I think it must be: starve a fever. At least, that is the course I’ve taken in the last few days. LI has been down with the flu. We’ve been living in a world of biomorphic distortions and inexplicable lapses of time, much like the narrator of Le Très-Haut. We’ve crammed ourselves with Tylonals, sudafeds, and cough suppressants – the latter of which still does not bar the dog from our door. The dog that is making that godawful din, growling, whining and barking, which shoots out of our mouth and rattle our bones. Possessed by a demon dog and condemned to walk the reaches of the night.
Yesterday we had to finish a review. It couldn’t be put off any longer. Such agony! Usually reviewing a novel combines putting together a flow sheet with a few remarks from our distinguished panel of judges. But instead of bright and spritely flow, every sentence we wrote seemed a peculiar and malicious bog, in which we would sink up to our chin. And then, by mainforce, we’d go forward by another sentence, and so on. The funny thing is that the review, which in the end was pretty bare and barren, is probably just the thing our editor is looking for – we are always being edited back to a paint by numbers, thumb up or thumb down format, there. Sadly, people actually expect reviews to be thumb up or thumb down affairs, when the faithful reviewer could truly care less about whether a review is positive or negative. No, the real reviewer has a wholly surgical objective: to peel back the skin and muscle from the heart cavity and reach in and touch the beating, quivering center of the book. That is reviewer’s coup. Which is why the question I am most often asked about my reviews is – but did you like the book?
…
Well, I have answered a few questions this week. One question is: how much food does a man have to consume in a day? And the answer is: a can of tomato soup every two days is sufficient. However, I have this creeping feeling that my fast is about to break.
And here comes sickness...
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10 comments:
There is little scientific evidence behind the notion of starving a cold and feeding a fever, or vice versa. however. (if you're a kid) usually good for a few extra Twinkies.
Ah, North, even when I'm healthy, twinkies are a bit too much for me! I'm not superfreak enough to confront that much industrial strength sugar. However, in spite of the tasteless of God's good array, I ate enough today to count as a citizen of these here states. Hoooraaah!
Good to have you back, Roger. I was getting worried. I tend to think you'll keep on blogging even after death - so clearly something was very wrong. Get and stay well...
Mr. P - how did you know?
For indeed, some seventy years ago, I commanded a crew of hearty bloggers. Never a one had reason to complain, though I was a swearing wretch. And so one day, trying to weather the lies that lead us into perpetual war, I walked about the blogging dogpound and said, 'May I be eternally damned if my blogging don't stop these here fuckin wars!' That's, of course, when the curse came down from Jehovah and so it came about that the LI blogging crewe eternally beats through the internet surf. And only, only if a woman - say Ava Gardner, for instance - only if a luscious woman is willing to give her life out of pure love for mine - say, after a carefree period of dalliance with racecar drivers and bullfighters, but with a heart full of secret sorrows - only then will me and my blogging crew be freed from eternal torment!
Twinkies—like cockroaches—can survive a nuclear holocaust. You, Roger, are the Twinkiest of Bloggers. good to have you back.
Reviewer's croup.
Like the miser in The Confidence Man: "ugh! ugh! ugh!"
AZ 68 = GOD'S GOOD ARRAY = TWINKIE DEFENSE.
It would be more poetic if you did your starving in a garret.
Mr. Lawrence, you should know real estate prices better than that! Renting a garret in this day and age - and the only place you are even going to find one is Manhattan - is something reserved for stock or drug dealers. The accoutrements of poverty, nowadays, cost an arm and a leg.
I didn't mean it would be cheaper, just more poetic.
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