"so kind that no-one understood how he could be such a good manager", sprang out at me as one of those strange comments that I did not understand the context of - other than, of course, his supply of a room for Florentino. There is a caveat: ",at least it seemed so to Florentino", but it is not pursued further. After this long in narrative time, short in pages courtship, the discovery of a letter, the expulsions of girl and aunt from school and home are almost matter of fact - now we think, now matters have come to a head. I read this last part late last night, and am having to go back to it to remind me of what was happening, because there are little asides, glimpses into the future that you can forget if you don't read with attention. Like the woman who cleans up all the detritus ( a marvelous (is that the right word?) list in its own right) of the brothel, and begins to masturbate Florentino, who only stops her after she has undone the buttons of his trousers, but stops her nonetheless, despite allowing himself to feel the warmth of her hand upon his bare stomach. Another life, compressed into few pages, and then, presumably forgotten for the rest of the book - or maybe not?
I'm contrasting all this, in some heady everyday mixture of images, thoughts and feelings with Breaking Bad and Lost in Austen, and then of course, gradually remembering Pride & Prejudice proper, that I will have to reread again, just so that I get all the references.
And I've sent off a shortened version of the Travelogue of the Beautiful & the Damned, renamed the Travelogue of the Damned & the Redeemed to Rattletales, have cut and cut to bring out a finished piece that still has its own internal pace and logic, but is under 2000 words. I think it works.
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