He had time for one subversive thought about his parents’ Nordic Pleasurelines shoulder bags–either Nordic Pleasurelines sent bags like these to every booker of its cruises as a cynical means of getting inexpensive walk-about publicity or a practical means of tagging the cruise participants for greater ease of handling at embarkation points or as a benign means of building esprit de corps; or else Enid and Alfred had deliberately saved the bags from some previous Nordic Pleasurelines cruise and, out of a misguided sense of loyalty, had chosen to carry them on their upcoming cruise as well; and in either case Chip was appalled by his parents’ willingness to make themselves vectors of corporate advertising–before he shouldered the bags himself and assumed the burden of seeing LaGuardia Airport and New York City and his life and clothes and body through the disappointed eyes of his parents.
By Jonathan Franzen, 2001.
Re-reading in preparation for Freedom, later this month.
Through the window of the cab he read ‘Gap Athletic’ as ‘Gal Pathetic.’ He read ‘Empire Realty’ as ‘Vampire Reality.’
He was half in love with a person he could never see again. He’d stolen nine dollars from a hardworking woman who enjoyed college football. Even if he went back later and reimbursed her and apologized, he would always be the man who ripped her off when her back was turned. She was gone from his life forever, he could never run his fingers through her hair, and it was not a good sign that this latest loss was making him hyperventilate. That he was too wrecked by pain to swallow more licorice.
He read ‘Cross Pens’ as ‘Cross Penises,’ he read ‘Alterations’ as ‘Altercations.’
An optomotresist’s window offered: ‘Heads Examined.’
The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn’t covetous, he wasn’t envious. But without money he was hardly a man.
Josh and I were talking about the male lead in Nights And Weekends and how we were glad the story made him a consistent d-bag instead of some admirable shell of a character. My feelings are similar for Chip in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, whose stories are littered with such brilliant disdain for the American Dream wrapped up mercilessly in this character who is such an opportunistic coward, you wonder what people must think of you.
People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as she drives up the onramp. She says, “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” Though that sentence shouldn’t bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I’m eighteen and it’s December and the ride on the plane had been rough and the couple from Santa Barbara, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk. Not the mud that had splattered the leg of my jeans, which felt kind of cold and loose, earlier that day at an airport in New Hampshire. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp shirt I wear, a shirt which had looked fresh and clean this morning. Not the tear on the neck of my gray argyle vest, which seems vaguely more eastern than before, especially next to Blair’s clean tight jeans and her pale-blue T-shirt. All of this seems irrelevant next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to merge rather than “I’m pretty sure Muriel is anorexic” or the singer on the radio crying out about magnetic waves. Nothing else seems to matter to me but those ten words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blair’s car. All it comes down to is that I’m a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven’t seen for four months and people are afraid to merge.
– Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis
Picked up Imperial Bedrooms and it’s not bad so far but it just reminded me how much I really, really love the first vignette of Less Than Zero.
