mallorys_camera | The Coming Rapture in the Sky (Reply)

Hit 70° again yesterday, and I couldn’t stay inside, no matter how much work I had to do.

It’s very strange to be sleeveless outside when the angle of the sun and the leafless trees are telling you it’s winter.

After my tromp, I went to Michaels, which is the only place I thought might still sell photo albums. (I was right.)

Michaels was packed. Their Christmas displays were up:

In the parking lot, I spied the signs of the coming rapture in the sky:

I figured out what’s wrong structurally with Super Sad True Love Story.

It’s that Shteyngart invests enormous amounts of energy and imagination, setting the novel up as an exaggerated satire, and then about two-thirds of the way through the book, he wants readers to start relating to his primary protagonists as though they were real human beings facing wartime atrocities.

And I mean, no. Just no.

It doesn’t work.

Would it work if Shteyngart were a better writer?

Or if the two primary characters were more sympathetic? Because honestly, from the very first page, I wanted to grab Eunice by the hair and smash her head against a concrete wall and skewer Lenny with a sharp stake up his anus.

I continued reading the book because Shteyngart is so very, very funny.

But I kind of resented it when Shteyngart abandoned the humor in favor of angst—although Shteyngart is as excellent at angst as he is at humor. He is a very good writer, and I don’t think any writer can pull this kind of pivot off. The whiplash it produces is too disorienting.

Also, I started sorting through the CD pix so I could put together a photo album for Annie.

There are something like a billion of them, and most of them are not of Annie.

Here are some from 2002.

I’d forgotten RTT was once a Cub Scout!

I dimly remembered the trip we made to Tustin. The terms of the divorce agreement I made with X-Husband 1 was that Ichabod spent all his time off from school with his Dad. I was a complete idiot when I negotiated that divorce agreement—for example, I did not ask for child support! In fact, that was a point of pride. I can support my own kid, I said sniffily—or words to that effect.

Anyway, I preferred to drive Ichabod to Tustin rather than put him on a plane because any excuse for a road trip, right? And in 2002, I brought RTT along.

As an aside, I will note that however much I dislike MaryAnne, she has always been extremely warm and gracious toward RTT.

In fact, the two daughters of Bill’s second marriage and the son of my second marriage kinda consider themselves brother and sisters.

Here they all are in Tustin: