Dear Bloggers, As promised a quick conversation on writing style. Sometimes when reading TGOST I feel a little like a dunce, the kind of dunce that takes the short bus to school and writes out the multiplication tables thirty or forty times, not because it's for punishment but because it is the only way I will remember it. Now I realize this is a little unfair because come to think of it I sometimes forget my multiplication tables and maybe writing them down would help. But I think the gist of what I'm saying is understood. The repetition of TGOST is infuriating, but yet it fits with the context of the book. The emphasis is all on the little things, things that if this were a novel from the sixties or seventies would hardly even be looked at would be dismissed as a piece of dialogue or a writers attempt at providing character background, but they would never be emphasized and repeated in the same way that they are in Ms. Roy's stellar modern novel. Often in novels from the post modern era, character were used as ways to look at the scene and agree with it or criticize it or critique it but there thoughts were in long continuous rants never repeating often contradicting their own thoughts. The little things, like rape and a mothers love, were rarely considered important or even dangerous topics. Authors were spellbound by vicious deaths, by penis-statues (Clockwork Orange) or apocalyptic scenarios where the world freezes leaving poets and journalists (cat's cradle) murder, mayhem, feck the scene man (One Hand Clapping) it's all scene. That's what was enthralling. The world obsessed with perfection or at least happiness (The Dharma Bums) what with the masses all reading Suzuki's books on Zen buddhism. It was all about the scene, not being a part of it, being on the train, the wagon, it was all the scene, no matter where you are in that scene. But it made sense the world was so close to being blown to pieces of course the whole thing would be happiness or death. But now, now, we're just confused lost with what we're supposed to do. We're no longer at the base of life, no longer fearing death now we're grasping for meaning and we have no idea where to look. So what do we do. We search in the corners and the crevases, looking for all the small things.