09.12.13

in the cemetery

   I'm sitting next to Evelyn, the woman with the stomach cramps. "My heart's racing to see if she calls out my name," she whispers. Evelyn has come on this cruise specifically to ask Sylvia about her stomach pain.
   "Evelyn," Sylvia calls.
   She walks up to the microphone.
   "Uh," she stammers.
   "Speak up, honey," Sylvia says.
   "Um," Evelyn says.
   Sylvia looks impatient.
   "I—uh—think I've got a poltergeist in my house because things keep moving in my dishwasher," Evelyn says quickly. "Can you tell me the poltergeist's name?"
   "The poltergeist is an older relative called Doug," Sylvia says.
   "Thank you, Sylvia," Evelyn says.
   She sits back down. I look at her. She shrugs.

(jon ronson, from lost at sea: the jon ronson mysteries)

8 comments:

cara said...

One of the best books I've read in years.

lauren said...

his taste in subjects is impeccable, but his abrupt endings keep throwing me. because i'm used to magazine-length articles rather than newspaper ones? is it a UK style thing? i'm wondering if this is why my british film tutor let me get away with conclusionless essays for a whole quarter.

cara said...

Hmmm. Interesting. A (british) friend mentioned this when I sent her a link to the piece about NLP but I hadn't noticed it before she mentioned it. I liked it, I liked that he gave me lots of facts and thoughts but didn't tell me what to do with them, I spent a lot longer thinking about what I'd read after I'd read it than I think I would have done if he tended towards conclusions.



cara said...

(I don't think it's necessarily a UK thing so much as a Jon Ronson thing. Have you read The Psychopath Test? I'm not sure that even though it is a whole book it has any more of a conclusion.)

lauren said...

this is the first work of his that i've read, as far as i know. i read so few newspaper articles these days (shame on me) that i don't have much of a guess on the paper v. 'zine question, but i'll trust you on the UK thing. i don't know that i want big world-tidying conclusions to his essays, exactly - informative rather than persuasive is more than fine - i'm just surprised at how...informally?...these end. they do feel a bit unfinished to me sometimes.

lauren said...

I liked that he gave me lots of facts and thoughts but didn't tell me what to do with them

actually, that's another thing - it's not that he doesn't tell you what to think, it's just that he doesn't do it at the end. he does seem to interject opinion and/or judge his subjects pretty early sometimes, to the point where it seems like it must be noticeable to them, even. for straight-up reporting, that was unusual to me.

cara said...

That's true, he is very opinionated a lot of the time. There is something about his writing though that didn't make me feel like I was being persuaded to have the same opinion and often that the piece was about him and what he thought rather than straight-up reporting. But it's been such a long time since I read it that I don't feel entirely confident in my remembering of what I thought about it. I do remember that I thoroughly enjoyed it though. I'd like to hear what you think of The Psychopath Test. Again, I loved it and told everyone that I know to read it right now. To my knowledge no one listened, but I keep hoping.

lauren said...

i can do that!