Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey – it was on the shortlist of six books for the 2010 Man Booker Prize - 8 out of 10

 

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey – it was on the shortlist of six books for the 2010 Man Booker Prize

 

8 out of 10

 

 

Reading notes written by amateurs, like yours truly makes less and less sense – I am not sure if it ever did, albeit there are some readers, including among my Goodreads friends, that know what they are talking about and you can easily see, it is one case where The Thin Slicing Theory works superbly and you know in the blink of an eye

 

Now you have access to AI, Artificial Intelligence in the form of the Copilot for the Microsoft Edge browser, and the other forms for the competition from Google and others, and they just give you a neat, clear, efficient summary of this book, and others…I remember a funny suggestion from England, Their England

At least that is the book I think I remember https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/08/england-their-england-by-archibald.html with the passage where one character suggests to another ‘ go to the end and see the content, if the author thinks the trithianes are good or bad eggs, the cover will give you some clues, and you have a review with that’

 

Well, along those lines it was, or I think so – however, if you are interested for some outré reason what I think about Parrot and Olivier, then the answer is not much, it was in no way ‘adjectival, hideous kinky, or medicine’ – these words are from some brilliant books, adjectival comes from Peter Carey himself, a splendid creation

I was overwhelmed by The True History of The Kelly Gang https://realini.blogspot.com/2015/11/true-history-of-kelly-gang-by-peter.html and this where the word adjectival is used frequently, and it is enchanting, only I see it in contrast with Parrot and Olivier, even if it is me, and not Peter Carey, I could not see its value

 

Then I have finished in 2018 Oscar and Lucinda https://realini.blogspot.com/2018/03/oscar-and-lucinda-by-peter-carey.html another Peter Carey novel that I enjoyed so much, that I gave it five stars out of five, and with this, the exhilaration ends, since Illywhacker failed to impress, at least not if set near the previous two works

If this were a football, or some other game, we would say this is a draw, two for Peter Carey and two against, well, not really scored by the other side, for there is no such team, but the last two encounters have not been rated as achievements https://realini.blogspot.com/2018/09/illywhacker-by-peter-carey.html

It is true that I have abandoned somewhere after about seven hours of reading – it was not even me, making the effort, somebody is reading it for the listeners – because it is not going anywhere. I mean not the plot, or anything, but the ‘personalized experience’, I just do not have the attention, concentration anymore’

 

We could say that Parrot and Olivier is not a book that is at the level of The Kelly Gang or/and Oscar and Lucinda, however wrong this comparison might be, it is said you cannot compare masterpieces – some of these are not there, maybe all of them – and then there is the known ‘apple and oranges’, thought it is more a question of taste

I would refer to Milan Kundera https://realini.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-9-put.html - with the caveat that memory may be playing tricks, again! – who said, if I do not invent this, that we must keep the number of geniuses to a minimum, and stop calling every intelligent human ‘he is such a genius’

 

He suggested Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, maybe Albert Einstein, and that could be too demanding, but the tendency is to exaggerate and say ‘that boy is a genius, with the ball, the goal was such a miracle, the footballer is a genius’…really, give me a break, we are going the way of ‘I love this, the color, texture, etc.’

Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis wrote more than twenty magnum opera – that I know of, there could be more, if you ask me – and one of them is The King’s English https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html a book where he lists a good number of words that have lost their meaning

 

One that I remember – here I have no doubt, memory is clear, besides, I have given this example maybe more than thirty times, and the chart of what we forget shows that after one day, we lose some percentages, then more, so the way out is to repeat what you do not to miss, and the best way to remember is to teach others, which is what I do with you now, I play the role of Chili Palmer, from Get Shorty, who said ‘ I am the one telling you how it is’, something Howard Zin aka fabulous Gene Hackman https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/get-shorty-by-elmore-leonard-aka.html - is the word infamous, which is lost

Infamous comes from infamy, but people use it now – at the time glorious Kingsley Amis wrote anyway – as famous, and we have to be careful with our words – The Talmud says “Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they become character; watch your character, for it becomes your destiny…’ one version I heard was character is you

 

Another example will come from Thomas Mann, I have read one of his short stories, in which a personage was aghast at how those around complained ‘I love you so much, there are no words to express it’, when the opposite is true, we have so many words which mean too much, you only find love in art, literature, at least that is what Thomas Mann was writing, for love means (almost?) to the end, while almost always, it just dies for no good reason…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”