THAT I WOULD SURVIVE MY YOUTH, AND BE FORGIVEN

The rains washed most of the remaining leaves off the trees and turned the fallen leaves to mush. Wet leaves are so slippery!

This quarter, I share an office in the Arts and Sciences faculty building. I love the way, at Highline, the offices are situated around a central courtyard. All the windows and doors look inward. It reminds me of a motel from the 60s and of Guatemalan architecture, which is Moorish, I guess--on the outside there are no windows, just walls, but on the inside there's a lovely, private garden.



In August I was obsessed with food writing, but those books are now below the shuffling and constantly changing stack of composition text books.



But I have had a little time to read for pleasure lately. Pamela Ryder's Correction of Drift was fantastic: a novel in stories about the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. I loved it for the dark, lyrical voice, the structure of fragments and images, and the historical, narrative content. It's one of those books I wish I had written, but reading it was pretty great, too.

I've never read much Harold Brodkey, but after he was featured on the New Yorker fiction podcast, I hunted some down at the library. His early stories are so straightforward. Sometimes, reading a story, I even feel a little restless. Where is this going? And then, the ending! Always heartbreaking!


An added bonus for me is that he writes so beautifully about St. Louis. Reading about his St. Louis, I miss it. And his St. Louis is not happy.

From "The State of Grace"

"There is a certain shade of red brick--a dark, almost melodious red, sombre and riddled with blue--that is my childhood in St. Louis. Not the real childhood, but the false one that extends from the dawning of consciousness until the day that one leaves home for college. That one shade of red brick and green foliage is St. Louis in the summer (the winter is just a gray sky and a crowded school bus and the wet footprints on the brown linoleum floor at school), and that brick and a pale sky is spring. It's also loneliness and the queer, self-pitying wonder that children whose families are having catastrophes feel."

One thing I love about this story is that it isn't about the catastrophe in the narrator's family--his father has been dying in the hospital for years. It's mostly about the selfishness and loneliness of youth.

Brodkey's so funny, too! Twice this week I arrived home from work scattered and tired, but before I plunged into grading papers, I read a story, and everything seemed so much better after that. Thank God for stories.


I have always been a fairly early riser. But this year I cannot seem to adjust to the end of Daylight Savings. It's really a little out of hand, since I fall asleep soooo early at night. But I like the extra time in the morning. And I'm not really resisting since I'm going to teach at 6:30 a.m. next quarter. Yes, 6:30 a.m.




It is Saturday!