claustrophobic

The way Lorrie Moore opens her short story "Debarking" -- originally published in The New Yorker in 2003 -- actually makes my fingers itch. The idea of not being able to escape a tiny golden band literally makes me a little sick. That probably says something about me. Nonetheless, thought I'd share:

"Ira had been divorced for six months and still couldn't get his wedding ring off. His finger had swelled doughily -- a combination of frustrated desire, unmitigated remorse, and misdirected ambition was how he explained it. 'I'm going to have my entire finger surgically removed,' he told his friends. The ring (supposedly gold, though now that everything he had received from Marilyn had been thrown in doubt, who knew?) clinched the blowsy fat of his finger, which had grown twistedly around it like a fucking happy challah. 'Maybe I should cut the whole hand off and send it to her,' he said on the phone to his friend Mike...."
(p. 35 from the 2008 Faber and Faber Ltd. edition of Moore's Collected Short Stories)

open for interpretation: from Laurence to Lawrence

I've been doing more "fun" reading this week -- like taking a night off to re-read Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, and standing in line at Starbucks today reading The Guardian.

(I brought few novels with me to London, but I had to bring one Laurence. I love The Diviners because, frankly, I find something new in it every time I pick it up. This time, because in my classes we talk so much about how the very nature of sharing information transforms it, I was particularly struck by this line of Morag's musing: "Will Morag tell Pique all she knows of Lazarus, or of Christie, for that matter? How will the tales change in the telling?" Or, much later in the novel, ".... was she interpreting him, as usual, only through her own eyes? How else could you interpret anyone?")

So, I have a few items to share:

1. There are lots of stories to read today about when Lady Chatterley's Lover went to trial as a banned book, and got un-banned. But I would suggest this tale, of a North England mining town's interaction with the novel, is a must-must-must-read. If only for the author's horrified response to his own mother....
2. Also from The Guardian, this story by Lorrie Moore. "Foes" is included in a 665-page short-story collection I bought earlier this fall, which I also turn to every once in awhile when I need a little more fiction in my life. What strikes me about this particular story, however, is Moore's unyielding push. She pushes the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, then rips away whatever helped them come to that conclusion. Does that make sense? What I mean to say is she ensures you, the reader, can not take the moral high ground, no matter how firm you think that ground is.
3. This is actually a shared link from TSS. Having, at times, the maturity level of a Cosmo-reading 19-year-old, I find this title particularly funny.....

where are you reading in South London?

Around the corner from here. Relaxing.