lackluster noir

At long last, my blog has finally been deemed 'non-spam.' This is exciting, because I've been looking forward to have a place to record my silly thoughts and ramblings.

Anyways, my first 'book for pleasure' this summer is Chicago Noir, a collection of (you guessed it) noir fiction set in Chicago. I'm feeling somewhat disappointed and frustrated by it so far; I've only read five of the stories, and only enjoyed two. The first, "Goodnight Chicago and Amen," had an inconsistent dialect and some (ok, most) of the other stories seemed pointless and stupid, in my own opinion. I did enjoy "The Gospel of Moral Ends" and "Destiny Returns," though. I'm hoping the book will pick up, but based on other reviews on goodreads.com, I don't think it will. I guess I was hoping for more typical crime noir, like Maltese Falcon shit. The preface claimed that the story collection was harking back to the 'old' Chicago, but all the stories seem to deal with fairly recent groups of immigrants and don't have the retro style I was hoping for.

I guess it is a nice break from Kafka, though. Dr. Zimra somehow conned me into incorporating some translations from the original Prozess into my paper dealing with Kafka's Trial and Marxist alienation. Hooray. Personally, I blame Brian for the task assigned due to his exaggeration of my German skills, which have been virtually unpracticed for the past year. Although, Katharina, my friend from Germany, claims my German is good, and even much better when I'm drunk. Does this mean I write my paper while drunk? No. Unlike some English grad students, I cannot write while intoxicated. I have a hard enough time writing as it is; I don't even want to imagine the results of a drunken Kafka tirade. Although that could be entertaining...