I wrote drivel,
spoke spiel.
I opined on societal tumult,
film, geopolitics, morality.
And I was feted, interviewed.
Cover paged in some,
centrespreaded in others.
Clueless, I mulled, 'Any basis to it at all?'
Maybe it was regardless of a basis.
Then I left these environs one day,
unsure of my talent if any,
to enter syllabi with
my progeny convinced
of my greatness.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wuss atop a hill
If anyone tells you hiking boots or even sneakers are a must for a trek, thank him and before he has the chance to say, "Welcome," quickly add, "And you are an asshole." And scoot. I wore hiking boots for a trek on Sunday and I ended up with blisters the size of Naipaul's ego! The trek wasn't for wimps, which is just another way of saying it wasn't for me. The hardest thing I can do is bend down a bit to switch on the CPU of my office computer. Imagine my trekking 2,700 feet, which was nothing less than an exercise in masochism. Though I knew it was going to be hard, especially during monsoons, I was kicked about it. It's like enjoying being butt-fucked by strange dicks--please don't be led to believe I'm homoerotic, I just employed a simile.
Accompanying me on the trek was a very indiscreet Anu and we were treated to some flawless courtesy by the organiser of the trek, henceforth referred to as 'Schmuck'. When we reached Virar, he said he had just taken a rick with his co-trekkers to a village called Sakwar which is the starting point of the ascent to Tak Mak fort. So we two had to take a bus, as we didn't have enough money to afford an auto ride costing Rs 300, and then flag a truck on a highway (that's how people travel there). The truck stopped and we got in to be smiled at by the driver, a probable rapist. "Holy shit! I feel anything but good. What if he tries something funny with Anu?" I started thinking how I would pull off a rescue act. When it dawned on me that I would throw in the towel a tad too early, I decided in the event of the driver's misbehaving with Anu, I would tell him to first drop me off at the nearest bus stop. Fortunately, my wussiness wasn't exposed and we got to the village unmolested and unmugged.
I then called Schmuck only to be told that the trek had begun. Organiser extraordinaire! Doff your hat for him. We then took the help of a village boy and proceeded uphill and met Schmuck and his gang. Quite expectedly, I was the worst trekker, and called it quits every ten steps. Meanwhile, I heard someone say, "I'm terrible walking uphill." I thought, "I'm terrible walking straight, leave alone uphill or downhill."
When were reaching the top, I felt I was very close to heaven from where my grandpa waved to me. He looked wan and forlorn because, as I found out a couple of minutes later, he had landed in the Catholic heaven by mistake and was being fed bacon and well-done steak (he gave me a bite of it) instead of avial and olan. The heaven authorities knew he was vegetarian but still made him eat meat and then told him he was a sinner according to Hindu laws.
Finally, we reached as high as we possibly could. Considering this was by far my biggest physical achievement, I wanted to jump off the cliff, except that no one had the balls to push me (I, quite obviously, don't have a fifth of the balls it takes). I decided if I wanted to trek ever again, I would just get stoned. Being stoned, you can climb (and a lot more) whatever you want, not just hills and mountains. And what's more, you needn't move an inch.
Accompanying me on the trek was a very indiscreet Anu and we were treated to some flawless courtesy by the organiser of the trek, henceforth referred to as 'Schmuck'. When we reached Virar, he said he had just taken a rick with his co-trekkers to a village called Sakwar which is the starting point of the ascent to Tak Mak fort. So we two had to take a bus, as we didn't have enough money to afford an auto ride costing Rs 300, and then flag a truck on a highway (that's how people travel there). The truck stopped and we got in to be smiled at by the driver, a probable rapist. "Holy shit! I feel anything but good. What if he tries something funny with Anu?" I started thinking how I would pull off a rescue act. When it dawned on me that I would throw in the towel a tad too early, I decided in the event of the driver's misbehaving with Anu, I would tell him to first drop me off at the nearest bus stop. Fortunately, my wussiness wasn't exposed and we got to the village unmolested and unmugged.
I then called Schmuck only to be told that the trek had begun. Organiser extraordinaire! Doff your hat for him. We then took the help of a village boy and proceeded uphill and met Schmuck and his gang. Quite expectedly, I was the worst trekker, and called it quits every ten steps. Meanwhile, I heard someone say, "I'm terrible walking uphill." I thought, "I'm terrible walking straight, leave alone uphill or downhill."
