Of the semester, I mean. . . .
Everywhere you go, people act out their holiday-induced neuroses through public spectacles. In stores children are screaming. At Wal-Mart the air is rife with burning indifference for your fellow man. But enough about that.
One of my purposes in life, I've discovered, is to understand what bizarre energy is at work in the fiction of Joy Williams. I have read each of her three story collections (Taking Care, Escapes, and Honored Guest) and two of her novels (The Changeling and The Quick and the Dead). I cannot say I dislike any of it. Not one story would I qualify in a negative light. And I won't comment on The Changeling here (I don't think I could). But The Quick and the Dead merits further attention. What on earth is this novel doing? It seems to lack any plot. Or it has just enough plot to move. Enough plot, as John Edgar Wideman says, "to hang the meat from." I have read nothing else that is so utterly bizarre yet so completely engrossing.
My mind slipped. I forgot where I was going with this. More later.
2008/12/09
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A Slowly Growing List of Things to Look Forward To When You Have a Child
- Every day is either Christmas or Halloween or Birthday or Easter
- Leave those cats alone! They're going to scratch you and it will hurt
- You cannot lie under circumstances, but nor can you tell the literal truth
- Geez that kid is sharp
- Can I have cake? Can I have cake? Can I have cake? Huh? Daddy? Can I have cake?
- For the last time, stop asking me!
- Noticing the growth: taller and a bit heavier to carry
- Children's television shows
- Food. Wasted food
- Remembering that you once acted this way yourself
- Watching where the both of you are going
- The joy of hearing the word "fuck" being used experimentally, and justifying this experimentation by saying "Well they learn it eventually"
- TANTRUMS
- Sitting down together on the living room floor, a mess of blocks & cars & plush Care Bears strewn around you, discussing the complexities of each car's identity, its name, and why it is so humorous
- Having to take responsibility for someone else for a change
- More frustration than you're prepared for
- Wicked cackling
- Drawings of potato guys
- Learning about the world all over again
- Circular Logic
- Unexpected hugs and words put beautifully together out of context
- Waking up after 4 hours of sleep, and unexpectedly having to confront shit, in more than one place, including the carpet, a big toe, a butt, a bed, a toilet seat, and underpants
2 comments:
Is that the novel that inspired the Leondardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman "shoot-em-up" movie?
If it is, then the screenwriter took some enormous liberties.
The novel's characters include adolescent girls (two of whom are orphans), a wealthy architect and his daughter, the ghost of the architect's dead wife, a young man who suffered a stroke and now has a monkey in his brain, a suicidal piano player, a guy who published two humor books about saguaro cactus and now hates all cacti, a man who murders a dog, and many others who I cannot recall at the moment.
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