How Novel

So I was reading Northanger Abbey the other day. I was reading it because it was sitting on my shelf screaming at me for having bought it years ago and not having read it. Every time I went looking for a new book to read it enthusiastically drove it's little white arm in the air and cried "Ooh, me! Me! Me!" and I brushed it aside. Truth be told, I don't like Jane Austen. Never have. She has a nasty habit of patting herself on the back. Writers do that, sure. But Austen is a snob about it. And one of my old professors agrees with me. Or I agree with him. Sort of. He once said in lecture that men and women write differently. Men write primarily for men but can be enjoyed by women. Women write for women. Men just don't get women. It's a difference in the way they think. Ursula Le Guin comes to mind as the only authoress I care to read. Anyway, I've digressed as I so often do into idle chatter which is probably more important and more the root of what I want to say than the more amusing story I am about to tell.

So I was reading Northanger Abbey the other day. The first few pages weren't too bad, rather surprisingly. As I said, I don't like Jane Austen so I was surprised to find those pages both so amusing and so readable. Normally she's so convoluted with period upper class speech that it makes me glad I didn't live in 1806. The pages were a parody of the usual type of novel being generated in her day. You know, the other crap she wrote. Like Pride and Prejudice. It mocked the conventionalism and standard cardboard cutout of heroes and villains. Twenty pages on though, it falters and splashes about in the mires of Bath high society. While still somewhat mocking, it's still the same old story of jaunting in carriages, circling the Pump Room and balls at the Upper and Lower Rooms. La de da.

About halfway through, I thought to myself, you know, Foxx, this is starting to read awfully familiar. It was the point at which Cathy gets to the Abbey. This should have been a signal for me. First of all, nothing of any consequence at all had happened until halfway through the book. Which is kind of funny because in a writing class I took, the professor marked one of my stories and noted that nothing really happened in it. I thought, ok, it's not a tour de force of legendary proportions as one might find in Lord of the Rings. But it's a short story. Have you read a short story written in the past century? Nothing much happens in any of them. All Nick Adams does is hop trains and hunt for deer. Nothing happens, you're just supposed to enjoy the flow. Hell, nothing happens in your book, mister. But Adrian, your voice is the voice inside my head when I read out loud now. 

Anyway, secondly, I had bought the book several years previous as one of the books for a course on colonial literature. I had to drop the course due to a conflict but read the books over the summer since I planned to take the course again the next year. As it turned out, that particular book didn't make it onto the next year's syllabus. I thought I had put reading it off since I frankly wasn't looking forward to it. Hence I thought it still unread years later.

I read on, unsure. It had a general and a captain in the army that seemed to tickle my piggy-shaped memory bank. But those old novels all have military men as desirable yet sleazy prospective husbands. It has a great house described in detail and a secreted room. But they all have that. It had BFFs and a creepy wardrobe. But they all have that. It had an awfully late to the party misunderstanding which would prove to be the only action of consequence in 240 pages. But that's normal. It wasn't until the carriage ride home alone for eleven hours that it finally struck me that I had in fact read this novel already. So screw you, Jane Austen! You wasted my time a second time! It won't happen again! If this had been a picture book, it would have been 4 pages long and run like this:

"Nifty!"

"Get out!"

She cried.

"My dad's on crack. Marry me, plain Jane I don't really care for but you love me and I can't think of a better reason to marry a dolt like you?" "Oh, Henry!" And they all lived happily as an upper middle class family for another two years until Cathy died in childbirth and Henry took an arrow to the knee in the Vampire Wars.

Another Day at the Office

 It starts out surreptitiously enough. I feel a few drops on my hat. The pavement is darkened one dot at a time until the whole ground is a shade darker than it was before. It starts to cling to me and I realize it’s not rain. It’s oatmeal. The ground is coated with a thin, slippery layer and it’s a task to stay up right. My feet splash in puddles of the stuff. It’s ankle deep. Knee deep. It’s getting difficult to sludge through it as it sucks down on my feet with every step. It’s waist level and must be what quicksand is like. I seek desperately a vine or rope to pull myself out but the tide of breakfast grain continues to rise. Shoulders, neck. It’s hard to breathe with the pressure on my throat. Chin. I’m trying to eat it. It fills my mouth and glides into my nostrils, ears. I close my eyes. I can only see, taste, smell, feel and hear oatmeal. It’s the only word on my tongue. It’s the only thought in my head. It’s so dark.

I stumble through the door of my second floor apartment and try my best to wipe off the day’s oatmeal. I cough it up, blow it out my nose, mumble a few “oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeals” and flop down on the couch. It’s spattered on the windows and there are commercials full of it on TV. But I’m safe here.

Golden Slumbers or Dream #1

I stopped in front of the red brick house and looked up. I don’t know whether the sense of déjà vu I felt was in the dream itself or because I was having this dream again. I’d been to a party at this non-descript student house before. There was another going on now.  Mounting the stairs, I walked through the front door and immediately found a cup in my hand. I also found I needed to pee. So I queued up. The attendant inside the foyer notified me that if I had a Member’s Only card, I could use the much shorter line for the second washroom. Checking my wallet, I found I had indeed remembered my Member’s Only card but while checking for it, the non-member’s line had swiftly carried me into the neighbouring Chapter’s store. The man in the centre of the store was wearing a tuxedo and white cotton gloves. His hair line had receded to give him a u-shaped crown of bristly brown hairs.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “please keep in mind this is a functioning book store and people will be reading these books. Try to do as little as possible to damage the books.” My head was flooded with the image of opening the dust jacket and let go a strong golden stream of urine onto the blank white page, watching the liquid soak into the paper, turning it a darker brown.

Around the room, people were furtively selecting places to relinquish full bladders, thumbing through paperbacks and oversized coffee table books looking for an appropriate place. Men stood in corners awkwardly trying to wrap and inch of paper around an inch or two of flesh. Women – in the straightforward perseverance  so particular to their sex – shimmied down underwear, hiked up skirts and squatted over tomes of Nora Roberts and Stephanie Meyers.

One gentleman side-skipped around the store entirely nude shooting a waving stream of urine across the shelves of books. He reminded me of Greased Up Deaf Guy.

“Winner!” I shouted and pointed at him, instinctively knowing that if one is going to piss on books, this is the only right way to do it. The man in the tuxedo agreed, also pointing his gloved hand. A few patrons clapped half heartedly. “When in Rome...” I shrugged and dropped my trousers.

I woke up feeling slightly disturbed and an urge to pee. I hope my subconscious wasn’t trying to tell me to give up on my chosen path in life. Maybe I just need to stop drinking liquids two hours before bed.