When were reaching the top, I felt I was very close to heaven from where my grandpa waved to me. He looked wan and forlorn because, as I found out a couple of minutes later, he had landed in the Catholic heaven by mistake and was being fed bacon and well-done steak (he gave me a bite of it) instead of avial and olan. The heaven authorities knew he was vegetarian but still made him eat meat and then told him he was a sinner according to Hindu laws.
Finally, we reached as high as we possibly could. Considering this was by far my biggest physical achievement, I wanted to jump off the cliff, except that no one had the balls to push me (I, quite obviously, don't have a fifth of the balls it takes). I decided if I wanted to trek ever again, I would just get stoned. Being stoned, you can climb (and a lot more) whatever you want, not just hills and mountains. And what's more, you needn't move an inch.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
No more love, please
Almost all say,
It's great to be loved.
I retort, Why? Sure?
No, wait. I know why.
I know its workings, acting
on existence like placebo
on affliction.
I lose myself in love, becoming
nothing but what
it makes me.
Parental, fraternal, conjugal.
No, thank you.
If you want to help,
stop killing each other with love,
and while at it, buy me
a couple vials to sanity,
for I am much loved.
It's great to be loved.
I retort, Why? Sure?
No, wait. I know why.
I know its workings, acting
on existence like placebo
on affliction.
I lose myself in love, becoming
nothing but what
it makes me.
Parental, fraternal, conjugal.
No, thank you.
If you want to help,
stop killing each other with love,
and while at it, buy me
a couple vials to sanity,
for I am much loved.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Laughing with the Corpse
Disclaimer: My family, of which I will be talking here, is quite deranged in its sense of humour, treatment of death and, most importantly, in mixing the two. So if you are priggish, faint-hearted or have just had a tooth removed, kindly refrain from proceeding further.
I wonder if death has ever fazed my family--I mean my extended family--as much as it does me every day. Probably it has but I can never tell given my dad's--and his brothers'--behaviour at funerals or repeated references to the subject in passing.
Let's start with my paternal grandpa's demise. It happened sometime in 1984 and he died a natural death. I guess he died late evening. His sons cried--in fact wept--for a while. Of course they did. Neither my dad nor any of my uncles is Meursault enough to say, "What if my dad's dead? I won't cry just because the world expects me to," and smoke cigarettes beside the corpse. Also, unfortunately, Camus did not create them. However, they did the next best thing when their tears ran out. To keep themselves awake through the night (and particulalrly, to ensure my grandpa does not run away) they started a game of cards. And the grapevine has it that my grandpa got up, much to my grandma's dismay, joined them, beat them hollow, took a dump, came back and stuck back the two small balls of cotton up his nostrils (as is the custom) and resumed his slumber. Such insensitive brutes, you say? Common, falling asleep over your dad's body is worse, especially when my dad has a tendency to actually fall on the person sitting closest to him while sleeping sitting which, if it had happened, would have made my grandpa cough incessantly.
Talking of my dad, he is a bonafide sadist who has escaped seeing a shrink so far. I will tell you why. I must have been seven or eight and he was cleaning our refrigerator. He had taken all the trays out which made the appliance all the more appealing to me. He told me it would be really chilly inside and asked me if I wanted to get in. I readily agreed. I went in (it had been switched off fortunately) and the next thing I knew was the door had slammed shut and would not open. I banged the door for a good ten seconds before being welcomed into the world of light with the evil force--my father that is--laughing unstoppably with his eye balls literally a foot in front of him. This was to be expected of a man who loves terrifying kids by turning off the lights and lighting up a torch below his chin to make his big lips and monstrous teeth seem more horrifying than they already are. The exercise always ended with two distinct shrieks--one of cries from the kid and the other of chortle from my dad.
The man is impossible. Here is another instance why. There was once a powercut at home at around 9 p.m. and my dad, as is his wont, was snoring so loud so as to make me call out to my mom to get a pillow so that we could press it on his face and squeeze every last breath out of him. My mom lighted a candle and handed it to me. I asked her where I should place it, and she, being the absent-minded soul she is, said, "Keep it next to your dad's head." Remember that back home a corpse should have a lamp next to its head. My dad, who we thought had been sleeping, got the topic for his daily discussion for the following day. He told every relative that came his way that his son and wife had been plotting to kill him and that he feared being poisoned in a short while.
