Just finished possibly the most...astonishing novel I've ever read, The Brothers K, on a recommendation from a person whose recommendations I intend to follow slavishly from now on. It seems impossible that the characters are not real people. It, like Cats and very few novels, made me laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page. The author's mastery of English is utter and absolute. He flits from one topic/style/voice to another with the effortless blitheness of a cat toying with various pre-killed types of prey -- and neologizes when the English vocabulary does not suffice -- reminiscently of Nabokov. It also reminds me a lot of my all-time favorite The Corrections, but exceeds it in scope and effect and is even more intense, affectionate and emotional in its author/reader communion. It has provoked various Deep Thoughts I am still processing.

Meanwhile, just a few of my favorite bits:

About Everett, trying to woo Natasha at a party: "He'd had to put himself rather heavily under the influence of Dr. Alcohol to protect his magic tongue from Natasha's debilitating gaze, and so far the difference between mute imbecility and drunken magniloquence had not seemed to impress her."

"There are, as far as I can tell, just two types of people who can bear to watch baseball without talking: total non-baseball fans and hard-core players. The hard-core player can watch in silence because his immersion is so complete that he feels no need to speak, while the persona non baseball can do it because his ignorance is so vast that he sees nothing worthy of comment. For the rest of us, watching any sort of baseball-like proceeding without discussing what we're seeing is about as much fun as drinking nonalcoholic beer while fishing without a hook."

"The Knucklebrain [pitch] was a no-spin no-dance no-account knuckler that any .250-hitting Single A musclebrain could have kabonged into the bleachers of his choice."