Vampire Novels, Grover Cleveland, Misunderstandings

One Christmas—one which I will place after the birth of our first child because I didn’t make all my cards by hand with thousands of tiny hand-painted hole-punches and a glue stick, but before the birth of our second, because I wasn’t yet sending around a cynical Family Christmas Letter–I bought a bunch of very pretty Christmas cards that turned out not to be Blank Inside. “Especially at Christmas, it’s always nice to think of you,” the cards read. Before they had been translated from the original language, the sentiment might have brought a tear to my eye. Unless it was Russian—then I wouldn’t have understood, since Ashley Alley only ever taught me to say “one of my breasts hurts.” One hopes—okay, I am the one hoping this—that being understood all the time isn’t the most important thing. For instance, I spent a very long time trying to memorize John 3:16 in Spanish one time from the Gideon Bible in my hotel room, and everyone thought I was talking about using an airplane seat to polish my spittoon. Unless I’m confusing several other useful Spanish phrases. Apologies to Jill, Billy, Samia, Anne, and any other Spanish language mentors I may be leaving out.

English is my Muttersprache, and even in this I think I tend to wander a bit, which is why I was so relieved to hear from a wise and reliable person that the author Stephen King–whose writing on writing, my reliable anonymous source and I agreed, is much less scary than his novels–has promised being misunderstood is okay. It is also a fine segue to the next thing I wanted to discuss, which is the book I haven’t quite finished reading, The Accursed, by Joyce Carol Oates. Stephen King reviewed it for The New York Times, but I will have a different emphasis, and a more curated readership.

I suppose I could have waited until I was finished with it to review this book, but I’m anxious to be known as a person who has a book in the hand that does not have a drink in it, or in the hand that is not putting the drink down for a moment, on a coaster, and tousling a child’s hair to soothe that child, or, more likely, to replace an unruly lock. There—now that I’ve used a word like lock, you will know that I am not making up the thing about reading a book. On second thought, I don’t think I’m going to write an entire review. You can read Stephen King’s review, if you enjoy spoilers, but I think I’d prefer you were surprised. Here is a taste: Woodrow Wilson has a stomach pump and despises Grover Cleveland, whose wife is a glamor puss! Anyone might be a vampire. Upton Sinclair is trying to join forces with Jack London. Why? Talk about a meat-eater! If you have finished this book, shhh! Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.

Lie, Lay, EYE-lah?

When my children correct me about something from the as-I-say-not-as-I-do category, I like to talk to them about building intellectual authority, and then I prescribe continuing their music lessons and not ignoring grammar. “Early one mornin’ the sun was shinin’, I was layin’ in bed,” sings Bob Dylan, but I don’t turn that part down. Instead I explain that Bob Dylan is a poet, and he knows all the rules, and the characters in his songs may “lay” in, or across, beds sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that either of my children should do that. I mean, say that. I mean—they may certainly lie in their own beds, but only by themselves, for now, in the present tense. By contrast, Barry Manilow, whose song I use only for the sake of comparison—or when I feel like someone is really hogging the mic and I need to monopolize a 17-bar interlude—could have asked “who shot whom?” at the Copacabana without breaking character. So, children, when I say “like” too frequently, remember that it’s with a wink—not, like, when Ariana Grande says it on Sam & Cat.

Gosh, intellectual authority—authority of all flavors—is so easy to fake within the parent-child relationship. It’s not as easy elsewhere, but I would like to point you towards some of my scholarly work, if you have a few hours, and read German: http://www.beckyloomis.com/Ichbinsehrsehrintelligent. The link has been a little fussy lately, but I hope you will get a chance to read at least a portion of this at some point, because I’m concerned you’re starting to believe me when I tell you I’m an airhead. Or maybe you’ve even witnessed that sort of behavior. Last night, I was trying, as always, to be subtle! But the hills of [more in a moment] were calling me, because I’ve been on a rare bourbon streak recently. Bourbon, it turns out, pairs nicely with the campfire smell lingering (permanently?) from the fire I made recently without opening the flue. So I needed to restore balance, and warm up, with a Lagavulin, before the Mary Chapin Carpenter concert. (Christine, she’s a folk singer.) The bartender told me they didn’t have Lagavulin. I believed her, but she also looked puzzled when I asked for Laphroaig. So I got up—not in a huff—and walked down to the end of the bar to point it out, and the other bartender said “Oh! you mean [something I didn’t understand]?” and held up the bottle of Laphroaig. “I’ve always pronounced it [same sound]”. “Maybe,” I said. “I’ve never been to Ireland.” I have also never been to Scotland, but I know where Islay is, more or less. At any rate, neither of them was disarmed by my mistake, and my white bean chili showed up with the cheese I had asked them to omit. I started to compliment the one bartender’s fishnets, or tell her I had a pair just like them, but that would have been a lie. Mine have the line in back.