i'm a very very complex person

I am still reading The Centaur. It's an interesting book, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it yet. There does not appear to be any sort conflict in the book at this point. Well, that's not entirely accurate; there's plenty of conflict, but it's all just the momentary frictions and chronic annoyances of everyday family and working life, not the sort of thing that really drives a plot. In a way it's reminiscent of Ulysses, if Ulysses were set in a small town in central Pennsylvania. Lots of wandering around, lots of attention to the inner life of the characters... Stylistically, though, it's actually very different from Ulysses. Anyhow, despite it's lack of any driving conflict, I'm finding myself really wrapped up in it. Updike has done such a wonderful job of creating the character of Peter: prickly, proud, sensitive, aloof, and very very real. He's part of the reason I'm drawn to the book, but I'm also interested because there's a lot that I haven't figured out yet. The chapters told from Peter's point of view are basically realistic, but the chapters told from his father's perspective are more problematic. The events described stretch the limits of belief (a group of high school students shoot an arrow through their teacher's ankle; the teacher leaves the school and goes to the garage next door where he has a mechanic cut out the arrow; he then returns to the school and continues teaching his class--am I supposed to believe that really happened? To take it seriously? And if not, how am I supposed to take it?), and the narrative switches back and forth between the at-least-semi-realistic high school setting and basically the same story being told through Greek mythology, with Chiron the centaur representing Peter's father. When I was reading the first chapter, I was absolutely mystified. I thought the father actually was a centaur who had somehow wound up teaching science in a high school in PA, or perhaps that the book was set in some crazy world where the Greek myths and ordinary life somehow exist simultaneously and overlap... So, yeah, it's kind of crazy, and I definitely don't have a handle on all of it yet, so I keep reading in an attempt to figure it out.

In other news, today there was a "suspicious package" at the mall where I work. It was big excitement, cops and bomb squad guys all over the place. And the package was right outside my office, too! I could see it from my desk! Of course I didn't notice until all the action started... (good thing I'm not on the bomb squad, I guess). The end result of all this was that I got to close up and go home early. Very nice. A few phone calls to the students who were going to be coming in, and next thing I knew, I had myself a free evening. So I went to see the Cole Porter movie, De-Lovely. It was good, and Kevin Kline did a great job, but it was not nearly as homoerotic as I had been led to believe. Scads of gorgeous gay guys of the sort of intensely closeted, WASP-y, tuxedo-wearing, late-40's/early-50's, gay underworld type, though.

And now, I must go work on the novel. The deadline for completing the revision of the next chapter (it's one of the many 2003 chapters, so let's call it the Friday Night chapter. Or, since I just read the first draft of it, I suppose we could call it the Poorly Structured, Incredibly Stilted Dialogue, Half This Stuff Doesn't Even Make Sense chapter, although I'd rather not.) is Monday, July 26. That gives me two full weekend, plus all of next week.