Today I experienced the, for me, the unprecendented thrill of of coming across a Thanksgiving-themed passage in a novel I've been slogging through for several weeks--and on Thanksgiving Eve, no less!!! At page 200, the novel's finally starting to pick up, and I'll post my Goodreads review here when I'm done.
I came across this passage on the subway to work this morning, and could barely contain my excitement at the serendipity of it all. For I was barreling up the west side on the subway, not too far from where the balloons for tomorrow's historic parade sponsored by an old, iconic department store are being inflated.
Unfortunately, I had left the novel at work, but an LA-based Fb friend, Chairm An Meow, responded to my Fb call, and scanned the relevant pages from her copy and emailed them to me. It was a little Thanksgiving miracle. (Thanks to Luisa and (former GITP blogger) Jenna for making suggestions.)
From Chronic City (2009) (The narrator-- former child star and ersatz boyfriend to endlessly circling astronaut, Janice Turnbull--Chase Insteadman has been recently felled by flu and receives a pair of rich friends in Burberry coats into his apartment on Thanksgiving morning.)
The two of them arrived just before noon with a caterer’s
roasted turkey and some sides, shocking me. [. . . ] The
Hawkman helped me set a small table, scooping sweet-potato mash and creamed spinach
from plastic quarts into rarely used serving bowls, gravy poured into a coffee
mug, and dusting off a bunch of cloth napkins I’d forgetting I owned. We even switched on the television to
catch the toe end of the Macy’s parade, the kooky giant balloons, supermen and
Gnuppets and unrecognizable new personae bobbing through the sleet canyons,
kids toughing it out in the cold.
“May
I ask, what does that represent?”
“That
represents SpongeBob SquarePants, Georgie.”
My
appetite suddenly savage, I was, yes, thankful, wildly so, to have the turkey’s
inexhaustible flesh before me, ate white and dark in a gravied pile together,
felt myself plundering the bird’s live forces, stripping it free of the
obedient skeleton. Recovering with
each bite, I felt a teenager’s strength and greed rising in me. Richard laughed. They ate, too, more decorously, through
threads of dried breast lodged in Richard’s beard until Georgina picked them
out, and gossiped absently, remarking on items of paltry interest in my
apartment, which was revealing, truthfully, only in its hotel-ish anonymity,
order, booklessness (201-2).
Happy Thanksgiving, all!
Btw, Thanksgiving Eve is my favorite holiday. By far.
a great story, julie. your own thanksgiving miracle, i'd say. i love the passage, too: "the inexhaustible turkey's flesh."
ReplyDeletehave a lovely day tomorrow, and safe travels.