Tonight work was slow because Hanakkuh started at sundown. I found the NYTimes Book Review, and was pleased to read a review of the new collection The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie.If anyone knows me then they probably already know of my long obsession and revisitation of the best short story ever written (by Beattie, of course) "The Burning House." Over the summer I read Beattie's novella Walks With Men, and I almost choked on the similarities between that breathless one-day read and "The Burning House." I like to think of the latter as the rough draft, though ever-so-polished, for the former.
Long story and bad attempt at lit crit cut short, I hope that someone will gift me The New Yorker Stories this Christmas, and I'd like to post an apt quote here, which sums up why I love Beattie's writing and why I feel such a strong affinity to her.
"What you learn when you read the works of the young Ann Beattie is that she loved men. She was an appreciator, a connoisseur, of men, in all their indefensible glory. Her male characters are often awful and usually irresponsible and almost always funny and touching."
If there was ever a girl that loved men in spite of everything else, well then I guess that makes 2 of us.
