Whirring wind, the whistling of asthmatic ghosts, the clinks of cans and other detritus thrown out windows by careless neighbors and left to pick up in an unpredictable gust. Spooky and grandiloquent gestures in lieu of snow. The slush well melted. Two inch puddles evaporating before tomorrow morning. Footfalls beyond walls. Eight days before the unfulfilled promise of a wintry wonderland. Mere weeks before year’s end. Party poppers and streamers and the clinks of champagne flutes, but not today. The phones are dead at this zero hour, batteries left to expire and the monitors dissolving into screensavers. Everyone is shaking. Jittery souls packed in thick soles, stampeding through powdery barricades. The other half packed inside clinging to lovers and protective blankets. Times Square half-deserted, the heavy credit card swiping primed for the robust nor’easter of Penn Station procrastinators. Subways chug and conductors repeat MTA warnings. They are the lonely drivers of this city, saturating these barely populated cars with lonely chatter. The rest ride silent in cabs because it beats shivering in shelters.
The smarter and richer ones have fled to warmer places, to friends and families, to wintering — although they’ll never use that gerund. There are still places that pulse with life. Warm tableaus where everybody seems mystified that the holiday hasn’t come to pass. Which explains the reliance upon safe tunes that everybody knows like the Beatles blasted over speakers, defacing the silence and filling in for the thirty-seventh version of “Jingle Bell Rock.”
Daylight’s at a premium and everyone knows it. In particular, the nine-to-fivers are sad because they’re inside when the sun stabs through the clouds. It’s hard to smile, but jokes come easier. And sometimes there’s the prospect of a shared flask. Conversations are quieter, subjects less scintillating. It’s as if we’re all part of a mandatory Secret Santa operation. Brain cells dwindle, fires kindle. But cats and dogs jump on laps and are walked around blocks, whether sun or sleet. Kids bristle with energy and anticipation. The haul might be pretty good or anticlimactic. The alone hole up with big bottles and are left alone.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
“they’re inside when the sun stabs through the clouds” — nice.
“They are the lonely drivers of this city, saturating these barely populated cars with lonely chatter.”
absolutely gorgeous prose. thanks for bringing me down to earth this morning.