If this is my dad, can his brothers be very different? His eldest brother, who was a toned-down version of Mickey Sabbath--don't tell my aunt about the comparison, she is no Anne Frank and might just swat you with a non-stick pan--spared no one from his biting jokes. One of his uncles was suffering from Parkinson's Syndrome and used to take two hours to take ten steps, which made Mr.Sabbath name him Armstrong chithappa--Armstrong a reference to Neil Armstrong walking as he did on moon and chithappa is what you call your dad's younger brother in Tamil. Whenever Armstrong chithappa passed Mr.Sabbath by, the latter said his sacred thread was quite old and he would soon get an opportunity to change it (it is a religious custom for Brahmin men to change their thread when someone closely related to them dies). Mr.Sabbath meted out the same treatment to his other uncle too, but the unfortunate and really funny part is he croaked before the uncle did and the uncle got an opportunity to change his thread, old or not.
At his funeral, when his dear friend Sundaram walked in to pay his respects, Mr.Sabbath's cousin told him, "It's ok. Don't worry, you are next in line." I was on the floor writhing from the pain of giggling too much. And when Mr.Sabbath was about to be taken to the crematorium, his daughter refused to let go of him. The same cousin, quite enraged with the daughter's shenanigans, told her to keep her dad with herself and started walking off, sending some gathered there into a laughing fit. At the electric crematorium, to break the gloomy monotony, the cousin said, "Sundaram, this is the first time we are using the electric crematorium. I am not too sure of the contraption. Please get in and if you burn good, I will send my brother in." Picture the scene: Mr.Sabbath lying supine with his nostrils blocked and a coin on his forehead, and his brothers, cousins and nephews falling over each other cackling. Considering Mr.Sabbath's proclivity to macabre humour, a subtle smile escaped his lips too as a sign of his joining the jamboree.
Coming from a family like this, am I to blame if I can't stand the twits around me spouting something incredibly insipid that they classify under 'humour'? Will those with at least a funny cell, if not a bone, in their body please stand up?
I wonder if death has ever fazed my family--I mean my extended family--as much as it does me every day. Probably it has but I can never tell given my dad's--and his brothers'--behaviour at funerals or repeated references to the subject in passing.
Let's start with my paternal grandpa's demise. It happened sometime in 1984 and he died a natural death. I guess he died late evening. His sons cried--in fact wept--for a while. Of course they did. Neither my dad nor any of my uncles is Meursault enough to say, "What if my dad's dead? I won't cry just because the world expects me to," and smoke cigarettes beside the corpse. Also, unfortunately, Camus did not create them. However, they did the next best thing when their tears ran out. To keep themselves awake through the night (and particulalrly, to ensure my grandpa does not run away) they started a game of cards. And the grapevine has it that my grandpa got up, much to my grandma's dismay, joined them, beat them hollow, took a dump, came back and stuck back the two small balls of cotton up his nostrils (as is the custom) and resumed his slumber. Such insensitive brutes, you say? Common, falling asleep over your dad's body is worse, especially when my dad has a tendency to actually fall on the person sitting closest to him while sleeping sitting which, if it had happened, would have made my grandpa cough incessantly.
Talking of my dad, he is a bonafide sadist who has escaped seeing a shrink so far. I will tell you why. I must have been seven or eight and he was cleaning our refrigerator. He had taken all the trays out which made the appliance all the more appealing to me. He told me it would be really chilly inside and asked me if I wanted to get in. I readily agreed. I went in (it had been switched off fortunately) and the next thing I knew was the door had slammed shut and would not open. I banged the door for a good ten seconds before being welcomed into the world of light with the evil force--my father that is--laughing unstoppably with his eye balls literally a foot in front of him. This was to be expected of a man who loves terrifying kids by turning off the lights and lighting up a torch below his chin to make his big lips and monstrous teeth seem more horrifying than they already are. The exercise always ended with two distinct shrieks--one of cries from the kid and the other of chortle from my dad.
The man is impossible. Here is another instance why. There was once a powercut at home at around 9 p.m. and my dad, as is his wont, was snoring so loud so as to make me call out to my mom to get a pillow so that we could press it on his face and squeeze every last breath out of him. My mom lighted a candle and handed it to me. I asked her where I should place it, and she, being the absent-minded soul she is, said, "Keep it next to your dad's head." Remember that back home a corpse should have a lamp next to its head. My dad, who we thought had been sleeping, got the topic for his daily discussion for the following day. He told every relative that came his way that his son and wife had been plotting to kill him and that he feared being poisoned in a short while.
