(To my mind, couples like that are always suspect - really, who are they trying to fool?) Besides which, we were there to pay a visit to Nola’s father, who’s in his eighties and living in a trailer park a mile down the road from the motel, which made it convenient not only for seeing him but for strolling into Old Town, where there are a handful of bars and restaurants and the junk shops my wife loves to frequent, looking for bargains. We don’t exchange heart-shaped boxes of chocolates or glossy cards with manufactured endearments inside, and we don’t go around kissing in public or saying “I love you” twenty times a day. You might not think of Kingman as a prime location for a romantic getaway (who would?), but Nola and I have been married for fifteen years now, and romance is just part of the continuum - sometimes it blows hot, sometimes cold, and we certainly don’t need a special day or place for it. This past Valentine’s Day, I was in Kingman, Arizona, with my wife, Nola, staying in the Motel 6 there, just off the I-40.
“I Walk Between the Raindrops” certainly starts with Boyle’s strengths: sentences that roll forward, pulling you with them a narrative voice you could listen to for hours, in part because he’s a bit off an interesting setting that is not somewhere in New York City. I still find his work, at the very least, interesting and usually fun, even if it doesn’t hit me in any deeper way. Nevertheless, I was excited to see his name pop up when I looked at what the magazine was offering this week. I don’t think I’m alone based on the discussions Boyle’s work has inspired here at The Mookse and the Gripes.
I think Boyle is a great writer, and I usually am pulled deeply into his work, yet I don’t think I’ve ever quite connected with it.
This week The New Yorker brings us another story from one of the preeminent short story writers of the last - gulp! - forty years (that’s right, Boyle’s first collection, Descent of Man was published in 1979).
0 kommentar(er)
