Friday, May 08, 2015

What's In It For You

from Small Stories from My Enormously Spiritual Life



I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for taking a moment’s respite from the management of your own micro-celebrity to read this paragraph.  I promise it won’t be a waste!  At the end of this paragraph you are going to be demonstrably more impressive.  Now: if we can just quickly come to the agreement that this is literature.  Why should you decide that, you ask?  Why should you do me that favor?  I’ll tell you: because then you become (instantly!) a person who reads literature.  A sophisticate -- and with hardly any eye strain.  Then you need only select one writer you totally adore: Calvino’s a safe choice, so’s Beckett.  (If you want a woman, it has to be Alice Munro or Elizabeth Bishop.)  Then you choose one writer who is totally overrated: Murakami is a safe bet there.  He has to be overrated, doesn’t he, since he’s so entirely pleasant to read?  There: that was easy wasn’t it?  See how we’ve helped each other out?  Isn’t this a beautiful reason to ardently click ‘like’?  We are now literary people, you and I.  All the more reason to drink and have affairs.  OK, that’s it, we’re done here.  You may now resume dressing for brunch.  You are welcome, too, to photograph yourself reading this paragraph, in a highly sophisticated pose. 



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