Just a quick note. When I see language like this, I think it’s important to note that the only “decision” made was for Obama to make public his personal opinion. Nothing changes legally–states can still ban gay marriage, etc.

(And as regards the value of Obama’s personal decision, please see Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com for an anti-cheerleading stance of a gay man.)

There was something about Bridey that just jumped off the page–we got hints into her character throughout the story (e.g., the self-correction at the laugh over the vows). In contrast, all along I had doubts about William’s “love” for Bridey and now consistent his character was.

If someone so painfully shy really capable of falling into the role of easy confidante with the object of his affections? What kind of “love” is it, if he wishes he could be freed somehow–that really feels more like an obsessive-compulsive disorder. (I.e., that dynamic just doesn’t ring true for an authentic love–if he was able to get himself out of town, apply to school, etc., surely he could have found some way to express himself.)

I suppose Williams may be plausible, but he’s just too opaque to know how to read him. (In that sense, he’s similar to Bridey’s father–he’s so reactive that pictures of Abu Graib (sp?) make him protest the war by denying marriage to soldiers? Why?)

So, while I always enjoy Meloy’s writing, and the character Bridey, there was too much of a cipher at the center of the story, and the ambiguous ending just added to a sour taste the story left.

Tremendous story, as good as anything the magazine has done in years.

Pykk, great great point on Walser:

those expressions of exuberance seem to be very much acted — he lets you know, by taking things too far, by being too humble, too nice, that this is not a writer writing unconsciously, it’s a writer performing his writing, very self-consciously, for an audience [. . .]

I agree. My experience with that is in The Tanners when the main character was one extreme and then the other, and you had to wonder just where he really sat, because the two extremes were obviously too extreme. That said, in the early pieces in this collection, where it seems very autobiographical, he does have that same extreme vivacity. In The Walk he seems almost to be running from some dark demon, or life itself is that dark demon, and certainly there’s the sense that the animated greetings are compensating for something.

“Yet many other sights were in store for them, a farmer plowing, for instance, and next to him a country manor of townlike appearance, over which a snail was strolling on some errand or other, if to speak of a stroll can be justified here. A robed rider rode on his buoyant horse out of a suggestive thicket, evidently on a mission, and a piece of rope, or string, was lying on a bench. The bench was absorbed in the expectation of being sat on. To enumerate every concrete thing in the world would exhaust me, and the reader too, so I shall confine myself and wish the couple a safe return home and a cornucopia of delights on their life’s way. All around they looked, were interested in a variety of things, took careful note of some, including an elephant, a dove, and a snake.”

Then of course I slid into memories of past “loves” (divorced at 34, never re-married)
and the wonderful ladies that moved in and out of my life and the dumb, dumb things I did and thought….no, matter I “see” them as slowly being more and more happy and unguarded and…well, anyway…thaks Maile!

Onward.