Today, January 24th, 2008-The Day I Finished Fortress of Solitude.

I have been picking up this book on and off for years, always stopping at more or less the same page before the prose just got too dense for me. For this reason, I've been stuck in Dylan's childhood in Brooklyn all these years, reliving his growing pains over and over so much that I feel like it has all happened to me.

I think this is the best possible way to read this book, as it makes the second half ridiculously emotional to read. After years of reading him, I feel like I know Dylan as well as I know myself...and everything that happens to him I've felt more than any other character I've ever read.

Read this book, everyone. And when you get to the last several pages, you need to put on Brian Eno's Another Green World. If all goes according to plan, you should be finishing the last paragraph just as "The Big Ship" reaches it's gorgeous climax, as I did. It is very fitting.

You listen to music while you read books?

to everyone: do yourself a favor and read 100 years of solitude instead

thx,

mgmt.

btw, are you suggesting i fruitlessly attempt to read this book for years, frustrated by my ability to finish anything i start thus questioning my very humanity, and then finish this book upon which date i decide to pick up the mantle from my shattered being and thrust forward with a book that clearly wasn't good enough for me to read in the first place?

sounds retarded

i see what you did there.

Also, I'm not going to lie. That post really hurt my feelings, Parchy.

do we need to talk this out, wm?

I don't think so. Just know that you have taken what I have considered a significant moment in my life and you have turned it against me. Now instead of pride, I feel shame. I'll never read a parchy post again without wincing a little.

I really can't stand Dylan and don't understand other peoples obsession over him. no offense.

Dylan Ebdus, the protagonist in FoS, or Bob Dylan?

the internets is serious business, pal

you don't?

oops!