Out Stealing Horses

I like Hemingway and the word "and" as much as the next guy, but when it's overdone it becomes an annoying fetish:

"I measure coffee into the filter and pour cold water into the jug and switch on the percolater, and then cut some bread and put it in a basket and get butter out and meat and cheese from the fridge onto plates and fill a small yellow jug with milk for the coffee and put everything on the table with glasses and knives for two."

Over 200 pages of this sort of thing becomes tiring. After reading In the Wake which was only slightly better than Out Stealing Horses, I think I can say I'm officially done with Per Petterson. I guess I prefer my Norwegian writers completely crazy like Knut Hamsun.

"Guyish stuff"

In this silly article, the writer drops the bombshell that it's a man's world in the Obama administration because there are no women in the pick-up basketball games. Ridiculous. Just as silly is the notion that "comics and Star Trek" is "guyish stuff." Sorry nerds, comics and Star Trek is "boyish stuff." Sports are also boyish, but I give it a pass because it's the universal language of men (i. e. it's what men talk about to avoid talking about anything important).