i finished "snow"

That was the major event of the weekend, along with Saturday night's St. Patrick's Day party at Flannery's near Tobalaba. Both were very satisfying. I liked Snow a lot more than My Name is Red, partially because it was easier to read and grasp, partially because it felt more relevant, less arcane, partially because I reacted to it more strongly. About that last part, one thing that irks me about the way that Pamuk writes, and I assume it's his writing and not the translations because the two books have different translators, is how his characters repeatedly experience instantaneous certainty about something: they KNOW they'll be in love for the rest of their life, they KNOW they're right about something that someone else has done, they KNOW a particular scene or tableau will be with them till the end of their days. His is not the first writing that's caused this irritated reaction in me, it's more of a general dislike in the way that certain writers give gigantic importance to a look, the expression "behind so-and-so's eyes," the positioning of characters in a room. I'm fairly sure I've never had a moment like that, of profound and conscious certainty, and so I'm not sure whether I object to others' descriptions of such moments out of a disbelief that they exist or out of uncertainty whether they do or not and possible envy if they do. They're very appealing, both in a literary sense (they're quite dramatic, although they lose a little of their punch in Snow because they happen every other page) and in a personal sense (everybody loves certainty; the idea that it can come perfectly, in a rush all at once, is tantalizing). But my experience is full of uncertainty, looks I share never give me an unambiguous view of the feelings of the person I'm looking at, nor of my own. Epiphanies that I've had about myself, while powerful and revelatory in the moment in which they occur, never have any lasting effect on my understanding of myself or the world. Whatever certainty I have about myself or the world is cumulative and slow-coming, and so maybe I just resent the characters in the books for having it so simple. I don't know. Ha, I guess that's the crux, isn't it. Anyhow, I've got to get back to work on practical things like my schedule. Joy of joys.