I realized Loren had my copy of The Corrections I’d given him in the early 2000’s: he said it was that book that made him realize what kind of writing he does and does not like, and that one was a ‘no’ because of how painfully realistic it was, the dysfunction of daily life and relations, that instead, he wanted books to take him somewhere else.
But I ate it up, rereading it: the jagged edges made me contemplate my own, the time traveling between characters at mid-life, toward life’s end, or at its start…how one scene told in detail over 10 pages could summarize a hundred childhood scenes all similar but forgotten, dismantled and rearranged, put back together again and regarded from afar.
I made my kids stay up late, and after 10 started the White Album and played it all the way through, but skipped “Revolution Number 9,” the remastered version of “Savoy Truffle” at the end…tried to get them to listen to the lyrics but they were so distracted and giddy at the strangeness of it all, of staying up late on a Sunday, the snow stacking up outside and the bistro lights illuminating it all…they couldn’t hear the words, it didn’t matter, there’d be another time.
Charlotte and I walked to the store and had to stop twice to get the snow out of her boots. I told her the word “slush” comes from the sound it makes when you step on it (made that one up).
On our way there it was turning to rain but when we came back it was snow again, big, fluffy flakes all up and down the road, our world reduced to a small, glass globe you could hold in your palms, an idealized life there in its miniature, frozen perspective.
The book was painfully sad and so real, it made me feel the same for my own small settings, moving from room to room, governed by foolish thoughts, sure to get most things wrong. Too much goodness to know what to do with it all, how much unrealized, no way to go back and correct it once committed.
Bill Pearse 
I’d say you did a lot of correct things here.
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Skipping that remastered version of “Savoy Truffle” and not telling them what it’s about.
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Side 4 of TWA does present some problems. “Honey Pie” seems too light for it, but then comes “Cry Baby Cry,” which is spooky, and then the way it drifts into “Revolution 9” is pretty awesome. But you don’t always feel like “Revolution 9,” yet the way it blooms into “Goodnight” is sublime.
Sometimes you just have to sit through “Revolution 9”. “If … you become naked.”
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I’ll have to devote myself to a listen of that run. I’m often so wrung out from The Beatles by the time I get there (not in a bad way entirely, just like eating rich food you know).
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I have a copy of The Corrections, but have yet to tackle it. As for the White Album, I’ve never even seen a copy (that I’m aware of), never mind having ever listened to. Couldn’t name any of the songs on it — and maybe haven’t heard any of ’em, either.
My Shorter OED says slush’s origin is likely as an imitation of sludge, the origin of which is “uncertain.” So hey, I say we go with the Pink Light Saber version of slush’s origin story. Makes a bit more sense that what’s supposedly, “official.”
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You need to read The Corrections! The White Album is also just self-titled, from ’68…bet you’ve heard at least a couple of those songs, too…
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I’ve got a signed first edition of The Corrections. I remember getting it signed shortly after he insulted a lot of Oprah book club members. Insinuated they had pedestrian tastes or something like the. Queen O came down hard on him. He seemed really down in the dumps because of it.
My first ed contains an erratum slip laid in. To wit:
“We have discovered that the text on pages 430 and 431 of The Corrections was reversed in this printing, i.e., page 431 should be read before page 430. We apologize for this error.”
I love stuff like that.
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Dude read that and sleep with it. He is fully entitled to his Dickdom. Go worship.
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