…this post would have a better title.
No updates for a few days, and the reason is twofold and exciting. First, I’m busy reading the longest book I’ve ever read. It’s a classic, and from what I’ve read so far, it certainly deserves to be. But it’s 1200 pages of small font.
Second, and more importantly, I’ve abruptly found myself in possession of a full-time job. I am now a reporter for a small-town newspaper. So take that, all ye naysayers! PRINT IS NOT DEAD! And it’s not going down without a fight.
["Print is not dead!" she loudly, proudly announced on her blog. It took her a few seconds to realize the irony of what she had just done.]
One thing I have read in the past few days was “Iff,” a short story by Antonya Nelson. I picked up a literary quarterly called Tin House a few weeks ago, because I want to read more new fiction. I picked this one for superficial reasons: there’s a latté on the cover. I was cold and tired, and it called out to me in the bookstore. Also, it’s from Oregon, which to me is the mythical land of tall trees and cool weather that produced my favourite writers and directors.
“Iff” starts shockingly, with the residents of an Albuquerque neighbourhood gathered around a pole studying a flyer. This one is different: instead of a missing cat or dog, the subject is a teenage girl. After a few minutes, the neighbours shrug their shoulders and continue with their lives. Nelson follows the narrator, a divorced middle-aged woman, home to her mother-in-law and her son. She’s dreading her ex-husband’s upcoming wedding. She doesn’t like her son’s boyfriend. It’s the story of a perfectly ordinary woman on a mostly ordinary day, and Nelson does a great job of getting into this woman’s mind. The best short stories are the ones that make me want to live inside them. They make me want to narrate moments throughout my day as though I were a character. This was one of those.