If this is my dad, can his brothers be very different? His eldest brother, who was a toned-down version of Mickey Sabbath--don't tell my aunt about the comparison, she is no Anne Frank and might just swat you with a non-stick pan--spared no one from his biting jokes. One of his uncles was suffering from Parkinson's Syndrome and used to take two hours to take ten steps, which made Mr.Sabbath name him Armstrong chithappa--Armstrong a reference to Neil Armstrong walking as he did on moon and chithappa is what you call your dad's younger brother in Tamil. Whenever Armstrong chithappa passed Mr.Sabbath by, the latter said his sacred thread was quite old and he would soon get an opportunity to change it (it is a religious custom for Brahmin men to change their thread when someone closely related to them dies). Mr.Sabbath meted out the same treatment to his other uncle too, but the unfortunate and really funny part is he croaked before the uncle did and the uncle got an opportunity to change his thread, old or not.
At his funeral, when his dear friend Sundaram walked in to pay his respects, Mr.Sabbath's cousin told him, "It's ok. Don't worry, you are next in line." I was on the floor writhing from the pain of giggling too much. And when Mr.Sabbath was about to be taken to the crematorium, his daughter refused to let go of him. The same cousin, quite enraged with the daughter's shenanigans, told her to keep her dad with herself and started walking off, sending some gathered there into a laughing fit. At the electric crematorium, to break the gloomy monotony, the cousin said, "Sundaram, this is the first time we are using the electric crematorium. I am not too sure of the contraption. Please get in and if you burn good, I will send my brother in." Picture the scene: Mr.Sabbath lying supine with his nostrils blocked and a coin on his forehead, and his brothers, cousins and nephews falling over each other cackling. Considering Mr.Sabbath's proclivity to macabre humour, a subtle smile escaped his lips too as a sign of his joining the jamboree.
Coming from a family like this, am I to blame if I can't stand the twits around me spouting something incredibly insipid that they classify under 'humour'? Will those with at least a funny cell, if not a bone, in their body please stand up?
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Hope and Despair
In the dark fluid I lay unaware
of the mission of my parents and the world,
schemers extraordinaire.
They had decided almost everything for me:
How to love, to despise, to spew venom, to mutilate.
This they managed with their featherly brush of conditioning
and indoctrination.
With their daggers drawn for the battle to implant in me
execrable notions of god and concepts of religion, caste,
peppered with a generous helping of prejudice and hatred
for men unlike me.
Mr. Bertrand Russell, do you hear me?
Can you please school my girl to break the chain?
If you fail-and I can already feel your failure-
I shall implore my kind
not to inflict the earth
upon the coming kids.
of the mission of my parents and the world,
schemers extraordinaire.
They had decided almost everything for me:
How to love, to despise, to spew venom, to mutilate.
This they managed with their featherly brush of conditioning
and indoctrination.
With their daggers drawn for the battle to implant in me
execrable notions of god and concepts of religion, caste,
peppered with a generous helping of prejudice and hatred
for men unlike me.
Mr. Bertrand Russell, do you hear me?
Can you please school my girl to break the chain?
If you fail-and I can already feel your failure-
I shall implore my kind
not to inflict the earth
upon the coming kids.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
To Toadies
Cocks sucked daily many
Suckers many more
Overt and in daylight the act is
Expedition and honour
Are two aimed at
But not all
Severance for them
Of dignity a cinch
A virtue they make it
An act of pride
Please suck mine
For your sake
For mine
And I promise to hatchet your head
And smile
Like God does
On deliverance.
Suckers many more
Overt and in daylight the act is
Expedition and honour
Are two aimed at
But not all
Severance for them
Of dignity a cinch
A virtue they make it
An act of pride
Please suck mine
For your sake
For mine
And I promise to hatchet your head
And smile
Like God does
On deliverance.
The 'Seldom' Woman
Fuck her?
Maybe not
But an urge it sure was
Maybe to embrace
Breasts non-existent
Behind passable
Attire passe
Countenance hardly a head-turner
How rare 'seldom' is in conversation
Is what she made me realize
Made me want to hold her tight
Blind to her corporal shortcomings
Wanted to kiss her
Just to taste the word once more.
