I’ve rarely read a good thriller that didn’t, at some point, rely on coin­ci­dence to advance its plot. But noth­ing undoes a thriller like a poorly man­aged coin­ci­dence, & The Girl Who Played with Fire, the late Swedish mys­tery author Stieg Larsson’s dis­ap­point­ing follow-​up to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, con­tains sev­eral. The most bla­tant simply insult the reader’s intel­li­gence (I real­ize these won’t make much sense to anyone who hasn’t read the first book):

• Salan­der just hap­pens to walk into an unfa­mil­iar bar where her evil guardian just hap­pens to be talk­ing to the man he has hired to kill her. Just how small is Stock­holm?

Oh, finally.

Bobby has made Mailer’s tag his own, but this is an adver­tise­ment fa mice elf agin. I’ll be read­ing my poems at Myopic Books this Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 20,  at 7 pm. Details here. Daniel Borzutzky is also read­ing, so please stop by if you’re in the neighborhood.

How awe­some is it that Sawyer was blast­ing “Search & Destroy” last night.

[This is the final install­ment of Anthony Madrid's note­book on John Ashbery's Plani­sphere, prompted by my writ­ing about same for the London Review of Books. I saw Madrid read at Myopic Books in Chicago last night. He should not be allowed in public with­out a han­dler.—mr]

ONGO­ING PLANI­SPHERE NOTE­BOOK

Anthony Madrid

5.

TWO BITS:

(a)

Pol. What is the matter my Lord.

Ham. Betweene who.

Pol. I meane the matter you reade my Lord.

Ham. Slaun­ders sir; for the sater­i­call rogue sayes here, that old men haue gray beards, that their faces are wrinck­led, their eyes purg­ing thick Amber, & plumtree gum, & that they haue a plen­ti­full lacke of wit, together with most weake hams, all which sir though I most pow­er­fully and potentlie belieue, yet I hold it not hon­esty to haue it thus set downe, for your selfe sir shall growe old as I am: if like a Crab you could goe backward.

(b)

mrs teas­dale: I’ve spon­sored your appoint­ment because I feel you are the most able states­man in all Freedonia.

fire­fly: Well, that covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground your­self. You’d better beat it. I hear they’re gonna tear you down and put up an office build­ing where you’re stand­ing. You can leave in a taxi. If you can’t leave in a taxi you can leave in a huff. If that’s too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff. You know you haven’t stopped talk­ing since I came here? You must have been vac­ci­nated with a phono­graph needle.

+++

These are sam­ples of bewil­der­ing non­sense. Which is not to say there isn’t any sense there. In fact, it’s almost all sense. It’s just strange.

What exactly would have to be left out from those bits to make ’em into Ash­bery poems? And what would need to be added? I feel like if I could put my finger on that, I’d really have some­thing.