'Are you sure that's a beach read?'

It's too much, the paperback

. I'll have to track down a hard cover, I think, shaking the sand out of the pages. Or find a PDF and print it out in chapters...for when I go back to read it with my intellectual brain. 

How is it in all of the literature surveys, at all of the sherry evenings, the martini meetups with the Lit Crit crows, the book launches, signings and shelfings, the grad seminars I snuck into ...how is that I am only know digging into _The Recognitions_ by William Gaddis?

And as I'm wading through not only my own history with the legal system, but my father's and brother's as well, noting how often 'justice,' is mediated out by those who believe themselves removed?

And is it the Puritan streak in Anglo-American culture that makes tears the only legitimate expression of that kind of pain? 

'The incident behind the organ proved it, and Aunt May said something about the stocks and pillory, a shame they'd gone out of fashion. 

--A shame to deprive us all of that satisfaction, Gwyon agreed. She was wart. --What do you mean? --The great satisfaction of seeing someone else published for a deed whu h we know ourselves capable. --But I....--What can be more gratifying than externalizing our own evils? Another suffering in atonement did the vileness of our imagings...--Stop it! cried Aunt May, --I'm sure I've never had such thoughts. --Then how can you judge your crime, if you have never been so tempted? he asked quietly.'