"Roadside Picnic" by the Strugatsky Brothers

Temporarily e-shelved Quixote (I'm more than half way through) to quickly read Roadside Picnic (I want to read it and then re-watch Tarkovsky's Stalker). Though the book and the film have similarities, I can certainly understand Tarkovsky's quip that they're nothing alike. Also, I probably half-agree with a friend who said she'd put Quixote down because it was too slapstick. I think it's more like: too much of a good thing is a bad thing. But that may also partly be a modern sensibility speaking. Anyway, I won't give up on the brave knight errant (seriously, though it takes some patience: I'm enjoying it), but I want him to rest before getting all banged up again.

I'm also enjoying Berger's selected essays: finished those from Toward Reality (Permanent Red in the UK) and have moved on to those from The Moment of Cubism. The only nits I have thus far are his "seeing things" in paintings and painters (he makes his evaluations sound so scientific, definitive) and the notion of movement = progress in relation to man (will this take more of a backseat in his later work--we'll see). Early Berger is a kind of Quixote.

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