Before, during and after silence

I still despise working out. Just so we get that out of the way. But the scale is tipping more and more in my favor these days, so I keep at it.

One good thing about working out today is that it gave me a chance to get a good start on Jonathan Carroll's After Silence. I first encountered Carroll's writing more than a decade ago, when I read Bones of the Moon and was very much impressed by it. I thoroughly enjoyed his confident style and the unabashedly flawed characters populating the pages. It was a smooth read, a good read, but also a challenging read. His use of the fantastic and the mundane is masterful. I don't write anything like he does, but I certainly wouldn't mind if I did.

His writing impressed me so that I planned to read more of his stuff--he hadn't published so much back then. But for some reason, I didn't. I have no idea, although I came very close many times only to back off. Maybe I was afraid his other books wouldn't live up to the first one I read. I dunno. But at any rate, the other day, quite on impulse, I picked up After Silence. I began reading it today, and the prose is as smooth and the characters as wonderfully oddball as I could hope. By one of those unexpected coincidences, there's a new interview with Carroll up at S1ngularity. Not an interview of mine, I'm afraid, but good stuff at any rate.

Now Playing: The New World Renaissance Band Where Beauty Moves and Wit Delights