Philip Roth

Thank you, Ugly Betty.  This is now all I can think of when I think of my favorite author now.BTW – Portnoy’s Complaint: not his best. 

The Frames

If you haven’t discovered The Frames yet (thanks mostly to the success of Once), do yourself a favor. 

Currently Reading: Portnoy’s Complaint

   Recently I’ve been trying to make it through the complete catalogue of Philip Roth.  Over the years, I’ve read American Pastoral, The Plot Against America, and Everyman.  In the past month, I’ve read The Human Stain, When She was Good, and am now reading Portnoy’s Complaint.

    I am thoroughly convinced that there is no writer still writing today with the talent of Philip Roth.   His style is so detailed and stark at the same time, and I can tell that my style has been greatly influenced by his.  I just love reading his works and devouring them.

Teaching

Writing recommendations is a strange thing.  It means two things: first, that the student really likes you, and two, that the student thinks you like them back.

It warms the heart a little.

She runs faster than her dreams

faster than the man on the corner whipping up a fresh batch of empty promises.

faster than her work and her time, faster than the world.

Inspired

I was just a young girl when the president and his wife fled the country.  When the news reached us I imagined the presidential limo passing through the streets with 100s of gourdes falling from the black tinted windows.  I figured that money fell from their clothes and their smiles.

    In those days I had loved them, longed to be like them.  The president’s wife with her jewels, her fabulous clothes, her proud demeanor: that was what I wanted to be.  I never understood my father’s venom towards the both of them.  They were in charge, and I respected them for it.  I would plug my ears when he spoke ill of them, my fingernails making tiny crescents in the soft flesh. 

    Long after they were gone, I would still wrap myself in mother’s best bed sheets and strut in front of the mirror, my chin reaching out, my neck stretched like a giraffe.  For a time I was convinced that I was their long lost daughter, and when they returned to Haiti they would claim me as their own, bathing me with presents in apology for the time they had lost with me, their precious only daughter. 

    Years later, when my father finally tired of my fantasies, I was told the truth about the couple I held so highly.  I ran screaming from the house, telling my father that he was jealous, that he was fearful for what my real parents would do to him when they found that he had kidnapped me.  My father caught me in his arms, and carried me, still hysterical, back into the house that was not my home. 

     We never spoke of it again, neither my delusions nor the incident.  Even still, when I hear of the atrocities that our former leader had ordered, I picture my father’s face in his stead.

 

 

Michael Chabon

I met a woman whose short stories have broken my heart over and over again for the last 15 years and saw only the withered neck and hollow stare of a woman who had wasted her life. I shook hands with colleagues in the department whom I had good reasons to admire and like, and heard their false laughter, and felt their discomfort with their bodies and their status and their clothes, and smelled the stink of sweet beer and whiskey on their breath.

Supposedly

I don’t really believe my own hype.

Song for Someone

   As I was running by this house, this house I have passed a million times, I stopped for a moment as I heard a choir singing.  It was Christmas, and though the sun was out, the people inside had lit up their brilliant tree, smiling out the windows – not at me, but at the people turning up the walkway to join in their party.      

 The sound wasn’t simply a stereo.  Nor was it a child, dressed in their finest clothes and paraded out for family friends to ooh and aah and envy because their child was not so well behaved.  It was an actual choir, complete with robes and angelic voices, and the sound amplified as the hostess opened the door to receive her guests.     

    I remember feeling warm and comfortable, like this was the way a neighborhood was supposed to be, my Americana, my home.  

Yes, another blog.

I know, I know.  Recently though, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and writing.  I wanted a place where my thoughts would fit – not in my knitting blog, surely, nor in my Disney blog.  So here you are.