THE TEXT AND THE BOOK

The text and the book were getting a divorce.

To tell the truth, they couldn't even bear to look at each other anymore.

"I don't know why I ever thought I loved him," the book said. "He took up every little inch of space he could, until I felt I was only there as some sort of horrible platform for his existence!" she told her girlfriend.

"She would close herself off constantly," he told a buddy sitting next to him in a barroom. "Somebody had to fill that space of silence up. And that somebody was me. Now it turns out she preferred silence. Who fucking knew? I would have been happy to leave a page blank wherever she wanted it. If she had only told me. Fuck it. Who cares, right? Let her sit there by herself, all her pages blank."

"Was there another text?" his buddy asked.

"I don't know. She swears no. But sometimes I'd catch a glimpse of intertextuality in the footnotes. Here and there. Ya know what I mean?"

His buddy nodded. He knew exactly what he meant.

"Wait until he finds what it's like out there," she said with transparent vengefulness to her girlfriend. "Let him hook up with a wall, try to pass himself off as still relevant. He has no clue what's out there. Let him pretend he's young, attractive graffiti. Wait til he sees how few heads he turns when he's no longer literary."

"She'll probably go into a tailspin, let any text that looks current into her pages," her husband snickered in the bar. "Let her find out what it's like to have a text lying around in her pages, one that doesn't move units. That can't pay the bills. A real lout of a novel. Or worse: fucking poetry! Let her find out what it's like to be the one who must bring home the bacon. Let her enter the fucking War Zone. Middle-age literary critics lying in wait like starving, anemic lions."

"Well, that's a little harsh buddy. She did keep your home for you. You shouldn't really discount that as work, ya know?" his buddy said.

"What are you? A fucking feminist now? Some sort of fucking materialist-feminist? You watch Oprah too? Get pedicures?"

"No...I'm just saying..." his buddy began but didn't finish. He took a drink from his bottle. And then stole a sidelong glance at his buddy. Making sure they were still cool.

"I need to get some tonight," the text said. "It's getting up to my ears."

His buddy laughed.

"A night when any blank surface will do? I hear ya." His buddy took a swig.

"Thank God we didn't have children!" is all I'm saying, the book said now to her mother on the telephone. There had been talk about a sequel. Or a trilogy. "You have absolutely no idea how frickin grateful I am that he was shooting blanks the whole time."

"The reviewers were fucking right!" said her mother. "And you will love again. Trust me, honey, it's going to be like being reborn. And I will be right there insisting you wear white for your next marriage. I won't hear any different. Don't think your father showed up like a Best Seller the moment my pages were ripe and nubile for printing. I spared you the details of my experience with potboilers, but I think it's time we had a little heart to heart. You're ready."


MORAL: A BON RAT, BON CHAT. (The French sometimes get things reversed.)