What do you think?
Rate this book
177 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
"The idea of hostages is very deep. Becoming pregnant is taking a hostage-as is running a pawnshop, being a bank, receiving a letter, taking a photograph, or listening to a confidence. Every love story, every commercial trade, every secret, every matter in which trust is involved, is a gentle transaction of hostages. Everything is, to a degree, in the custody of every other thing."
‘When I woke up at noon the next day, the wet wood and ashes with a kettle looked like some desolate form of art’
That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.
The problem is this. Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care at all resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in the literature.
They Take Turns Using a Word They Like
"It's extraordinary," says one woman.
"It is extraordinary," says the other.
"Well, you know, you can't win them all," the old bartender said. "In fact, you can't win any of them."This is mostly what Speedboat ends up being: just little sketches, sometimes with a punch line, sometimes not. There are no rules.
I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.And I thought oh, that's wonderful: finally, someone else who knows about that. Sometimes Adler shows you a whole horizon with a single sentence: "'Self-pity' is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative." Sometimes I underlined things just because they were funny: "Many English girls one meets abroad are called Vanessa," she mentions, and then just moves on. Or when a child named Kevin goes missing on a field trip:
It turned out that every single child on the school bus had known that [Kevin] was missing. They had not mentioned it to the driver, or their teacher, or each other. They took it that Kevin had been left, forever, for some reason, which would become clear to them, with patience, in the course of time.I find myself thinking of this story surprisingly often. It's funny, of course - you can imagine a standup comedian killing with this story. But it feels meaningful, too. Isn't that what your life is like? We all just...assume that there must be some reason for this? Or look at this little excerpt, which starts as observational humor and rapidly raises the stakes:
"Take off everything except your slip," the nurse said. "Doctor will be with you in a moment." Nobody under forty-five, in twenty years, had worn a slip, but nurses invariably gave this instruction. There they all are, however, the great dead men with their injunctions. Make it new. Only connect.And you're like holy shit, where did Ezra Pound and EM Forster come from?
"So for these purposes, digitalis, adamantine, apple orchard, gonorrhea, labyrinthine, motherfucker, flights of fancy, Duffy's Tavern, Halley's Comet, birthday present, xenophobic are all synonyms," the great professor said. "Synonyms, in terms of meter, that is."