Fjord of Killary
Feb. 7th, 2010 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleEvery now and then I get the feeling that some published work has been written expressly for my own benefit. Which is reassuring, since 90% of pop culture hits my eyes like something from another planet. Though I don't read much fiction, certain short stories in the New Yorker have left me feeling that, yes, there do exist other people in the world that share my concerns.
Then there are a few stories that go a bit beyond that, stories that are almost scary in how accurately they call out the details of my own circumstances. Being a Bayesian, I know there are no coincidences, only mistaken priors. Or so one might think... Anyway, a few passages from Fjord of Killary, a short story just published in the New Yorker, fairly leaped out of the page. A restless city fellow, just turned 40, has moved out to Ireland and purchased an old hotel:
I had made — despite it all — a mild success of myself in life. But on turning forty, the previous year, I had sensed exhaustion rising up in me, like rot. Before forty, you think that exhaustion is something like a long-lasting hangover. But at forty you learn all about it. Even your passions exhaust you.
And this:
They were all nut jobs. This is what it came down to. This is the thing you learn about habitual country drinkers. They suffer all manner of delusions, paranoia, warped fantasies. It is a most intense world indeed that a hard drinker builds around himself, and it is difficult for him not to assume that everyone else in the place is involved with it.
Did I mention that our neighbors are Irish?
Oh, and this:
Lovely, coldhearted Nadia came running from the kitchen. She was as white as the fallen dead.
“Is otter!” she cried.
“What?”
“Is otter in kitchen!” she cried.
He was eating soup when I got there. Carrot and coriander from a ten-gallon pot. Normally, they are terribly skittish, otters, but this fellow was languorous as a surfer. Nervously, I shooed him toward the back door. He took his own sweet time about heading there.
No, he didn't write that, did he? Really? Um, actually, yes he did. Not that this means anything.
Another interesting angle on the storyhere.
I guess one reason people read fiction is that it makes them feel less alone. It's so rare that it has this effect on me that I'm not sure I even understood it until just now.
Then there are a few stories that go a bit beyond that, stories that are almost scary in how accurately they call out the details of my own circumstances. Being a Bayesian, I know there are no coincidences, only mistaken priors. Or so one might think... Anyway, a few passages from Fjord of Killary, a short story just published in the New Yorker, fairly leaped out of the page. A restless city fellow, just turned 40, has moved out to Ireland and purchased an old hotel:
I had made — despite it all — a mild success of myself in life. But on turning forty, the previous year, I had sensed exhaustion rising up in me, like rot. Before forty, you think that exhaustion is something like a long-lasting hangover. But at forty you learn all about it. Even your passions exhaust you.
And this:
They were all nut jobs. This is what it came down to. This is the thing you learn about habitual country drinkers. They suffer all manner of delusions, paranoia, warped fantasies. It is a most intense world indeed that a hard drinker builds around himself, and it is difficult for him not to assume that everyone else in the place is involved with it.
Did I mention that our neighbors are Irish?
Oh, and this:
Lovely, coldhearted Nadia came running from the kitchen. She was as white as the fallen dead.
“Is otter!” she cried.
“What?”
“Is otter in kitchen!” she cried.
He was eating soup when I got there. Carrot and coriander from a ten-gallon pot. Normally, they are terribly skittish, otters, but this fellow was languorous as a surfer. Nervously, I shooed him toward the back door. He took his own sweet time about heading there.
No, he didn't write that, did he? Really? Um, actually, yes he did. Not that this means anything.
Another interesting angle on the storyhere.
I guess one reason people read fiction is that it makes them feel less alone. It's so rare that it has this effect on me that I'm not sure I even understood it until just now.
