Go Like This

Lorrie Moore hurts my feelings.

I picked up a copy of Self-Help the other day, after reading about it on Sarah's blog.

Her stories are dead on. Her writing is piercing — sometimes inspiring me to whip out my pen and notebook, and sometimes just taunting me, saying "go back to branding (or maybe become the fry guy at Mickey D's), you'll never be as good as this, so why bother?"

"He swallows with some difficulty, his wonderful Adam's apple, gliding up and down his throat, a tiny flesh elevator ..."

"I inhale four times with the drama of the first amphibian."

"She (her crying daughter) laid her head in my lap like a leaky egg."

And those are just tips of the icebergs.

I'm only half-way through this collection, and I've already grabbed another one, Birds of America, to soak up when I finish.

She really is an amazing writer. Reading her is (almost) like taking a writing seminar (without having to go all the way to Madison, Wisconsin ... brrr ... where she teaches).

I seem to have found a slew of talented prose spinners them this year: Amanda Davis, Greg Bottoms, Panos Karnezis.

*sigh*