Maybe not
But an urge it sure was
Maybe to embrace
Breasts non-existent
Behind passable
Attire passe
Countenance hardly a head-turner
How rare 'seldom' is in conversation
Is what she made me realize
Made me want to hold her tight
Blind to her corporal shortcomings
Wanted to kiss her
Just to taste the word once more.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Winning the war against Rushdie
Why do I not get Rushdie when I had no problems understanding my class 9 organic chemistry textbook purportedly authored by two psychotics immeditaely after raping a schizophrenic? Martin Amis finds his books deserving of glowing praise. So do more of his ilk. So is there something wrong with me? Not too sure about that, given that a few deranged souls find me passably perceptive--kindly excuse the braggadocio though any appraisal from asinine fruitcakes is to be discounted. The only way to solve this conundrum is to outnumber the tribe that finds Rushdie readable by the one that does not mind declaring me 'not an imbecile'. That should be a cinch I guess.
The money I need
How much should I ideally earn? Just enough to be able to subscribe to The New Yorker and hire a PhD in 'decoding the indecipherable' from the School of Insufferbale Assholes in Pompousdale, Massachusetts, to help me make sense of at least a page of Rushdie's in my lifetime.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Fuckers obsessed
What's with our fascination with fair skin? It's sickening. Take me to the nearest sink. Right now. When my mom returns from any wedding, in response to my question about the couple, she tells me, "The girl is unbelievably fair," with such an expression as you would be led to believe that the bride performed some sort of an unperformable stunt like eating her right thumb only to go into the loo and come out with her thumb in place, and my mom is effusive in her admiration for her feat. I can understand her being like that for reasons best-known to me. Of course, I am not excusing her. Most certainly not. But what about those people my age I meet everyday who are just as besotted with white skin? I can't explain it except by saying, "Give them a white pig and they will wholeheartedly fuck it till their breath runs out." After all we are a bunch of pigfuckers, aren't we? Here's raising a toast to our own sick selves.
Monday, April 13, 2009
An Attempt
Don't die a joke of your kind,
Don't live a pisspot.
Jerk your pen off on paper, satin, wood;
It sure will hurt, hurt sick.
Take it on and don't stop
Not now,
Not before you sleep with the earth.
Don't live a pisspot.
Jerk your pen off on paper, satin, wood;
It sure will hurt, hurt sick.
Take it on and don't stop
Not now,
Not before you sleep with the earth.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Eternity of a book's consequence
Haruki Murakami's words--and stories--are transient, but the feeling they create and leave behind in the reader is anything but. I am sorry if you have not read at least a couple of his books, for what I am saying wouldn't make much sense to you. I can recollect nothing more about 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' than the graphic description of the torture of some soldiers. Does that count for anything at all? I doubt. The same is true of 'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman'. All I can remember of the book is some details about the title story, or rather, some images: A boy and his uncle (I am not sure if he is the boy's uncle or neighbour) on a bus; a lady on the hospital bed. Similar is the case with 'Norwegian Wood' and 'South of the Border, West of the Sun'.
Does this mean Murakami has failed as a writer, at least with me? Far from it. No other writer (my modesty quite intact, I would like to believe I have read a decent number of authors) has left such an indelible imprint on my mind. Murakami deserves no bracketing with any member of his ilk not because of what he writes, but because of the upshot of his writing. The fact that I remember not a single story of his, but yet grant him the throne, is evidence enough of the man's much-contested prowess--and that of Jay Rubin, Philip Gabriel and Alfred Birnbaum, his equally-gifted translators. Or, because I have not read Murakami in the language he writes in, do I have to concede I have no right in appraising his talent and settle for the much-easier task of singing his translators' praise?
A word of caution to like-minded people: Never read a Murakami book that meant something to you the first time you read it, twice. If you own it, just give it away or, if you can't, burn it. It's a price worth paying for the inexplicable feeling that you will always carry in your head (provided you don't become neurotic or slip into a coma) and that you can retrieve whenever you want to be entranced, calmed, uplifted and what not. I made the mistake of reading 'South of the Border, West of the Sun' a second time sometime back and paid the price for it. The treasure-box with all those little thoughts and emotions the book brought about when I had read it the first time, vanished. Maybe, to begin with, the book, according to the current-me, is not as great as thought by the me who had read it then. But, I don't give a toss. The book could be a piece of drivel, but I want my treasure-box back.
