Time Fades Away: The First Monday in November

This morning I woke up and felt slightly disoriented from gaining the hour; in the shower, I fantasized about gaining a whole year, even as I admitted the impracticality of it. Out on the street, the light was intense, which for some reason registered blue on my camera.

Time passed at work. At around two o'clock, when the sun began to set, I regretted that I would probably not see it set over the George Washington Bridge for several months (except on weekends). I decided that I would have to take more shots of the rooftops across midtown Manhattan from my office window, which to be fair is a very nice view, if not quite as moving as the bridge. I spent a few minutes talking with my friend M___ about contemporary 'lady writers' (or more contemporary than Virginia Woolf) whose work I've enjoyed, and in a burst of 1980s nostalgia I came up with Mona Simpson ('Anywhere But Here') and Katherine Dunn ('Geek Love'). I remember kind of loving Donna Tartt ('The Secret History,' or at least the first half of it) in the 1980s, although I didn't recommend this, but I did recommend Lorrie Moore and Carol Shields, whose book 'The Stone Diaries' was quite depressing if I remember it correctly. I'm not sure why I didn't mention Jeanette Winterson, since I've loved her books, too. Maybe it's not surprising that of all the books I read in my closet-case youth -- with the possibly exception of 'Infinite Jest' -- it's really the lady writers who have stuck with me, and whose work I find myself mulling over in those spare moments when I'm waiting for a document to load.

Real work called and we returned to our respective offices. The sun was gone, leaving no trace but an illuminated corner in the southwest. The melancholy that is November had effectively settled in.

Comments

[Robert Patrick]

Several months ago as I was packing up books to donate to our local library's fund-raiser, I came across the Simpson & Dunn titles--they were excellent reads--and I hesitated before putting them in the boxes, but relented because they deserved to be shared. However, when I came to "The Stone Diaries" I had to set it aside as it begs re-reading. Sadly, her follow-up book, "Larry's Party" wasn't nearly as strong. Do you ever wonder if excessive praise is a deterrent to creativity?

[Matthew Gallaway]

Thanks for the comments, Robert -- I never read anything by Shields except the Stone Diaries, but my sense is that its probably unrealistic to expect every novel to be as meaningful as the last? Perhaps success does breed a bit of laziness, too -- I hope that someday Im in a position to confirm that, lol.