If you’re interested in knowing more, here’s a helpful link:

http://www.theliftedbrow.com/?p=242

Proof that I am read by complete strangers

And I don’t even know this person.  Snapped by Susan Clark (whom I do know, and to whom I am grateful) during a trip to Gotham last month.

     Happily, rebuked children now abed don’t have to admit to either category.  According to Wikipedia, a third has arisen: the Ambivert.  The ambivert is not a free-ranging pervert but rather something in between an introvert and an extrovert. Wikipedia asks us to imagine a questionnaire consisting of ten statements with which five people–John, Maria, Marcus, Sarah, and David–must either agree or disagree:

     John and Maria are extroverts. Sarah and David are introverts. (This is according to Wikipedia. I contend that no true introvert, such as David, would agree to agree or disagree with any of these statements, or any statements in general.  It’s none of your damn business.) Marcus is an ambivert.

     He yearns for the spotlight, and why not? Marcus is a whiz at social situations–in truth, he’s the life of any party, just as long as it’s not held on a Friday or Saturday night. Weeknight affairs might attract more people than you’d expect.  Of course, there’d be the usual extroverts, so afraid to be alone that they’ll go anywhere, even some lame Tuesday potluck thing larded with introverts like Sarah and David.  John, a 100% career blowhard, may begin to wonder who the hell this Marcus guy is and why he keeps popping up at odd hours to vie for the center of attention, but he probably won’t notice that Marcus never shows up on weekends, since he’s too busy back-slapping, bloviating, and charging about with the twenty-first century equivalent of a lampshade on his head.  I don’t know what the equivalent is, because I’m an introvert.

     Still there’s more to Marcus than meets the eye.  For instance, he hates to be “where the action is.”  Assuming that the action is apt to manifest on weekends, this might explain why he avoids them, but I’m not sure that’s all there is to it. Marcus may secretly covet the action–to dream of it, in fact–but wherever the action is, there’s John, a legion of Johns, amped up on action, action-happy, pontificating and clowning around and generally filling Marcus with a vicious loathing for humanity.  To compete with John for the action’s hub, no matter how gorgeous the action is, is to admit defeat on some deep level.  Or maybe, like me, Marcus isn’t sure what “action” actually means.

     Another thing: while Marcus enjoys being in the spotlight (so long as “action” is absent), he refuses to draw it to himself, presumably relying upon introverts to do the dirty work for him.  One of the many things the chart doesn’t make clear is how he goes about doing this, since he’s (1) rotten at making friends, and (2) purposely enigmatic in the company of strangers.  Possibilities:

• Bribery.  Marcus pays Sarah and David to hang around with him in an approving way.  This is unlikely, though: it’s more of a John move.  John wouldn’t see anything wrong with it. And a true introvert such as David couldn’t be bought off.
• The recognition of kindred spirits. Introverts sense that for all his low-wattage charm, he’s really one of them. They gaze at him benignly and encourage his wit with restrained, honest laughter. The extroverts just can’t figure him out, and as they pass by on their way to the Next Big Thing, they pause to study him. Who the hell is this guy?

     The unhappiest of the bunch, it turns out, because, just like John, he can’t stand himself, and unlike John, he admits it. Without an audience he falls apart.  He can’t even work effectively unless he’s surrounded by other people. His weekends must be hell.

Lightning sought our mother out, when she was a young girl in Brown County, Indiana. Licked her body up and down, so she said, with a long scratchy cat tongue. She smelled the ozone, which she described as indescribable. “Not a smell at all, really, but a new and horrible sensation of the nose.” We used to beg her to elaborate. She said it didn’t smell like animal, vegetable, or mineral, or anything else in the world. Then how did you know? we asked. “It had,” she tried again, “a tactile pungency. Every hair on my body stood out straight and vibrated. I wanted to drop flat on the ground but I couldn’t move. It licked me like a big cat! Girls, I was an idea in the mind of a charged cloud!”

Then the lightning dismissed her, and demolished a dying elm across the street. “You always look so disappointed,” she’d tell us, when she came to the end of the story. “You wouldn’t be here, you know, if it hadn’t let me go.” But both of us truly were a little sorry she wasn’t struck. It reflected badly on our mother, that she was tasted and found wanting. Fate had jilted her.

