Reading: Martin Amis's The Information and Baby Island

Moving: Not much

 

 

18 April 2000: Sensual World

RDC mixed himself a vodka martini the other evening. I personally would call it "a martini glass filled with vodka" since there was no vermouth to be seen anywhere. RDC alleged that olives make the drink a martini and, without fanfare, dropped three into the glass. "No no no," I chastised him. "That's wrong." I demonstrated: "Ah-one, ah-two, ah-thrrrreeee." He blew my Tootsie-Pop reference by adding a fourth. Okay, I could sing along to four...but no, I couldn't. I don't know the song for four. I fetched my Schoolhouse Rock book and read the lyrics and not only were they totally unfamiliar but they didn't even evoke a tune. Further evidence of my misspent youth.

Sunday night I continued reading Swallows and Amazons to him. Yes, we've been reading this for a while, but those kids are so good they're nauseatingly boring. RDC has given up asking if this is the chapter where they build a still and his attention is as easily held by Midnight's Children or The Book on the Bookshelf plus he reread A Farewell to Arms, which he says was better this time. That I don't believe. Anyway we're nearly finished with Swallows and Amazons, and toward the end, the Amazons eat some of the Swallows' food. Nancy says,

"Then we found a seed cake and ate it. I hope you don't mind."
"Not a bit," said Susan. "There's a new one coming today."

This passage strained the book's credibility in RDC's mind more than anything had yet--more than their inability to walk barefoot or the fact that they never pee. "You can't just eat a seedcake in one sentence like that!" he ejaculated. Poor RDC. Humble, honest Walkers, and brash but decent Blacketts, and never a Molly Bloom from one end of the lake to the other. I myself know Kate Bush better than James Joyce, and she takes a lot longer than this to describe eating a seedcake:

Mmh, yes
Then I'd taken the kiss of seedcake back from his mouth
Going deep South, go down, mmh, yes,
Took six big wheels and rolled our bodies
Off of Howth Head and into the flesh, mmh, yes
He said I was flower of the mountain, yes
But now I've powers o'er a woman's body--yes

Stepping out of the page into the sensual world

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