Pleasures of the flesh...
and other textworthy topoi...
I am in the middle of another totally unrelated narration when my mom comes home and says, "Lan, come upstairs and talk to me." So I dutifully follow and I. parades about strutting in her new clothing and I peruse (as I am wont to do) her headrest for interesting reads (that I should not be doing but oh well, I am allowed to read a non-reading-list book before I officially start, I am on holiday, am I not?)... Meanwhile I. snatches what look to be strange sex toys from my father's side and dangles the prickly pink balls asking, "what is this?" Mom and I crack up and I am reminded of the time she pulled the fuzzy hand-cuffs from Chema's bedside table spurring a whole series of WUI events of which I was just reminded this very afternoon. Prescience indeed.
I found The Fourth Hand, John Irving's 10th book. Few of you, if any, have known me long enough to know that A Prayer for Owen Meany was the book that changed my life and that I pored over as many of Irving's earlier novels that I could during the year that I spent as an English-deprived exchange student in Argentina. He was my secret pleasure. He may yet be. The first chapter of this new one is promising, so it looks like I have an activity for the night. Think: Pain-killing pills that detach you from the pain and offer prescient dreams of the best sex you have never had... yet.
But here is the reason I am posting so feverishly. My time is up. The back of the book touts the fact that he published his first novel when he was 26, which means... that I have exactly 2 and 1/2 hours to write and publish my first novel if I want to measure up, (or 5 and 1/2 if I want to pretend to still be on CA time). Ok. So I know I will never measure up, and the novels I have not written don't really haunt me, so much as taunt me. Who am I kidding about being a writer? Just myself, I guess.
I am in the middle of another totally unrelated narration when my mom comes home and says, "Lan, come upstairs and talk to me." So I dutifully follow and I. parades about strutting in her new clothing and I peruse (as I am wont to do) her headrest for interesting reads (that I should not be doing but oh well, I am allowed to read a non-reading-list book before I officially start, I am on holiday, am I not?)... Meanwhile I. snatches what look to be strange sex toys from my father's side and dangles the prickly pink balls asking, "what is this?" Mom and I crack up and I am reminded of the time she pulled the fuzzy hand-cuffs from Chema's bedside table spurring a whole series of WUI events of which I was just reminded this very afternoon. Prescience indeed.
I found The Fourth Hand, John Irving's 10th book. Few of you, if any, have known me long enough to know that A Prayer for Owen Meany was the book that changed my life and that I pored over as many of Irving's earlier novels that I could during the year that I spent as an English-deprived exchange student in Argentina. He was my secret pleasure. He may yet be. The first chapter of this new one is promising, so it looks like I have an activity for the night. Think: Pain-killing pills that detach you from the pain and offer prescient dreams of the best sex you have never had... yet.
But here is the reason I am posting so feverishly. My time is up. The back of the book touts the fact that he published his first novel when he was 26, which means... that I have exactly 2 and 1/2 hours to write and publish my first novel if I want to measure up, (or 5 and 1/2 if I want to pretend to still be on CA time). Ok. So I know I will never measure up, and the novels I have not written don't really haunt me, so much as taunt me. Who am I kidding about being a writer? Just myself, I guess.
posted by ilana at 6:16 p.m.
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