RIPs and Asthma Attacks

I have a trove of moldering love letters from this particular writer in a storage facility somewhere in Berkeley. He introduced me to the phrases “profoundly okay” and “asparagus weather.”

I read Dog Soldiers long before I met Bob, actually:





Here I am behind the scenes at a lingerie photo shoot in 1972. I was reading while I waited for the stylists to do me. You can't see the title of the book I'm reading, but yes, it's Dog Soldiers.

It was a pretty important book for me. It made me realize that real horror is often quite funny, and that the humor actually adds to the horror.

Bob’s other novels? No so good. I think he was kind of embarrassed by the fact that he identified so strongly with the protagonists his first two novels – the cowardly, smarmy Rheinhardt of Hall of Mirrors; the squirrely, morally ambiguous Converse of Dog Soldiers. Bob desperately wanted to be heroic! So his next novel after Dog Soldiers was a sweeping maritime epic that takes place mostly on the high seas. It didn’t work.

Bob and I lost touch the year after Reagan was first elected President, which since Bob was very married, was the way it was supposed to be.

I don’t think his literary reputation will endure.

Although, as I say, Dog Soldiers is a wonderful novel.

In other news, I’m feeling better than I have in a few days although I’m still not operating on all cylinders. The cold – which had been going away – triggered a massive asthma attack a few days back, which meant I had to pull out the steroid inhalers which I hate using. I’ve been using them everyday since.

It’s difficult if not impossible to do anything worthwhile when your system is being assaulted by corticosteroids, so I am now completely up to date with the Law & Order SVU oeuvre. Go ahead! Ask me anything about Olivia Benson’s underwear collection!