The single-minded writer "Nothing more all...
The single-minded writer
"Nothing more all along and I could have saved myself a lot of wear and tearThat's all I've had anyway to keep the shit at bay
"What's 'the shit'?"
"The picture we have of one anotherLayers and layers of misunderstandingThe picture we have of ourselvesOnly we go ahead and we live by these pictures'That's what she is, that's what he is, this is what I amThis is what happened, this is why it happened--' EnoughYou know who I saw a couple of months ago? Your brotherDid he tell you?"
"No, he didn't
"He wrote me a letter and invited me to dinner in New YorkI drove down to meet himHe was black chanel quilted composing a tribute to your old manIn the letter he asked for my helpI was curious about what he had in mindI was curious about him writing me to announce that he wanted to write somethingTo you he's just a brother--to me he's still 'the Swede' You carry those guys around with you foreverBut at dinner he never mentioned the tributeWe just uttered the pleasantriesAt some place called Vincent'sAs always, he looked terrific
"Your brother's dead?"
"Died WednesdayThat's why I was in JerseyWatched my big brother die
"Of what? How?"
"Cancer
"But he'd had prostate surgeryHe told me they got it out
Impatiently Jerry said, lady dior bag "What else was he going to tell you?"
"He was thin, that was allWhat, astoundingly to Mendy Gurlik, was decimating the Daredevils right up the middle; what, astoundingly to me, had, a year earlier, made of me "purely a writer"; what, in the wake of all the other isolating losses, in the wake of everything gone and everyone gone, had stripped me down into someone whose aging powers had now but a single and unswerving aim, a man who would be seeking his solace, like it or not, nowhere but in sentences, had managed the most astounding thing of all by carrying off the indestructible hero of the wartime Weequahic section, our fake birkin neighborhood talisman, the legendary Swede
"Did he know," I asked, "when I saw him, that he was in trouble?"
"He had his hopes, but sure he knew
"I'm sorry to hear it
"His fiftieth was coming up next monthYou know what he said at the hospital on Tuesday? To me and his kids the day before he died? Most of the time he was incoherent, but twice he said, so we could understand him, 'Going to get to my fiftieth' He'd heard everyone from his class was asking, 'Will the Swede be there?' and he didn't want to let them downHe was a very nice, simple, stoical guyJust a sweetheart whose fate it was to get himself fucked over chanel j12 white watch by some real craziesIn one way he could be conceived as completely banal and conventionalAn absence of negative values and nothing moreBred to be dumb, built for convention, and so onThat ordinary decent life that they all want to live, and that's itThe social norms, and that's itBenign, and that's itBut what he was trying to do was to survive, keeping his group intactHe was trying to get through with his platoon intactIt was a war for him, finallyThere was a noble side to this guySome excruciating renunciations went on in that lifeHe got caught in a war he didn't start, and he fought to keep it all together, and he went prada logos