1. Irrevocable
2. Inconsolable
Where are the accents? No matter how many times I look up the pronunciations on Dictionary.com, I still can’t remember.
3. non sequitur (I can never say this word casually enough.)
4. coven (somehow I always find myself wanting to talk about witches, but with a hard or a soft O?)
Just finished Meg Wolitzer’s The Wife, and I loved it. It’s not only written in strong, muscular, and beautiful prose so transparent that you can see Wolitzer’s images in your mind’s eye, but it’s also a great story, full of depth and ideas. It has surprises and non-surprises, depictions of gender that resonate as true and some that don’t quite seem fair, and it is layered with contradictions, but the book gives the reader a lot to think about. I want to do a post soon on “feminine” versus “masculine” writing, an issue that Wolitzer explores in her book, but it is very late and I want to sleep on the novel for tonight. Ms. Wolitzer seems like a novelist that “owns the world” (in her words).
A few weeks ago I told myself that I wouldn’t read another novel about a novelist for a long time, but this one snuck up on me.
1. A childrens’ lunchbox. Nixed because it was too “90s rave culture.”
2. A bottle opener shaped like a flamingo. Beak seemed sharp – dangerous.
3. An envelope for business cards. Is she going to be handing out business cards at Burning Man? Probably not. You don’t want those people knowing where you work.
4. Condoms. She’s already stocked up.
5. Drugs. All I have is Tylenol PM and a couple Vicodin left over from dental surgery. That’s not going to cut it in the desert.
6. Some anti-Bush, pro-liberal buttons. Isn’t that just assumed?
7. Cute purse. Oh wait – that was for me.
8. A decorative thermos. Wasn’t nearly big enough to hold the two gallons of water you have to drink every hour you’re there.
9. Chocolate. A) It would melt. B) People would assume it was laced with something and then they’d be disappointed and perhaps take it out on my friend.
10. An escape pod. jjjjjk.
I settled on something very ordinary (albeit Mexican), and something she can easily re-gift to new friends, and something that can double as a travel case for LSD. I’m a good shopper.
PS Thank you Cha Cha’s and Paper Rock Scissors.
Today I was walking down the mall to get a salad from the Blue Ridge Country Store (across from the post office, beside Bagby’s sandwich shop, near the Pavilion), and I saw my cousin’s husband walking toward me with the telltale cardboard salad container, and for a moment we stopped to gush about how amazing the BRCS salad bar is. And how the same amount of awesome salad would cost you $15 at Whole Foods while it only costs you $5 at the Country Store. I said “Surely these prices can’t last,” immediately embarrassed that I sounded like an infomercial, and he responded “Maybe enough customers just buy iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing, balancing out those of us who want red bell peppers and spring greens.” We stood there thinking deeply about lettuce and we had a bonding moment, perhaps greater than any moment we have shared at all the Murray Thanksgivings and Christmases. Salad brings people together. It brings families together.
This will not be my last post about the Blue Ridge Country Store salad bar.
Today I started reading The Wife by Meg Wolitzer. So far it’s great. Almost too great. Sometimes I don’t trust contemporary books that are so well-written. Sometimes I doubt that they can be meaningful as well. There are good novels, where you sit back and say “Wow, great sentence” over and over again. Or “This girl must have an MFA from a prestigious NYC grad program or a history of winning writing competitions in lit journals.” And then there are novels that are so good the writing becomes invisible, and all you see is story. I will let you know what I think at the end.
Update on the end.
I don’t want to neglect Diana. Diana and I are in the Recluse Honor Society. Diana comes home from work, reads The Odyssey, watches Carnivale, and makes thousands of dollars worth of beautiful jewelry. She sits on her smoky rug and tweezes sterling silver into necklaces for hours. Sometimes she reads my blog. Sometimes she picks up the phone when I call. She is the best person to have breakfast with in Northern Virginia. We share a love for eating our boyfriends’ food. I am always pleased when I can get her out of the house.
For most of my life I have avoided clubs and extracurricular activities. I was always more comfortable hanging out by myself or with one other person than as part of a group. I also hated being committed to stuff, because I like having the flexibility of taking a nap if I need a nap. When I was a kid I guess I played on a few sports teams. I was even on swim team for a time in 5th grade, but mostly for the Rice Krispy Treats and single serving Twizzlers that the concession stand sold at Saturday meets. Then my friend Caroline and I started skipping swim practice. Instead of doing laps, we’d walk around town hiding from our parents and neighbors before dousing our hair and our bathing suits in the YMCA locker room sinks. But for many years I didn’t participate in any after-school activities. In college a few of my friends started a club called SEED – The Society for Eastern European Decadence. We sat around and talked about The Unbearable Lightness of Being and drank wine spritzers, always a little tongue-in-cheek (I hope), but the club dissolved the night that we invited the boys to play Truth or Dare and some shirts came off. Then I just retired altogether from group activities. Even holding a job was hard for me. It was always too much like Office Club or The Secretarys’ Alliance. However for the past few months I have been involved in a writing group that I LOVE. I always felt too introverted and embarrassed to join one of these, but now I find myself interrupting the other members to say what I think of an original story. And it helps me open up that we typically have wine and cookies at our meetings. This workshop group combines my great loves – words and sweets. And it just doesn’t bother me anymore that being in a club is totally gay.
So even if you think you are incorrigibly shy or socially awkward or if you just don’t like people, I think there is a group out there for you. Dominic, you can find a club made up of people who like to listen to obscure music alone for hours, and then put their playlists on the internet. Willis, you can join a gang of people who like to giggle at America’s Funniest Home Videos. Jennifer, you already have too many extracurricular activities. And Darren has joined a club of computer nerds who like to play soccer and go to happy hour at French restaurants. There is a community for everyone. So get off your computer, get on Craigslist, and start your own club. You can even have a clubhouse and a secret password. You can even make t-shirts and make fun of non-members. You can even give out cheap trophies for attendance and hang out at Pizza Hut on Saturday afternoons.
I love being “spotted” at the library with a bag full of Philip Roth novels. It is so much better than being spotted at Target buying fake nails. One Saturday afternoon I was at the library contemplating checking out the new biography of the Hilton sisters and I ran into my friend Abbey, who was headed to the basement to peruse old New York Times articles on microfiche. I will never be that cool.
Never take the time to write a blurb for your homepage, replacing “This is just a small space for you to write an introductory about yourself. Nothing too long should be written here. It should be just enough to tease your visitors to find out more.” Never take the time to upload a picture of yourself. Never write about significant things. Never stop fixating on oral sex and ice cream.
My neighbors just won $100,000 in the lottery! So now I have to remove my grandfather’s bumper sticker that says “The lottery is a tax on stupid people” and put up one that says “The lottery could have paid for my retirement if I hadn’t been so snobby about it.” [Love ya, Poppy.] I wrote down a bunch of tips for how to win, and now I’m going to start buying tickets every day at the liquor store. The next winner could be me! I think the chances of next door neighbors winning thousands in the same month are pretty high.