Darling,
07/29/13
These days, I feel more
and more in a hurry, a rush of something good. Lots to read, lots
to write.
If you think of me, you might as well imagine me wearing loafers with little brass spikes on them.
Spiky loafers. They are everywhere. I could carry a spiky purse to go with them.
I recently dreamed that I met a woman whose hands were encrusted with faux
diamonds. She wasn’t even engaged, she assured me.
Sophie’s
Choice has hooked
me. It seems to be one of those works that is both terribly sad and terribly
funny. The beginning is hilarious, but I know what the title refers to.
By the way,
do you know of a book called Under the Volcano? I first encountered it
in Infinite Jest and thought it a made-up exaggeratedly
depressing-sounding book in a list of such titles. Then I saw it on the display
table at the bookstore today, near Sophie’s Choice, and again on page 13
of Styron’s novel.
Stingo, the
narrator, is wonderfully brash, a proud smart-alec. Told that his lunchtime
newspaper choice was too radical and that he should wear a hat to work, he
donned his military beret and came back from lunch with The Daily Worker.
How he makes fun of McGraw-Hill, publications, such titles as American Strip
Miner, Pesticide News. His summaries of manuscripts he has reviewed cast them as failed
versions of the Great American Novel: “Love and death amid the sand dunes and
cranberry bogs of Southern New Jersey,” began one summary. And for a book about
Kimberly-Clark:
“As the romance of paper is central to
the story of the American dream [says the writer], so is the name
Kimberly-Clark central to the story of paper…many of its products—the most
famous of which is undoubtedly Kleenex—have become so familiar that their very
names have passed into the language…” He tries to make Kimberly-Clark out as a fundamental contributor to American prose. Maybe tragedy, in particular, I might add.
Well, dear, I’d better
put on my spiky bedroom slippers and get ready for bed. I'd love to read you those passages in person.
Yours,
Katie
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