“Where would we be?” Abigail always asked, and Mother would answer, variously, In Heaven, In deep space, Nowhere, Who knows?, A twinkle in your father’s eye. When I was twelve, one of the last times we talked about it, I said, “Maybe we’d be an idea in the mind of a charged cloud.” Mother was terribly pleased.

When our mother was petite—in Brown County, Indiana—the lightning had hunted. She had washed the body from top to bottom, in his words, like a large cat râpeuse language. Our mother had felt the smell of ozone, which it described as indescribable. “No smell at all, in fact, but rather a new olfactory sensation, feeling terrible.” Imploring We always develop. She explained that it was neither animal nor vegetable nor mineral nor anything known on earth. So how could you know? ask us. “This smell it and took it, had a hand in both ac and tactile. All the hairs of my body were prepared and shuddered. I wanted to drop flat on the floor, but I was unable to make the slightest gesture. Lightning licked me like a big cat! Girls, I was an idea in the head in a cloud charged with electricity!”

And then the lightning had washed it and eventually destroy an elm half dead on the other side of the street. “You always look so disappointed,” it is sad when arriving at the end of history. “You know, you would not be here if it had not turned away from me.” But it was indeed true that we may regret a little every second it would not have been foudroyée. The fact of being excluded after being tasted seriously tarnishing the image of our mother. Fate was plated. “Where would we be?” Abigail always asked, to which mother responded, depending on the day: “In Heaven,” “In outer space,” “Nowhere,” “Who knows?”, “Light in the eye of your father.” One of the last time we discussed the topic—I was then twelve years—I said: “Perhaps we would gain insight into the mind of a cloud charged with electricity.” Suggestion that rather enormously mother.[from here]

]]> http://www.jincywillett.com/journal/2009/02/02/machine-translation-arguably-improving/feed/ 0 http://www.jincywillett.com/journal/2008/11/06/the-onion-does-it-again/ http://www.jincywillett.com/journal/2008/11/06/the-onion-does-it-again/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:00:54 +0000 Jincy http://www.jincywillett.com/journal/?p=118 Just as theirs was the most appropriate response to 9/11 (sadly, no trace of that brilliant headline remains on the web), they wrote the best 11/4 headline (and article):

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/kobe_bryant_scores_25_in_holy_shit

She was disconsolate. It was inconsolable. For hours she lay face-down on the living room couch, sobbing wildly, angrily brushing off my comforting hand.  Lengthened flat belly on the settee of the living room, it sanglota passionately during hours, pushing back with anger my caresses of comfort. When she became coherent she called herself “a freak, a freak, a freak,” and threatened to run away to a sideshow. When it could be expressed in a coherent way, it qualified “monster, monster, monster” and threatened to go to be given in spectacle in fairs. I told her that indeed, she was a freak, in a positive and glorious sense; that she was unique; that she was different, not in degree but in kind, from any other woman I had ever known, and that therefore she was infinitely precious to me. I say to him that indeed, it was a monster, in a positive and glorious direction; that it was single, different, not in degree but in kind, of all the other women whom I had known; and that, consequently, it was infinitely invaluable for me. She said I was crazy. It answered that I was insane. How can it be crazy, I asked her, to love someone without reservation, just as she is, and to wish for nothing more? “In what is this insane, asked him I, to love somebody without reserve, such as it is, and nothing to wish moreover?” “I don’t know,” she said, “but it is.” “I do not know, but that is.”

Twisted stories or stories to twist laughter, the stories of Jincy Willett stick tenderly to characters délicieusement wobbly. The women are awkward there with the clean direction, the men with the illustrated direction. Useless to specify that as soon as it is a question of going to dance, allure or simply discuss, the catastrophe is never very far.

The author seen by the editor:

Jincy Willett is an author and editor; she lives in San Diego, in California, where, since the republication of Julie and the fair with the illusions, she has more and more evil to remain incognito.

