Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Broken Heart Spree

There was this little debate in the novel J R by William Gaddis about whether or not the composer Bizet "died of a broken heart," and that made me want to look up Bizet in my MILTON CROSS' ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC, because if there is anything they love in MILTON CROSS' ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC, it is a composer dying of a broken heart. So I looked him up. And to my surprise, I became convinced - and this is speculative, unfounded, and fruitless as a subject, just the way I like it! - that Gaddis must have relied on MILTON CROSS' ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC while writing J R. At the very least, Gaddis and MILTON CROSS' ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC share a certain deadpan attitude toward tragedy. That reminds me of something else nobody cares about! When I was having my wild spree of buying old comic books, I bought the issue of BATMAN that inspired the Donald Barthelme short story "The Joker's Greatest Triumph." I was like, "I can read the comic book and then write an erudite essay comparing it to the short story!" But then I thought: "1) somebody has already done that, I bet; 2) nobody cares anyway; 3) writing is hard." I haven't even cracked the comic book. I can't make myself! That's how lazy I am. Too lazy to read a comic book.