Shabbos was nice; the entire family was home simultaneously for the first time since Passover. A couple of siblings wanted to know if I'd brought any Stash Chai with me. I feel a bit like a drug pusher.

I'd meant to bring Allende's book with me, but I accidentally left it behind. So I ended up reading Bag of Bones, by Stephen King instead. I'm about halfway through, and mostly liking it so far.

I've been occasionally amusing myself by imagining the annontations in a future Norton Critical Edition of the book. For instance, the footnote following "It's like a John Grisham novel, isn't it?" might be "John Grisham (1955- ), lawyer and novelist. Works like The Client, popular in the 1990s, featured a lawyer working against overwhelming odds on behalf of an otherwise defenseless client."

This, of course, is not the best summary of Grisham's work, I agree, but it would suffice for the context it'd be establishing on page 170 of King's book. And what do you expect from a Norton Critical Edition, anyway?

Then again, it is a bit more satisfying to imagine this footnote instead: "John Grisham (1955- ), lawyer and novelist. Popular for much of the 1990's for such works as The Firm and The Pelican Brief, many of which were made into movies. His biggest strength was in writing compelling page-turners. In later years, he abandoned this in place of polemics on his pet causes, which caused him to fade into obscurity by the turn of the century."

I shouldn't be so harsh. Grisham may have learned his lesson after the utter fiasco that was The Street Lawyer. We shall see in a couple of months, when his next work is due out. Either way, it's a safe bet that there'll never be a Norton Critical Edition of his stuff.

(Nor of King? I wouldn't be so certain. Very few arguments against Stephen King eventually being included in The Canon wouldn't apply equally to Charles Dickens. I don't think all of his works will make it in, but I would be surprised if none of them did.)

This makes sense, of course. Including any reference to himself would probably have been too distracting for most readers, and might have looked rather pretentious. Still, I can't help but wish he'd gone for it anyway. I love it when writers blur the line between fiction and reality. Metafiction is right up my alley.

The only recent novelist I can think of offhand who has done just what I advocated in the last paragraph would be Olivia Goldsmith, which is just one of the reasons why I love Olivia Goldsmith. Half the fun in her books is finding all of the references she sneaks in to previous books she's written. The Bestseller, my favorite, even mentions the movie version of The First Wives' Club, and Olivia herself... while Brenda Cushman, a character in said book and movie, makes a cameo appearance. How can the character, movie, and author all exist in the same universe? Well, why not?!

As for the background image... it looks fine on my system, and absolutely wonderful at the college paper. It looks fairly bad on my brother's computer, and downright awful on the system I tried in the college computer lab. I haven't pinned down the cause of the differences yet, and will probably switch to a solid background color, come February 1st.