This brings us to the topic of criticism. Criticism, as considered by those who apparently mastered it, should be driven by more than the momentary, the transitory. They say a work of art should be evaluated keeping in mind the various factors at play, not least the myriad contexts it ought to be viewed from. Maybe so. Maybe, rightly so. But as a reader, I leave it for the birds. To me, any work of art viewed with a critical eye grows ever-so-distant from the reader, movie-goer or music aficionado. To me, the relationship that's forged between the former and the latter is of utmost importance. That relationship is just not possible with the spectre of criticism lurking in the vicinity. I have been for quite a while now trying, but in vain, to stop reading reviews or critiques of any film or book or music album, and wait till my mind decides if it's willing to carry the work, or rather its consequence, with it to the grave. What if Truman Capote, in what is considered by many a website to be the "greatest literary putdown of all time", called 'On the Road' "typing, not writing"? My mind is blank whenever I recall 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' or the first few pages of 'The Grass Harp' which I trudged through. On the other hand, my remembrance of 'On the Road' is accompanied by my journey in a 'beat' car parallel to the one with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, through the fascinating land called America, watching them make time with countless women and discomfit many a poor soul with their drunken outbursts. I remember not much else from the book, but the question is, do I have to?
I no longer consider my inability to review a work of art a handicap. I couldn't do it even if I were paid to. And thank the heavens I couldn't. I might rather go to bed with the work than sit by the bed, flinching, accusing, correcting. It's another thing that the post-coital experience might not always be memorable but I take heart that I at least got into bed.
Does this mean Murakami has failed as a writer, at least with me? Far from it. No other writer (my modesty quite intact, I would like to believe I have read a decent number of authors) has left such an indelible imprint on my mind. Murakami deserves no bracketing with any member of his ilk not because of what he writes, but because of the upshot of his writing. The fact that I remember not a single story of his, but yet grant him the throne, is evidence enough of the man's much-contested prowess--and that of Jay Rubin, Philip Gabriel and Alfred Birnbaum, his equally-gifted translators. Or, because I have not read Murakami in the language he writes in, do I have to concede I have no right in appraising his talent and settle for the much-easier task of singing his translators' praise?
A word of caution to like-minded people: Never read a Murakami book that meant something to you the first time you read it, twice. If you own it, just give it away or, if you can't, burn it. It's a price worth paying for the inexplicable feeling that you will always carry in your head (provided you don't become neurotic or slip into a coma) and that you can retrieve whenever you want to be entranced, calmed, uplifted and what not. I made the mistake of reading 'South of the Border, West of the Sun' a second time sometime back and paid the price for it. The treasure-box with all those little thoughts and emotions the book brought about when I had read it the first time, vanished. Maybe, to begin with, the book, according to the current-me, is not as great as thought by the me who had read it then. But, I don't give a toss. The book could be a piece of drivel, but I want my treasure-box back.
This brings us to the topic of criticism. Criticism, as considered by those who apparently mastered it, should be driven by more than the momentary, the transitory. They say a work of art should be evaluated keeping in mind the various factors at play, not least the myriad contexts it ought to be viewed from. Maybe so. Maybe, rightly so. But as a reader, I leave it for the birds. To me, any work of art viewed with a critical eye grows ever-so-distant from the reader, movie-goer or music aficionado. To me, the relationship that's forged between the former and the latter is of utmost importance. That relationship is just not possible with the spectre of criticism lurking in the vicinity. I have been for quite a while now trying, but in vain, to stop reading reviews or critiques of any film or book or music album, and wait till my mind decides if it's willing to carry the work, or rather its consequence, with it to the grave. What if Truman Capote, in what is considered by many a website to be the "greatest literary putdown of all time", called 'On the Road' "typing, not writing"? My mind is blank whenever I recall 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' or the first few pages of 'The Grass Harp' which I trudged through. On the other hand, my remembrance of 'On the Road' is accompanied by my journey in a 'beat' car parallel to the one with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, through the fascinating land called America, watching them make time with countless women and discomfit many a poor soul with their drunken outbursts. I remember not much else from the book, but the question is, do I have to?
I no longer consider my inability to review a work of art a handicap. I couldn't do it even if I were paid to. And thank the heavens I couldn't. I might rather go to bed with the work than sit by the bed, flinching, accusing, correcting. It's another thing that the post-coital experience might not always be memorable but I take heart that I at least got into bed.
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