The Nose

Read Nikolai Gogol's The Nose yesterday on some stolen time.  It read very much like The Third Policeman and I just envisioned my old Scottish co-worker friend chuckling to himself as he read this.  It's kind of just a nonsensical three-part short story.  Literally, a nose leaves its owner's face, turns up in a bread roll, then is somehow human-size and is wearing fancy attire as it trots away in a carriage.  After all that, it miraculously appears back on its homestead face.  I'm not even sure that there is any point at all.  I looked it up thinking that perhaps it was a satirical commentary about society or the upper class but it doesn't really seem to be the case.  There was something about masculinity and shallowness/materialism that seemed probable but in the end it might just be that Gogol was just being silly and getting paid to do it.

Outside of that, I have been trying to read Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union for the past few weeks but quite frankly, it's boring.  BY GOD, it's so boring.  I even looked it up on Wikipedia to see if I'm missing something and the only thing that I found helpful is that supposedly the Coen brothers were going to make a movie based on this book but then scrapped the script they had initially written.  EVEN THE COEN BROTHERS CAN'T MAKE THIS BOOK WORTH WATCHING.  If such talented gods can't even save it, it's hopeless I say!  I'll probably just keep trucking at it out of sheer stubbornness until I die of boredom.  Then I will rue this day.