-J. D. Salinger, Nine Stories, page 123 sentences 6-8
So I got tapped by one of the “internet memes” floating around the literary and now musical blogs. Not really a fan of these but once tagged…well I’ll play along. As an aside I dunno if I really consider the chain letter aspect of this really letting this aspire to meme level. It seems like an artificial way to spread to me, OTOH I guess one could think of that as “memetic engineering”. The spreading it to five people part, I can’t say I’m up for that. In the same way that I haven’t spread any genetic material I think perhaps I’ll be a non-breeder of this meme. Oh all right fine I’ll play along, but like a more responsible parent I’ll keep my reproduction near replacement levels 😉
The meme rules are:
1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences.
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.
As one can see my pick was from Salingers, Nine Stories the story that page falls on happening to be Pretty Mouth and Green Eyes. One could argue that Gert Jonke’s Geometrical Regional Novel was closer at hand, but I have yet to read it and page 123 is right near the end. I for one refuse to read a bit of the end of a book before I’ve read it! Nine Stories, was only a couple of inches further away anyway, perhaps it would even win under strict measurement. It just happened to be out here in the living room at this time as I’d wanted to reread The Laughing Man a couple of weeks back and had yet to refile it. I have to say I rather like those three sentences; posted out of context of this “meme” they’d be pretty inexplicable.
I was tagged by Bruce Hodges at the always interesting Monotonous Forest Blog. I’ll tag Brian Olewnick at Just Outside and Richard Pinnell at Learning to Listen. That seems like a reasonable amount.
A Spiral Cage 