Saturday, April 06, 2013

A Long Series of Jumbo Salesmen

Lydia Davis wrote a wonderful story collection called SAMUEL JOHNSON IS INDIGNANT but I am starting to think Samuel Johnson is just kind of a pill. Right now he is making fun of Oliver Goldsmith's coat. Shut up, Samuel Johnson! How much longer can I go on? Shoot me some encouragement, Burke! But I am still reading Portis for my class, so naturally I have come across some sentences worth stopping to "blog" about, this time from Portis's article recollecting some motels of his past. 1) "I gave the desk bell my customary one ding, not a loutish three or four." 2) "These clerks are trained in their motel academies to watch for furtive movement in the back seats of cars, for the hairy domes of human heads, those of wives, tykes, and grannies left crouching low in idling Plymouths." 3) "That central crater in the mattress hadn't been wallowed out overnight, but rather by a long series of jumbo salesmen, snorting and thrashing about in troubled sleep."