#568 Everyone’s Reading Bastard- Nick Hornby
People get divorced. It happens everyday. More than half of all marriages will end this way, and they usually follow a period of angry, bitter conversations with family and friends. Usually these family and friends understand that they are blowing off steam and sometimes—in the case of friends—they hear both sides of the post-divorce clamor.
But what if one person of the former couple is a columnist and decides to use this column to do her complaining?
“…her insatiable appetite for self-exposure and, unavoidably, the exposure of those who happened to be somewhere close to her. And that was what fueled her reputation—and she really was quite well known now—for eccentricity and solipsism.”
Elaine’s column was called “Bastard” and everyone in his life new exactly who the bastard was. It was unfair and it was cruel. I don’t care who you are—even Mother Theresa—if all people new about you were the bad things without context and without rebuttal, you’d look awful. That is what Charlie’s life was like. What made it worse was that she was a great writer and the column went viral. Oddly, Charlie was taking this all vey well.
“Taking abuse in a national newspaper without attempting to hit back was actually a pretty good way of wiping the slate clean. He was hoping that when this was all over, his spiritual overdraft would have been paid off, and he’d be allowed to use the cash machine again.”
In a turn worthy of a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romantic comedy, Charlie meets the woman made notorious in a countering column called “Bitch,” and the two start their own relationship. Charlie needs only to wait the vitriol out and wait for Elaine to make the wrong enemies, and hopefully his slate will be swept clean.
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