After only reading the essay by Adam Kirsch, I knew Yoel Hoffmanns book was going to be fragmented and broken down and unlike traditional books. After just the first couple pages I immediately noticed what he meant and how the paragraphs are numbered and perhaps they all relate in some way but it is not always clear. For instance, the book begins talking about a certain story about a woman in a basement apartment. Hoffmann describes her, describes the building, he reflects that he had once took steps down to a place where a woman had waited and maybe this was just a memory of his experience. While it is all put together and worded differently then I have seen, initially it does make sense and piece together. However when we get to 9, Hoffmann does relate a bit to the story, speaking about the bible that saved his life because the bullet went into the book of Nehemiah (the name of the man going down the steps in the story), but he ends 9 with "which is to say, a bona fide story with plot twists and intrigue and an ending cut off like salami (to keep it modern). books like those have at least 328 pages, and in the end mods of people running around you like holograms.
But I can't, because of the turquoise sunbirds." this is something I underlined because it doesn't directly relate to what he had spoken about so far, but as I continue reading maybe it will relate to something else or I will further understand the story and be able to go back and understand what he meant by that.
Nice response, Catherine. A big part of Moods is that it makes you read differently. Whereas in a book like Malcolm X, the author puts things in logical order, in a book like this, we have to do a lot more work. Which book do you think has the wider audience? :)
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