I read "Franny and Zooey", by JD Salinger. mally recommended it. It was kind of quite good. It was mainly -- kind of like Catcher in the Rye this way -- sort of about the idea that most everyone is kind of terrible and egotistical and self-serving, but that we have to live with all these people anyway, and hell, we're all of us like that too. And there was a lot about Jesus, but it was more of a Joseph Campbell approach to Jesus, at least as I saw it, more about the ideas behind the stories, the philosophy. Franny and Zooey are both actors, and so this book took more of an artist's viewpoint, which resonates more with me, which helped me relate to the things they were saying.

So anyway, it was good. And what was also good is the way it was written on the whole, which was basically as a series of conversations -- first between Franny and her boyfriend, then between Zooey (Franny's older brother) and their mother, and then two conversations between Franny and Zooey. Of course there was narration throughout, and it was a kind of detached omniscient narrative that sort of gets on my nerves, but it didn't get in the way of the brilliant dialogue and the really gripping battle of ideologies and shit that went on in these conversations. Dialogue is where things happen for me. I like stories about peoples' mental environments and their fucking skewed visions of the world more than those about people jumping off buildings and driving around in cars. Especially when I'm writing them.

In less pretentious and pseudo-literate news, I drink way too much fucking orange juice. I think I'm addicted. It's an expensive habit, but I guess it's cheaper than crack.