De Amerikaanse schrijver Joshua Ferris werd op 8 november 1974 in Danville, Illinois, geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Joshua Ferris op dit blog.
Uit: A Calling for Charlie Barnes
.“What do you want from me, huh? What did you expect?
Those were some of the questions Steady Boy was asking that morning, after waking his computer and sitting awhile with the rapier-style letter opener, contemplatively cleaning his nails.
But of whom was he asking them? His children? Ex-wives?
Old colleagues, maybe. Like that bastard Larry Stoval.
He knew Larry from his time at Bear Stearns—that scrappy brokerage firm with the dog-eat-dog mind-set, now kaput. He and Larry Stoval were good buddies back then. This was years ago. Charlie worked the retail desk while Larry cleared dubious trades at the direct orders of Jimmy Cayne, Bear’s CEO, doing God knows what damage to the moral universe . . . but what was it that kept Larry up at night? It wasn’t boiler rooms and FTC fines. It was Charlie’s affair with a nurse at First Baptist.
It was fall, 1992. The nurse’s name was Barbara. Larry didn’t like her. Didn’t like the idea of her. Larry, the Oak Brook deacon, didn’t give a damn about Wall Street thievery, but coveting thy neighbor’s wife—now that Larry could not abide.
Human hypocrisy of this magnitude was one reason Charlie always felt far from God. Little did Larry know that that guilt-ridden affair, which ended when Charlie left Evangeline and married the nurse, sent him, for the first and only time in his life, to a therapist’s couch just to pull himself together.
Honestly, he’d assumed the extramarital shame would go on eating him alive, like the guy who stole fire from the gods and had his liver picked clean by birds. But did Larry offer him any comfort? Take-home pay that put Larry Stoval in the halls of Valhalla, but he still couldn’t afford a little compassion for his fellow fallen man. “Larry,” Charlie had said, making himself vulnerable to his good old friend, “I’m in real trouble here,” and what’d the guy do? Treated him like a fucking pariah. He set down the letter opener, picked up the phone, and dialed. with the rapier-style letter opener, contemplatively cleaning his nails.
But of whom was he asking them? His children? Ex-wives?
Old colleagues, maybe. Like that bastard Larry Stoval.
He knew Larry from his time at Bear Stearns—that scrappy brokerage firm with the dog-eat-dog mind-set, now kaput. He and Larry Stoval were good buddies back then. This was years ago. Charlie worked the retail desk while Larry cleared dubious
trades at the direct orders of Jimmy Cayne, Bear’s CEO, doing God knows what damage to the moral universe . . . but what was it that kept Larry up at night? It wasn’t boiler rooms and FTC fines. It was Charlie’s affair with a nurse at First Baptist.”
De Engelse dichteres en schrijfster Anne Sexton werd geboren op 9 november 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts. Zie ook alle tags voor Anne Sexton op dit blog.
Het mos van zijn huid
Het was alleen belangrijk
om te glimlachen en stil te zitten,
naast hem te gaan liggen
en even uit te rusten,
samen te worden opgevouwen
alsof we zijde waren,
weg te zinken uit de ogen van moeder
en niet te praten.
De zwarte kamer nam ons op
als een grot of een mond
of een inhuizige buik.
Ik hield mijn adem in
en papa was er,
zijn duimen, zijn dikke schedel,
zijn tanden, zijn haar dat groeide
als een veld of een sjaal.
Ik lag bij het mos
van zijn huid totdat
het raar werd. Mijn zussen
zullen nooit weten dat ik
uit mezelf val en doe alsof
Allah niet zal zien
hoe ik mijn vader vasthoud
als een oude stenen boom.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 8e november ook mijn blog van 8 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 8 november 2015 deel 2.