Even an animal couldn't save it.

This week I tried to read a novel that’s coming up for discussion at the library, a bestseller. I don't often read bestsellers, but I like discussing books at the library, and this one had an unusual premise involving an animal, and I like animals. I couldn’t get to page fifty. The sentences were soggy, and every chapter ended with something or someone "glowing palely in the growing dark," "silhouetted by the falling dusk," etc. There was a time when I would have finished the book anyway, if only to complain during the library discussion, but that was last year.

photo: Anthony Ulinski

Blue parrot, or the perils of nonfiction

Lately I've been writing personal essays, a new form for me, and twice last week I let worries over the feelings of others creep into my editing decisions. It's hard enough to edit when your motives are purely literary. In an odd sort of punctuation to these episodes, I happened on an essay by David Sedaris, "Repeat After Me," in which he repeats a story his sister has told him in confidence. The particulars of the story aren't important; the point is that Sedaris is telling it. The essay is about betrayal, and the guilt that often goes along with writing personal stories. In the last scene, Sedaris imagines himself in his sister’s kitchen, chanting while his sister's parrot listens, teaching the parrot to say, "Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me."

blue parrot photo: JT Reby / jtdc.files.wordpress.com.