Monday, July 29, 2013

Letters of Katie Crenshaw 07/29/13

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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