The century is bending—have a very happy ending

We are still dealing with Schrödinger's plumbers, but last night I was in bed for almost twelve hours and may have slept for as much as ten. The previous night I slept none and had an urgent care appointment even later in the day than it had been scheduled for: who needs a functioning health care system when a pandemic is no longer a national emergency? It turns out I have a sinus infection. I curled up with spatch and cats and read Gwynne Garfinkle's Can't Find My Way Home (2022), which I loved with its varyingly figurative degrees of haunting and its never simplistically shifting definitions of art and friendship and revolution and its own questioning, exhilarating soundtrack as it spirals in and out of time, which I impractically wish could have been included as a mixtape with the text. I have a better grounding in protest music of the Vietnam era than in American daytime drama of the same decades, but Garfinkle makes a strong case for caring just as much about the soap operas. With any luck, coming a year late to this full-blast first novel only means less of a wait to its follow-up, whatever form it may arrive in. This one takes several by turns: an unmissable kaleidoscope.