No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. It's Just One Planet. But There Are Many Stories.
T. C. Boyle’s new novel is all about the plot, with the author is at his acerbic best. You would not be blamed for thinking he has no faith at all in humanity until you get to the end. I can’t tell you about that because it would be the final spoiler of all the spoilers I will not reveal.
For those that find cliché an imposition on their patience, Elle directed by Paul Verhoeven is two-edged. Yes, the film seems to find some conventions of the thriller indispensable, like the loud, sudden noise that turns out to mean nothing. And is it a spoiler to say that a character shouldn’t go down into the basement? But the film is so ingenious otherwise, so original in its plot contortions and so fuck you I’ll show you anything I want in its bravery, that ‘must see’ rings out at you from the screen.
The first time I saw Lucille after she died, she told me, “You better find someone new, Harlan, or you’ll be lonely.”
Before you enter this run-
down house, drink caffeine.
As you approach,
ignore baseball-busted
window on second floor—
you’ll never leave first. Follow
creaky path down dank hall
to third door, the only room
with blue lights dimmed. Take
a seat before the console
of your choice. Start to play
don’t stop. Don’t eat. Don’t
sleep. Let time escape
like the caged bird
from my bedroom,
the last heart-beating thing
touched by anyone
who’s ever come here.
It’s not such a wonderful idea to try to prove one’s machismo by eating fugu, i.e. puffer fish, or by lining one’s pockets with the profits of such sales. Firing M-16s on a military base, likewise, can cause harm. More detrimental to one’s well-being, though, is blasting music in an apartment in which a Mama Writer is trying to compose a text.
Before she died, Dr. Candice Mittleton, an employee of Friendly Morgues Inc., the body storage facility that is associated, somewhat loosely, with Upper Valley Hospital, was habituated to addressing me as someone many years her junior. She acted in that manner despite the fact that I was her boss and despite the fact that I was decades older. Even when a mutual colleague, Seth Huffington, publicly protested that behavior, Dr. Mittleton responded to his remonstration with laughter.