Posts tagged "authors" — Page 5
Conversion
Disclosure: I have not read Les Miserables in its entirety. On page 434 out of 959, I sometimes find its talons dug too tightly into my shoulder. Dates and deaths and detailed histories and analyses, it gets too heavy to hold. So I perch it upon the shelf, where it sits content and well-behaved amid good company, often for several months—until it begins to sing, the nightingale’s tune, sweet testament to transformation. I forget past discomfort and begin again.
I am in transition. The scratched record of loss, grief, and remorse is spinning in my mind. I feel captive to this ragtime racket until I recall that oft overlooked B-side. I flip the record over and find a more promising melody—opportunity.
The Writing Life
INTERVIEWER
You once told me that the most difficult thing for a writer to write was a simple household note to someone coming to collect the laundry, or instructions to a cook.
E. L. DOCTOROW
What I was thinking of was a note I had to write to the teacher when one of my children missed a day of school. It was my daughter, Caroline, who was then in the second or third grade. I was having my breakfast one morning when she appeared with her lunch box, her rain slicker, and everything, and she said, “I need an absence note for the teacher and the bus is coming in a few minutes.”
Jesus on the Lean Donkey
There will be no cream for coffee in the morning. This afternoon, I did not complete the trek to the back corner of the grocery store as sadness overtook me, threatening to unleash a salty deluge, right there in front of red and white rows of soups, their golden eyes staring in judgment. I escaped from their glare into the privacy of tinted-enough windows and the detached acceptance of a leather seat.
