Good Reading!

I just read the first 18 pages of William Goldman's "Marathon Man" and—wow— have not been so blown away by anyone's writing since "The Shipping News." I'm practically holding my breath reading, the sentences are so long, the action moves so quickly, and it is so dark and tense and funny at the same time.

"'There is definitely a lump on your wife's left breast,' the doctor had begun, and Rosenbaum, apoplectic at the man's stupidity, had turned to his pale spouse, saying, 'See how lucky we are to have come to a genius specialist? We tell him there is a lump on your left breast and, armed with only that speck of information, he can absolutely assure us that the lump is a lump.' He turned to the doctor now, a young cocker, probably married to a blonde shiksa. 'Of course there's a lump on her breast, my God, you're a tit man, I didn't come to ask her about the lump on her face—that's called a nose, by the way, I don't know if they teach that kind of thing anymore in medical school.'"

Gotta get back to the book now.