A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore

I go through phases of reading--phases where nonfiction seems more real to me and more necessary, and so I just read nonfiction.  I was in a nonfiction phase in graduate school and in the five years (roughly)  following that time.  When my son was born I found it hard to get much reading done at all as I went to the studio while he slept during the day, and at night my head was too tired to do much more than watch old episodes of Lost or The Wire with the help of netflix.

Of late I have been in a fiction reading phase.  For now memoir or actually-happened fact does not call me.  Invention and story are the draw, as I want to settle my painter's imagination in my own work or in the worlds created by writers.  I don't leave my own space when I travel to a work of fiction that holds me, but instead step along an ancillary path that gives me more of the information I crave.  Last night I finished reading Lorrie Moore's A Gate At The Stairs, a book narrated by one of the most captivating, resonant, humorous and smart female characters in recent fiction.  Why are there not more of these in contemporary fiction?  Or maybe I just need to read more.  Here's an excerpt from the book that reminded me of many a late night with book in hand in an old home without air conditioning:

Every night I lay in my bed, staying up past ten, reading.  The light from my lamp attracted insects through the holes in one of the screens, and by eleven I would look up at the ceiling and it would be crawling with bugs, small, medium, and large, light and dark, all collecting up there in omincous flocks as if awaiting Tippi Hedren.  Once, a leggy winged albino think landed on my book, and its oddness fascinated me, though I soon slammed it between the pages.  Once I awoke in the middle of the night and could see that through the crack in the door and the badly settled frame there was a long sliver of light from the hallway, and fireflies could enter the room; they sparkled in and out like fairies, as if the door were nothing at all, as if there were no separating this room from any other space.  They were like visions, really, but ones I'd not had as a child, when I'd slept through the night with a depth and stillness that was no longer possible.   
p. 290 from A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore 

I've been away from home in the last week and will be gone this coming week too, so I will not be posting much, if at all, until the start of August.  I am very fortunate to be heading to a retreat centered on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.

From Herta Muller's The Appointment

Quick as a handful of flour hitting a windowpane, the bathroom light cast a face into the mirror, a face with froggy creases over its eyes which looked like me.  I held my hands in the water, it felt warm; on my face it felt cold.  Brushing my teeth, I look up and see toothpaste come frothing out of my eyes--it's not the first time I've had this happen.  I feel nauseous, I spit out what's in my mouth and stop.  Ever since my first summons, I've begun to distinguish between life and fortune.  When I go in for questioning, I have no choice but to leave my good fortune at home.  I leave it in Paul's face, around his eyes, his mouth, amid his stubble.  If it could be seen, you'd see it on his face like a transparent glaze.  (p. 15)

I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind.

Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time.  There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island; for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.  It would be an easy map if that were all; but there is also the first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needlework, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling your tooth out yourself, and so on; and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

from the first pages of Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

and she would first be smiling the big closed-mouth smile she smiles, then that big

small-toothed smile she smiles, then she would be laughing, someone would say something funny and she would laugh that way she laughed, silently, crazily, out of breath, it was so funny whatever someone said, who said that funny thing?  Who?  Maybe I said it, maybe I said it and made her laugh like sometimes we could, really bust her up, so that it was just killing her, this laughing, her eyes struggling to stay open, to see, because when she laughed, my mom almost immediately teared up, and had to wipe her tears with the side of her forefinger--Oh that's when you knew you had really said something funny, when she would be crying, wiping her eyes, you had her then, you really wanted that, there was no greater thing, no achievement so great, so stirring, you tried to play it casual, deadpan, but you were so proud and thrilled, watching her, you wanted her first to say Stop! Stop! because you were so funny but you would continue because you wanted her to laugh more, to really laugh until she would have to rest, to half collapse on the kitchen counter while you were sitting at the table after school, Oh you're awful! she would say.  Stop!  Oh but to see her laugh you would say anything, and she so loved a good laugh at someone's expense--Bill's, Beth's, yours, her own, and at that moment everything would be wiped away, all the times you feared her or wanted to run away, or wondered how she lived with him, protected him, you wanted only her laughing like she did when she was on the phone with her friends--Yes! she would shriek, Yes! Exactly!--then afterward she would sigh, breathing heavily and say Oh that's funny.  God, that's funny.
from pages 346-347 of Dave Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius