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Dec. 13th, 2011 01:43 amSometimes I foolishly read the reviews of contemporary fiction and I think about it and that's like a challenging call and then I write nonsense like this:
There were facts afoot, they all lived in a swirl of facts, information that had, for provenance only the past. But these were secret truths, unveiled only to the few who obsessively knew them. Of the residents of the building only one could tell you that today was special, that it was 100 years old today. That it had been built as in an accident of misguided speculation in the early days of suburban growth in a time, now fondly recalled, in the nation's bloom, an early bucolic period of health. Only one person in the building could tell you that it had withstood the pressures of two world wars and another war against the third world, still going on. Only one person could tell you that the chipping paint on the ice-man's door frame was the 19th coat and the third of the ersatz eggshell acrylics to cover what was once a finely polished maplewood, harvested from some far off corner of the county.
But you wouldn't talk to that person because he wouldn't talk to you. Wouldn't make any eye contact at all. Because Whitey O'Pristine, a complicated boy of many inner dooms and one singular hope was the mulatto son a careless yet free-spirited and tragically endearing mother who absentmindedly referred to him as a half-breed and a mongrel, and that was only on good days when she was home to lavish him with backhanded praise. No Whitey was hopelessly atavistic but curiously knowledgeable about the glib peculiarities of place while only passingly interested in the occupants of those places. And now you'll learn the sordid story of Whitey O'Pristine which is essentially pornography you awful fucking wretch.
There were facts afoot, they all lived in a swirl of facts, information that had, for provenance only the past. But these were secret truths, unveiled only to the few who obsessively knew them. Of the residents of the building only one could tell you that today was special, that it was 100 years old today. That it had been built as in an accident of misguided speculation in the early days of suburban growth in a time, now fondly recalled, in the nation's bloom, an early bucolic period of health. Only one person in the building could tell you that it had withstood the pressures of two world wars and another war against the third world, still going on. Only one person could tell you that the chipping paint on the ice-man's door frame was the 19th coat and the third of the ersatz eggshell acrylics to cover what was once a finely polished maplewood, harvested from some far off corner of the county.
But you wouldn't talk to that person because he wouldn't talk to you. Wouldn't make any eye contact at all. Because Whitey O'Pristine, a complicated boy of many inner dooms and one singular hope was the mulatto son a careless yet free-spirited and tragically endearing mother who absentmindedly referred to him as a half-breed and a mongrel, and that was only on good days when she was home to lavish him with backhanded praise. No Whitey was hopelessly atavistic but curiously knowledgeable about the glib peculiarities of place while only passingly interested in the occupants of those places. And now you'll learn the sordid story of Whitey O'Pristine which is essentially pornography you awful fucking wretch.
