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| img courtesy of flickr user vincent desjardins |
I splurged on books today. It's easy for me to do that now, now that I have money. I know the money is an illusion. But I spend it anyway.
Tiffany let me on to this bookstore. In fact, we went there together. The Housing Works is located in a lavish, expensive neighborhood. An impossibility. How do they make rent?
Oh man, oh man. I bought so many books my arms still ache from the strain of carrying them.
I'm so nervous. How will I read through these books? I've allowed, for instance, the Arenas collection I bought from my favorite UES hole-in-the-wall to pile up unread. I'm so afraid of the aftermath; I'm afraid that I'll read these books and feel bereft at the end of them; I'm afraid that, deep in my unfocused fog, I will misread them; I am afraid that I will hate them (Not possible. You can't hate someone who is capable of writing the following sentence: "He dismissed me with his penis.")
*
I'm reading the easiest ones first. On the train ride home I inhaled Rahul Mehta's Quarantine. A prolific reviewer whose blog I sometimes read, but do not admire, recommended this book. Not just recommended it; she practically had sex with it. When it comes to Mehta, we agree. I almost feel angry that we're in agreement. Everything this woman says is so trite. How could we both understand the sublimity of Mehta's work? I'm an asshole, yeah, I just wish I knew.
The short stories reminded me a little of Jhumpa Lahiri's, in the sense that the vague malaise and immigrant unease permeates both collections. But Mehta's energy is so refreshing; he's actually passionate about relationships and their overwhelming power in his characters' lives. Leagues away from the clinical characterizations Lahiri uses in her own work.
Funnily enough, Lahiri's new book, the Lowlands, will be released next month. Obviously I will get it. I wonder what I will think.
Perhaps I identify with Mehta's work more strongly because his characters smack less of upper-crust failure and, instead, simply express an overwhelming need to make it to the next day.
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I also read How To Shake The Other Man by Derek Palacio. Unsettling.
Palacio tells this electric story in the span of 63 pages. There's not much I can say except that the story bleeds. Like a macaroon that looks dry until chewed. (I'm always shocked by the moistness of macaroons.) A man named Marcel is murdered, leaving his brother -- a boxing trainer -- and his lover, a boxer, behind. This highly compact story deals with the days following Marcel's death. I finished the story in about 45 minutes.
A side note: it's weird reading these incredible sex scenes while on a train full of toddlers named Yousef and Fatima who want nothing more than to eat my pages as they streak past my seat. Yes, eat the scenes covered in glistening naked limbs. Watch the seeds of animalcrazylust germinate in your idiotic little bodies until you grow up and breathe them out like fire.
Jesus Christ, I'm demented.
