AN EMAIL TO MY MOTHER asked her if for my birthday present, she can track down the following titles and send them to me in a mass package. This is a list of all the writing styles I'm missing in my apartment that contains only awful Roth, overdone P. Cameron, Zadie Smith's lesser works, and the heavy, perfected, drenching Atonement. Plus Hardy. Remember the story in "Like Life" about the poet who goes to the middle of America? There's a terriffic passage that I get in my head from that--
"It was like a dog's song, her heart, put in funny. Like a cab that pulled up shortly in the rain, to a curb, to stop there."
And I know I can't be getting it totally right and it's killing me.
1. Lorrie Moore - "Like Life" - Slim, grey volume with green bar on spine & on cover.
2. The World According to Garp (John Irving) -- believe it's a purple book with white text, could be in Alex's room (lent it to him a while ago)
3. The Book of Daniel - E. L. Doctorow (Blue, black and white--thick)
4. Oh, England England - Julian Barnes (thin red with yellow text on spine)
5. Park City - Ann Beattie (black and white with yellow text on cover--thick)
6. Desperate Characters - Paula Fox (slim purple volume)
7. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon (bronze spine--**this might be too big for it to be worth it to ship**)
8. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad (I have two copies--one I know is penguin with a tiffany blue spine, the other is maybe dark brownish)
Could you buy
1. A collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald? Annnnnything. It's so good.
What's funniest to me about the list is how I know my mother will find them based on color, and how I know what color each of them is.
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1 comment:
how could Gravity's Rainbow not be worth the trouble to ship??
It sounds like you're on a desert island but you got one chance to get a note in a bottle someone will read. I'm pleased GR might be with the supplies.
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