compliment:
❄️Fleeting Thoughts
I passed 400 subscribers this week. A number of folks expressed surprise that I had “so few” subscribers, and that’s probably because I’m such an annoying ubiquitous presence in Notes. If you’re not into dumb dad jokes and a weekly summary of a few books you may not have heard of, then I totally get why you wouldn’t subscribe to me.
That’s part of the reason I set goals for myself of writing more book reviews (especially Substack novels… which I’m way behind on) and releasing more fiction. The Weekly Digest was never meant to be the whole kit-and-kaboodle of Vinny Reads content, just something to provide regular updates because otherwise you’d just get (very) sporadic, disorganized missives.
I’m also not especially concerned with growing my subscription base. I appreciate you all and especially appreciate those of you who pay me (!!) to write this. I think one of the benefits I have over folks with wider readership is that I feel like I have a much stronger/closer connection to a majority of you. That’s one of the benefits of slow growth.
We know that each avatar and newsletter is, in theory, a full-realized human being somewhere in the world but it doesn’t always feel that way. Building an audience “brick-by-brick” wasn’t a goal I started out with, but it has been endlessly rewarding to get to know each of you brick-heads.
So, thanks. And if you’re inclined, share with someone cool.
🤙,
— V
If you don’t want or can’t afford to become a paid subscriber, but would still like to support the newsletter, you can do so through ko-fi. The ko-fi money mostly goes towards beer and video games, while the subscription money mostly gets reinvested into the Substack community.
Unfortunately, that means I’m slap-dashing this newsletter together at 9:30am.
Brock Eldon, Brett Puryear, Aaron Gwyn (though I’m assuming you’ve already read this), and probably several others I’m forgetting.
I love it when I zoom in on a bookshelf and see a familiar title 😊