Reading and Writing (but no arithmetic)

Today I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and I'm embarrassed to admit it's the first book I've read this year, and only the second book I've read in the past twelve months. It had gotten fantastic reviews and is of a subject matter that I'm consistently drawn to, that of apocalypse or post-apocalypse, so I decided to give it a go and I'm very glad I did. It's interesting, as a writer, to read someone whose style is the antithesis of mine, and when reading something this brilliant, both in its overarching themes and in the fantastic and challenging use of language, it's hard not to compare myself to that, to judge myself and deem myself unworthy. I struggle to remember what my strengths are, but am also inspired to work a bit more at my weaknesses, or to rediscover what abilities I might have had in the past that I've since misplaced. Remind me to read more. It's not a book I could recommend in a blanket sense, because of the truly disturbing themes, and there's no better evidence for that than the face that both my brother and my mother, two of the most voracious readers on the planet, turned it away as too dark. But for those who derive the same pleasure that I do from such a challenging and potentially unpleasant experience, I can't praise this book enough.

Tangentially, I've decided to do something I've never done before, which is to release a fragment of an in-progress story before the entire thing is completed. I've finsihed writing it in my notebook and am in the process of typing it up, but the typing is usually the opportunity for a sometimes dramatic revision. But for some reason, since the day I wrote this segment, I've wanted to put it out there. This is just one section in a larger story and that story is part of a larger project I'm working on, a series of interconnected stories that may or may not lead somewhere.

Anyway, here it is:

We were on your bed, and silent: you didn’t speak and I couldn’t. I said everything I needed to say, what I thought I needed to say for a long time. I said it and you didn’t answer, or wouldn’t, and walked away from me, so I followed you, into the bedroom, and joined you on the bed, and waited for your response. I knew it would come eventually. The television was on, and had been the whole time, but suddenly the laugh track from the show we’d been watching was incongruous, voices echoing out of another life, mocking us. I lit a cigarette and for once you had no comment and my smoke seemed to have an uncommon weight, wafting slowly through the even heavier air, hanging languidly around us while we lay in that impenetrable air, in pregnant, impenetrable silence. That show ended and another began, one we’d never liked but neither of us moved to change it or turn it of, and eventually Harvey came to join us on in the bed, possibly aware of what was happening in the way that animals can be hyper-aware, but probably not. Probably not because he’d spent all of his life with us trying to get past the neglect he’d experienced before we found him, that night we’d found him underneath a car outside your house, just a few weeks after I’d started coming around, when I’d been around so often that your neighbors thought that I was your brother visiting from out of state. You named him Harvey after we brought him in, when he was still vaguely petrified of us, scared and defensive but also curious enough to follow us inside, and I never asked you why you picked that name, or how you chose it so decisively. Harvey padded into the room, into that quiet, and curled up on my stomach, as he’d learned to love to do, and began to purr while I stroked his neck, and then, finally, you spoke.

“Well, baby,” you said, reaching across the space between us to put your hand on Harvey’s underside, too rough, as always, or rougher than Harvey liked, though he’d learned to accept it and did not even react, still purring, oblivious, still purring. “Luke thinks he can find someone to love him more than you or me.”

Feel free to comment. You can be honest, I can take it.