frankly ludicrous

"Frankly Ludicrous," July 15, 2022 (#196)

title from "How 'Elvis' Plays the King" by Anthony Lane (June 24, 2022)

The Point: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio (1978)

The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1796)

The Keep by Jennifer Egan (2006)

The Wife by Meg Wolitzer (2003)

penultimate line from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1869)

Frankly Ludicrous

Unvarying heat hammered the days into a dull sameness, and driving

a right lover's argument, and I dare dispute no longer with so profound

decaying crap everywhere like some kind of violence had happened. And the

splendor, tentatively separated from anxiety; there was no turbulence and the

motor kicked out of the water with a high-rev whine, and Jones steered for

what it is to love without hope! I daily expect orders for restoring

newspapers, nail brush, bottle caps, rubber bands, plastic bags, a beat-up phone

out of the pomp of his arrival; this was what he had been waiting for, always:

columns of snow, like nuns in a church, slanting with a slight forward bow

straying upon the banks of a rivulet by moonlight; and

you’re pulling that worm inside you. You’re sucking it in. It’s a

scavenging for anything edible in the piles of garbage and waste,

a conviction which I have gained while I have been in this

pit and swallowed. Yeah. Go. You know where?

12-13-21

12-21-21

7-15-22

7-13-22

King Creole (1958)

7-28-21

12-22-21