From Meg Wolitzer’s The
Interestings:
‘The love between a brother
and a sister just over a year apart in age held fast. It wasn’t twinship, and it wasn’t romance,
but it was more like a passionate loyalty to a dying brand.’
Hmmm…not sure re dying brand,
but I totally get the passionate loyalty.
‘Standing in the heat and
noise, facing the rows of bent heads [in a factory in Indonesia], Ethan Figman
willed himself to leave that long sleep in which you dream that the inhuman
things that people do to one another on a distant continent have nothing to do
with the likes of you.’
Re: talent:
‘Exuberance burned away,
and the small, hot glowing bulb of talent remained, and was raised high in the
air to show the world.’
‘But, she knew, you didn’t
have to marry your soulmate, and you didn’t even have to marry an
Interesting. You didn’t always need to
be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone else up, or made
everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the
play that got the standing ovation. You
could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting. Anyway, she knew, the definition could
change; it had changed, for her.’
Re: her ‘un’Interesting
husband:
‘He reached out and touched
her hair, just as Ethan (an Interesting) had done; it was one of the basic
moves in the male playbook, coming as naturally to them as anything. Jules let herself fall with a thud against
her husband’s wide chest, and Dennis willed himself into full presence again.
He willed the marriage back, and pulled his wife toward him. Dennis was present, still present, and this,
she thought as she stayed landed against him, was no small talent.’
Moi-meme: That’s why you say I will, not I do. I do is only good for that moment, the present tense, and present yes you must be, and present yes I hope you are – but I WILL speaks not only of this moment but of the future too – and trust me, there are more moments that need to be willed to make a marriage not just work, but last. I will says it ain’t just about the love bubble you’re in right now, that radical rose-colored bubble of infatuation that holds all the crazy pheromones leading to the endlessly inventive, endlessly the same dance nature has genetically instructed you to dance to make more, more, more of you! ...
Regardless, unfortunately, of what may or may not happen next.
I do seems more for one night
stands. It speaks only to the here,
to the how you feel right NOW. And that’s also why
you don’t say I may. Or I can. You say I WILL. You speak for the future; otherwise, it is no
vow. Or at least, none that is binding
beyond a single night.
And now, from:
Jonathan Dee’s A Thousand Pardons:
‘For all that had gone sour
within it over the last few months and years, this was their home, and the
faith in the future required to walk away from it risked seeming arrogant, even
reckless. What was behind you had, for
better or worse, a substantiality that what was still in front of you could not
exhibit.’
Re an actor/movie star
(character): ‘When he watched himself on screen, he had one important thing in
common with everyone else in every theatre everywhere, and that was to
understand that, even though you were asked to pretend you were watching some
fictional character with a made-up name, you knew at every moment that you were
really watching a movie star named XX.
That seemed like the greatest, most fundamental failing any actor could
possibly admit to, and yet his whole life was based on it, it was perversely
considered a mark of his success.’
No comments:
Post a Comment