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Part Deux:

Here’s an automatic translation of an ad for the French version of Winner:

 Gloire, Honneur, et Mauvais Temps

Abigail and Dorcas live in Providence (Rhode Island) and are twin. More different one from the other, it does not have there. Abigail is the Gironde, sensual, unsteady, greedy, secretly with the drift; Dorcas is less than pretty, revêche, disgusted by the sex, book (it is a librarian). Abigail will marry, have a girl, will become widowed, take lovers; Dorcas will be desiccated on the spot, handled clearness like a sabre, will be cynical by nature or survival, with the choice. And here is Abigail who convole in second weddings with Conrad Lowes, famous novelist and perverse practitioner; and here is that Dorcas observes the sadomasochistic relations between Conrad and his sister. All will fly in glares, glory and honor, beauty too. And then one day, Abigail will kill Conrad. Its tumultuous life of couple in a book will entrust. Who will have success. That Dorcas will briskly comment on, with compassion, fury and intelligence, carried by the blizzard which blows on Providence.

Biography of the author

Jincy Willett was born in 1946 in Massachusetts. After studies with Brown University, it teaches philosophy and takes part in workshops of writing. It has a son in 1987 and becomes widowed the following year. It joined then its family with San Diego, where it always saw. It publishes Jenny and the jaws of life (1987) who will appear in France under the title the Can-opener (Otherwise, 2004). In 2003, it delivers its first novel, Winner of the National Book Award (this Glory, honor and bad weather that Phébus publishes in January 2007). Jincy Willett is putting the last key at its second novel, The Writing Class. 

IMPASSIONING!!!

lumbers into class five minutes late, dragging, along with her yard-wide butt, a beat-up vinyl briefcase stuffed with old notebooks. A contender once, it’s obvious, she’s got great hair, long and wavy and thick and white gold, but she’s pushing fifty++, pushing two hundred, and she wears polyester fat pants and a big & tall man’s white long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves ragged and rolled up. Here is a woman who does not give a rat’s ass.

She sits down behind a rickety desk in front of the blackboard, upends the briefcase, and spreads out the notebooks and crap in a neat line, like a magician’s row of cards. She’s the teacher. But I knew this. How? Because she’s the only person in the room who isn’t nervous.

Because she’s the Dominant Male.

She looks up and counts us with her eyes. Seven. She heaves herself up on her feet and addresses the whiteboard with a green marker:

FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP

AMY GALLUP

and she follows it up with the numbers of her home phone and cell phone, which if I turned this into a novel or esp a screenplay I’d have to represent as 555-something, which is foolish, which is stupid, but there you are, this is the world we live in, soft and womanish and lowest common D.

I, of course, am not nervous. Yes I am. Why? I’ve done this before. I’m a workshop vet, purple heart and silver cross. I’ve shown my stories to pretentious morons from sea to shining sea. I’ve been encouraged by twinkly grandmas, torn apart by gynecologists, talked down to by insurance salesmen.

Write what you know

The interesting thing about women, they get past a certain age and they might as well be men. The Dominant Male. Title? Idea for story?

Torn apart
by twinkly grandmas
patronized
by gynecologists

Six more trickle in. The Fat Broad looks up with studied disinterest. Yes, STUDIED DISINTEREST. It’s not a CLICHE, because these workshop instructors don’t get paid if they don’t fill their quotas. The quota here is ten; any fewer than that and it’s no go, we get our $$ back, The Fat Broad goes hungry, which would do her a world of good, but never mind. So behind her pleasant, scary face the gears are whirring and grinding. ( I’ve got to keep ten of these people. Not much breathing space. It’s time to go into my dance.)

And will she dance with me? Will she walk across that floor, past the losers and wannabes, the loudmouths, the grandmas, the housewives with a million stories in them, the math teachers whose characters for God’s sake wake them up in the middle of the night, will she pass them all and pick me? And will it be a fun dance? Will she tell me I’m talented and brilliant and that it’s just a matter of time and perseverance, and will she know what the hell she’s talking about and will she have any idea how much fucking time and PERSEVERANCE I’ve put into it already and will she look right at me and lie and will she for christ’s sake help me out or

2 more, more noise in hallway, here comes another, that makes 16, she must be breathing easier, the bitch

OR will she condescend me to fucking death like that pompous twit at Irvine and that pompous twat at Berkeley or look right through me like Professor Twitmore Fucking Twatface in Chi with his Recommended Reading List and his fucking Strunk & White

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

WRITE

The Fat Broad speaks.