Read this book.
From the intro: "Narrators of first-person claptrap like this often greet the reader at the door with moist hugs and compliant kisses. I won't. I will not endear myself. I won't put on airs. I am not that pleasant. The older I get the less pleasant I am."
I love it.
Chapter one begins:
"'You're too fat to fuck.'
I was eating dinner in a cafe with a fellow I liked. I shouldn't have liked him but I did....
"I was eating a cheeseburger, holding the assemblage in both hands. Crisp around the edges, the bun was warm and squishy, squeezed between fingers and thumbs. It had been fried on the griddle, had soaked up meat grease, and my hands were getting greasy.
"I was glad that the meat and the bun and cheese and lettuce and dill pickle and mustard and mayonnaise and chopped onion were inside my mouth. I was glad that I was chewing and that my mouth was full. The chewing and the taste of the cheeseburger mush that I pushed against the roof of my mouth with my tongue made me dreamy and forgetful.
"I wanted to forget. I wanted to forget what the fellow sitting across from me had just said. He was drunk when he said it, but still, he said it and he meant it."
It goes on from there and it just keeps getting better and better.
The Italian for today is che deliziosa prosa. It means: what delicious prose!
11:01:05 AM 
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