Best Quote

I'm nearly finished with Lorrie Moore's collection of short stories, 'Birds of America', and I'm willing to go out on a limb and declare this the best passage in this spare partial oeuvre:

"The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney."
"Oh, not the raccoon story," groans Cal.
"Yes! The raccoons!" cries Eugene.
I'm sawing at my duck.
"We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney," explains Simone.
"Hmmmm," I say, not surprised.
"And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped that the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They are all like that."

You can listen to a podcast of author Louise Erdrich reading this short story, 'Dance in America', on The New Yorker's website, or just click here. Nothing is quite as fun as listening to one author fawn over another, except for one author hating on another (the famous feud between Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman, anyone?).
Enjoy!

Newly Discovered Writers, By Me, At Least

I often feel as if I'm late to some literary party. Some great author has been around forever and I've only just discovered them. Forever being as subjective as discovery, I can only know something when our paths have crossed. Esoteric enough for a Thursday?
So it is that I've finally stumbled upon two authors I'd never heard of: Lorrie Moore and Sara Ryan. These authors have nothing in common, apart from both being women and thereby human, but as fate would have it, here I am ordering their books. Not that I don't have a stack of books glaring at me on the bedside table, I'm just not in the mood yet for 'Outliers', and let's face it, I'm never going to finish that one book by some guy who thought something about something but used too many words to never get to his point. I just can't commit any more time to someone like that. I've broken off the reader end of that relationship and unfriended him on MySpace.*
Like many readers, avid and otherwise, I depend on book recommendations from friends and reviews I peruse at my leisure on the interweb tubes. In all honesty, I probably rely more on reviews than on friends because ever since that 'Bel Canto' recommendation I've cast a rheumy eye toward what some people consider a 'must' read.
Now I just await the delivery of Moore's 'Birds of America' and Ryan's 'Empress of the World'.

*I'm not on MySpace, or Facebook, or Twitter, or classmates or really anything that makes me more accessible. I just can't resolve all that interaction with my hermetic world view.