#461 Paper Losses- Lorrie Moore

#461 Paper Losses- Lorrie Moore

Here is another story about a failed, loveless marriage, perhaps even infidelity. At this point of this story-a-day exercise of mine there are some topics that I just don’t like to read about anymore. This is one of them. So, I say right away, I know that it’s not Moore’s fault that I am saturated with this topic. On the other hand, stories that astound the reader often do so by transcending the topic. Yesterday, the Lahiri story I read, Sexy, was about infidelity and a failed marriage, but I found interest in it, because at least it was coming from a different perspective.

Trying to stay somewhat objective, I found the writing here to be a little uneven. Moore is exceedingly clever and creative in her word play and ironic observances. However, it seems here that those moments overshadowed the objective of the piece. If I stop and say—hey, that phrase the author used is a clever one—then I’m taken out of the narration a bit. I didn’t believe I was hearing the narrator speaking, I was seeing the writer, writing clever phrases.

But, some of them were definitely winners, or at least fodder for bumper stickers:

“Rage had it’s medicinal purposes, but she was not wired to sustain it, and when it tumbled away, loneliness engulfed her, grief burning at the center in a cold blue heat.”

“Like a person, a marriage was unrecognizable in death, even buried in an excellent suit.”

“Marriage stopped being comic when it was suddenly halted, at which point it became divorce, which time never disrupted, and so the funniness of which was never-ending.”

“All husbands are space aliens.”

“Hope is never false. Or it is always false. Whatever, it’s just hope.”

“Divorce she could see, would be like marriage: a power grab, as in who would be the dog and who would be the owner of the dog.”

Rating: 7-5-5-7 Total= 24

#440 Debarking- Lorrie Moore

#440 Debarking- Lorrie Moore

Ira was divorced and was having a hard time coping with his new reality. He claimed his wedding ring was stuck on his finger and he couldn’t get it off. He had an eight-year old daughter and a host of good friends.

He started dating a woman, also divorced with a son, that he met at a friend’s party. It was an awkward start, being so unpracticed at dating:

“This elusive mix—the geometric halfway point between stalker and Rip van Winkle—was important to get right in the world of middle-aged dating.”

As the reader, I was rooting for him, feeling bad at the uncomfortable moments, nodding at the I’ve-been-there moments. But after a while, I got the feeling that this woman was either taking advantage of him, unable to have a relationship post-divorce, or she was a little bit crazy. Either way, the whole second half of the story—which ran on for a bit too long—was filled with this tense frustration where you just wished it (the frustration, not the story) would end.

Quality writing.

Notable Passage: “When affection fell on its ass, politeness could step up.”

Rating: 9-7-8-7 Total= 31

#338 Eleanor’s Music- Mary Gordon

#338 Eleanor’s Music- Mary Gordon

I guess you could call Eleanor old-fashioned. Perhaps stubbornly complacent is a better term. It’s not that she is happy or content with her life, as much as she doesn’t want anything to change.

She had a husband, but they divorced when he admitted his homosexuality. They are still friends now, and for the last 18 years, she has lived with her parents, a situation to all of them that seems normal.

“She knew that many people thought it odd, to say nothing of unhealthy, for her to be living with her parents at age fifty-one…She had long ago given up that last residue of her embarrassment, which at one time, like a pile of dried leaves, could be set adrift by the slightest wind, and would flutter inside her, cause her to put her hand splayed out flat against her chest.”

“She considered the shape of her life not peculiar, but original; she lived as she liked; real courage, she believed, was doing what you believe in, however it appeared.”

Like her parents who never leave the house without impeccable dress, Eleanor believes the details of her life should be kept from everyone, including her family. She lives with small enjoyments. These will rarely change, and anything ugly or new should be avoided or hidden.

Rating: 8-7-7-6 Total= 28

#148 Cosmopolitan- Akhil Sharma

#148 Cosmopolitan- Akhil Sharma

Gopal Maurya has lost his family. He daughter moved to Germany to live with her boyfriend and his wife left him to follow a guru in India. He treats these events as if they have died, and has become a widower.

“But the swiftness with which the dense absence on the other side of his bed unknotted and evaporated made him wonder whether he ad ever loved his wife.”

He is depressed and has become antisocial:

“At one point, around Christmas, he went to a dinner party, but he did not enjoy it. He found that he was not curious about other people’s lives and did not want to talk about his own.”

When you spend 30 years with someone, and now have nobody there but yourself, life can get confusing. Without work, friends, or a reason to get out of bed, who are you? When a divorcee next door enter Mr. Maurya’s life, things turn around, but for the right reasons?

“He believed that something would soon be said or done to delay Mrs. Shaw’s departure, for certainly God could not leave him alone again.”

The story is a cold one, probably a bit too long for what it had to say.

Rating: 6-5-6-4 Total= 21

#105 The Other Two- Edith Wharton

#105 The Other Two- Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was the first female novelist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, writing the Age of Innocence in 1921. I was introduced to her, like many people my age were, from reading Ethan Frome in High School.

Alice has just married her third husband, Mr. Waythorn. She is a twice divorced mother of Lily. Lily has become ill and they must cut their honeymoon trip short. Her divorces are a scandalous thing at the time and her husband will come to get very insecure about them.

Lily’s father has one-day-a-week custody rights and has to come visit their house when Lily is sick. Mr. Waythorn feels sick about it:

“As his door closed behind him he reflected that before he opened it again it would have admitted another man who had as much right to enter it as himself, and the thought filled him with a physical repugnance.”

The loves of the newlyweds and the “Other Two” former husbands become entwines as life often happens that way. Insecurity, jealousy, intrigue…its all here.

Wharton was fully entrenched in high society, and her writing is steeped in that world, and is a little on the stuffy side for my taste. Her historic significance aside, I’d rather read some of her contemporaries like D.H Lawrance, Joseph Conrad, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Thankfully, there is enough literature for everyone’s taste.

Word of the Day: Propinquity- the state of being physically close to someone, proximity.

Rating: 8-6-8-7 Total= 29