[lit-ideas] Re: What happens next?
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:16:48 +0900
Reminds me of a deeply affecting novel I just finished but am sure to go
back and re-read. Richard Ford (2006) The Lay of the Land. You wouldn't
think that one damned thing after another in the life of a 55-year old,
divorced, New Jersey real estate broker with a Tibetan Buddhist immigrant
who calls himself "Mike Maloney" as his partner, contemplating life in the
wake of prostate cancer treatment and an impending Thanksgiving with the son
from whom he has been estranged, who has run off to Kansas City and a job as
a Hallmark card writer and a lesbian daughter, who has just broken up with
her partner and has come home to take care of dad, while his second wife has
run off with her ex-husband, who suddenly turned up after 30 years of being
presumed dead.... could, in fact, be so compelling.
Picaresque with melodramatic scenes comically undermined and made occasions
for "what's it all about" musings by the protagonist, I've never read
anything like it. E.g., the third paragraph, describing a news item our hero
is reading,
"Don-Houston Clevinger, the disgruntled student-- a Navy vet and father of
two -- had already done poorly on the midterm and was probably headed for a
bad grade and a ticket home to McAllen. This Clevinger entered the quiet,
reverent classroom of test takers, walked among the desks and toward the
front where Ms. McCurdy stood, arms folded, musing out the window, possibly
smiling. And he said to her, raising a Glock 9-mm to within six inches of
the space just above the mid-point between her eyes, he said, 'Are you ready
to meet your Maker?' To which Ms. McCurdy, who was forty-six and a better
than average teacher and canasta player, and who'd been a flight nurse in
Desert Storm replied, blinking her periwinkle eyes in curiosity only twice,
'Yes. Yes, I think I am.' Whereupon this Clevinger shot her, turned around
slowly to address the astonished nurses-to-be and shot himself in
approximately the same place."
Followed in the next paragraph by
"I was witting down when I began to read this -- in my glassed-in living
room overlooking the grassy dune, the beach and the Atlantic's somnolent
shingle. I was actually feeling pretty good about things. It was seven
o'clock on a Thursday morning the week before Thanksgiving. I had a 'happy
client' closing at ten at the realty office here in Sea-Clift, after which
the seller and I were going for a celebratory lunch at Bump's Eat-It-Raw. My
recent health concerns --sixty radioactive iodine seeds encased in titanium
BBs and smart-bombed into my prostate at the Mayo Clinic--all seemed to be
going well (systems up and running, locked and loaded). My Thanksgiving
plans for a semi-family at-home occasion hadn't yet started to make me
fitful (stress is bad for the iodine seeds' half-life). And I hadn't heard
from my wife in six months, which, under the circumstances f her new life
and my old one, seemed unsurprising if not ideal. In other words, all the
ways that life feels like life at age fifty-five were strewn around me like
poppies."
Enjoy.
On Jan 12, 2008 1:42 PM, Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Check out this site. First turn on your sound. And then wait. Just watch
> and
> see what happens.
>
> http://producten.hema.nl/
>
> yrs,
> andreas
> www.andreas.com
>
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--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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