Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Cheever Fever


The prayer that opens the short story "The Trouble of Marcie Flint:"

"My suitcase is full of peanut butter, and I am a fugitive from the suburbs of all large cities. What holes! The suburbs, I mean. God preserve me from the lovely ladies taking in their asters and their roses at dusk lest the frost kill them, and from the ladies with their heads whirling with civic zeal. I'm off to Torino, where the girls love peanut butter and the world is a man's castle and...God preserve me...from women who dress like toreros to go to the supermarket, and from cowhide dispatch cases, and from flannels and gaberdines. Preserve me from word games and adulterers, from basset hounds and swimming pools and frozen canapés and Bloody Marys and smugness and syringa bushes and P.T.A. meetings"


I was too nervous to search for what a "woman dressed like torero" would dredge up on google, so I found what I hope is a modern day equivalent:

Our next book club book is The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, and I'm gearing up as I wait for the amazon shipment with some short stories. I wonder what separates ladies who like peanut butter from the ladies of suburbia.



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