I love this! The word "cottoned" grabs my attention right away. I would connect this part: "but the liner lays like a blanket, the fit is already loose."
Nice alliteration with cottoned/carefully carved. Then the "l" liner/lays/like/loose, and the "l" sound is carried into the blanket and already.
Thank you so much for all of that! I love the last five sentences of this story also, the way they just break my heart: the bottomless loss. One sentence with two words, and the sentences that precede and follow it expand even as Linda’s world contracts. The drowning of the soul. The chained dog. Such poetry in the words and images. What a great writer!
I agree! Thank you for recommending this story. It is so powerful and so concise because it effectively uses the pool image as a stand-in for the marriage.
It might just be me, but it seems like a metaphor for people’s lives disintegrating, or maybe for society disintegrating. It’s the early 1970s, the party’s over, things are not so great, what now? (The best leaders of a certain generation have all been assassinated.) The fallout from the late 1960’s. So many couples in Updike’s generation (which is also my parent’s generation) are separating, getting divorced. Maybe I also see impending death in it, not only the death of one marriage. All things must pass. Possibly I am reading too much into it, a possible flaw, but that’s how I am wired. I hope this answers your question!
Thank you! I see what you're saying, how the end of something reverberates with everything that will end. The beauty of literature is it opens itself up to multiple interpretations.
Lovely again. Was reading this excerpt from Michael Chabon and I thought you would love the sentences (somewhere between Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace): https://www.npr.org/2010/06/24/113379661/excerpt-manhood-for-amateurs-the-pleasures-and-regrets-of-a-husband-father-and-s
Thank you so much! I can't wait to read this--please keep them coming!
Fantastic. Thank you. I love this imagery.
I cottoned onto the pool's DIY nature: the hole is carefully carved, but the liner lays. Like a blanket, the fit is already loose.
I love this! The word "cottoned" grabs my attention right away. I would connect this part: "but the liner lays like a blanket, the fit is already loose."
Nice alliteration with cottoned/carefully carved. Then the "l" liner/lays/like/loose, and the "l" sound is carried into the blanket and already.
Thank you so much for all of that! I love the last five sentences of this story also, the way they just break my heart: the bottomless loss. One sentence with two words, and the sentences that precede and follow it expand even as Linda’s world contracts. The drowning of the soul. The chained dog. Such poetry in the words and images. What a great writer!
David,
I agree! Thank you for recommending this story. It is so powerful and so concise because it effectively uses the pool image as a stand-in for the marriage.
Yes, and, I feel, as a stand in for all of us.
So glad you like it. I first heard it read on Selected Shorts on NPR maybe 12-15 years ago. I was, as you might imagine, mesmerized.
How so?
It might just be me, but it seems like a metaphor for people’s lives disintegrating, or maybe for society disintegrating. It’s the early 1970s, the party’s over, things are not so great, what now? (The best leaders of a certain generation have all been assassinated.) The fallout from the late 1960’s. So many couples in Updike’s generation (which is also my parent’s generation) are separating, getting divorced. Maybe I also see impending death in it, not only the death of one marriage. All things must pass. Possibly I am reading too much into it, a possible flaw, but that’s how I am wired. I hope this answers your question!
Thank you! I see what you're saying, how the end of something reverberates with everything that will end. The beauty of literature is it opens itself up to multiple interpretations.
So true.