A disclaimer for you on this happy June that will become self-evident soon enough: I love this story. I could read it a thousand times over and give you a thousand different insights. I love it in the peepish and borderline obsessive way its narratrice experiences love. Love it, in its own words, “as a mouse might love the hand that cleans the cage, and as uncomprehendingly, too, for surely I see only a part of him here.”
(Except the story doesn’t have a gender, so swap the pronoun for the more appropriate in that quote.)
I first read this story while obdurately at the beach with a friend on a cold, wet day. The only other beach-trawler was an Australian man, whistling and playing football by himself and wearing nothing but a floppy hat. This guy belonged perfectly with this collection of stories.
In fact, if story’s author is one whose writings (long and short) you haven’t yet read, I can tell you authoritatively that they’re perfect reading for rivers and hammocks and beaches and other June-type reading.
Speaking of June reading, by this daymarker it’s just about Bloomsday…
The effusiveness of that ending seemed positively Joycean. It’s refreshing that the female is the sexual deviant for a change….
Miette
Happy Joyous Bloomsday I wish you will / are going to read some James Joyce this year. Thanks for all your work. Much encouragement R. Ross, sitting in California
Robert, my god, I KNOW. Emshwiller writes the most genuinely complex women in the known universe, as far as I’m concerned. The Mount = required reading.
R: I celebrate Bloomsday every year, and this’ll be no different. You still have a day and change to catch up on Miette’s Bloomsdays Past:
http://miettecast.wpengine.com/authors/joyce-james/
excellent! amazing details and anxious thinking and of course well read too. I always track down the stories that I like to see if it written similarly to how you read them
Finally got around to listening to this one-what a great story! I now have to track down everything else by this author. Why have I never heard of these people before? (And I could hear in your voice how much you liked this one. Unless that was just me.)
So perfectly suited to your voice, this story. When she was nibbling on the cheese near his knees I pictured you taking tiny little bites from a paw-sized chunk of gouda. It made me want to see if I could make a piece of cheese, or indeed, any piece of food, last for 30 minutes (about as long as it took you to read the story, no?).