Friday, February 09, 2018

about “a heartwarming work of
awe-filling genius”



To say that sundry gardening is “1000+ pages” is an understatement, because that’s actually 1000+ documents, most of which are more than one typical-book page long (though many are much less than a book page). It’s fair to say that the documents average 3 book pages.

It’s fair to say that sundry gardening is 3,000 pages—longer than Proust’s Time Regained (commonly titled Remembrance of Things Past), let alone Ulysses.

Many of the points (pages, postings) in the now-gestalted pointillism are forgettable, of course. Many are cute, many difficult, some profound (maybe). Yet, altogether, it has singularity beyond the trivial fact that it's all by one rather protean selfidentity. It would easily be commercially published as several volumes.

So, how vain is a writer allowed to credibly be, in the wake of so much work, so much tedious editing, and so much more-tedious formatting, all something else than development of The Project which remains unrepresented (but is the basis for the 17-section gardening)?

I am happy, Beth. If I was on my deathbed tomorrow, I’d be smiling.



(My posting title is a play on a novel title by San Franciscan Dave Eggers, which I haven’t read.)