still life, A.S. Byatt

Trying to avoid writing too generally about the books, I kept track of a few of the thoughts that popped up while I was reading.  This is how it began:
3.     I wonder what it would take to be popular in the cultural world, whether that world exists, and what it should be called.  
3.     "Van Gogh had shot himself insufficiently in the groin."
4.     Did Winston Churchill ever paint the Cap d'Antilles?
8.     Van Gogh being unwilling to paint religious scenes--painting olives instead.  What it is like not to say everything.
9.     Structure and facts--even if they are made up
12.   "One should never, she considered, ignore surface meanings in favor of implication."
16.   Learning on one's own.
63.   The narrator introduces herself as I.
116. The I again--bolder.
You can see I got lazy and tapered off.  I've read this before, and I get wrapped up in it--a little too excited by it.  I am easily seduced by the seeming ease of the characters thoughts.  It starts to seem like a pure fantasy, and I forget to listen to the author's claims that her characters are flawed.  The flaws slowly become more obvious, though, and the book becomes more solid.  Later I want to write a little bit about accident.  The characters all struggle so much to understand the world--mostly in a literary, connection-making way--that the things they don't understand become great enemies.

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