On Wed, 12 May 2004, John Klein wrote:
> On Tue, 11 May 2004, Durston, Andrew (AGRE) wrote:
>
> @> Hi all,
> @>
> @> [Off topic, but this has always bugged me... ]
> @> Has Robert Jordan ever commented on why his books have become more
> @> turgid as they go onward?
> @>
> @> My wife and I joke that the next book will solely consist of Rand
> @> having breakfast for 1000 pages... (and hence why we'll wait for the
> @> local library to get it... )
>
> Why is it that this idea actually sounds kind of neat to me? Not from
> Jordan, of course. Just a 1000 page book set entirely at a
> breakfast-table.
This is a book Nicholson Baker will write if people keep daring him to.
A poem by Billy Collins (from _Picnic, Lightning_):
A Portrait Of The Reader With A Bowl Of Cereal
"A poet...never speaks directly,
as to someone at the breakfast table."
--Yeats
Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things--
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries--
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.
Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the window at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a cloud passing behind a tree.
There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper,
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.
But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour--
then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you will look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.