by
Lucia Berlin
inspo/dialogue
Sally Rooney,
Rachel Kushner,
Shirley Hazzard,
Jonathan Franzen,
Jennifer Egan,
Raymond Carver,
Nick Hornby,
Viet Thanh Nguyen,
Annie Proulx
good dialogue, with or without quotation marks
“How come you hit me?” Tim asked softly.
I started to answer him, to say, “Because you were insolent and unkind,” but I saw his smile of contempt as he waited for me to say just that.
“I hit you because I was angry. About Dolores and the rock. Because I felt hurt and foolish.”
His dark eyes searched my face. For an instant the veil was gone.
“I guess we’re even then,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “let’s go to class.”
I walked with Tim down the hall, avoiding the beat of his walk.
Storr: How consciously did you structure this according to psychological or psychoanalytical models, or how much of this was organically coming out of your own experience?
X: It came out of my own development.
STORR: Your own development?
X: Yeah.
Storr: What do you mean by development?
X: Are you familiar with photography, the process of photography?
Storr hesitates and half laughs as he squints at her.
X: You put the photo paper in the developer and what happens?
Storr: What I was asking—
X: What happens, Jerry?
Storr: The photograph develops.
X: Good boy, Frank, good boy. The photo develops. And this is what life is, little Waldo Emerson, little Charlie, darling. You put people in situations and their personality develops. Their little freaky heads.
X lights a cigarette. A long silence.
STORR: I—well, I had one more—
X: Come on, Billy, just go with it, Billy Boy, ask me another smart question of yours. Have a look at your notes, find some genius in there!
this is so funny
[...] we could see a garden with green things the size of baseballs hanging from the vines.
"What's that?" I said.
"How should I know?" she said. "Squash, maybe. I don't have a clue."
"Hey, Fran," I said. "Take it easy."
She didn't say anything. She drew in her lower lip and let it go. She turned off the radio as we got close to the house.
noted for the emotion (petulance, tension) communicated solely through dialogue, not adjectives
After a time, Olla came back with it. I looked at the baby and drew a breath. Olla sat down at the table with the baby. She held it up under it arms so it could stand on her lap and face us. She looked at Fran and then at me. She wasn't blushing now. She waited for one of us to comment.
"Ah!" said Fran.
"What is it?" Olla said quickly.
"Nothing," Fran said. "I thought I saw something at the window. I thought I saw a bat."
"We don't have any bats around here," Olla said.
"Maybe it was a moth," Fran said. "It was something. Well," she said, "isn't that some baby."
obviously ugly baby
Is your dad as handsome as you are? I said
Why, are you thinking about going there? He's very right-wing. I would point out that he's also still married, but when has that stopped you before?
Oh, that's nice. Now who's hostile?
I'm sorry, he said. You're so right, you should seduce my dad.
Do you think I'm his type?
Oh yeah. In the sense that you greatly resemble my mother, anyway.
I started to laugh. It was a sincere laugh but I still wanted to make sure he would hear it.
That's a joke, said Nick. Are you laughing there, or weeping? You don't resemble my mother.
Is your dad actually right-wing or is that a joke too?
Oh no, he's a real wealth creator. Hates women. Absolutely detests the poor. So you can imagine he loves me, his camp actor son.
I was really laughing then. You're not camp, I said. You're aggressively heterosexual. You even have a twenty-one-year-old mistress.
That I think my father would actually approve of. Happily he'll never know.
cute/funny exchange
I looked down at my own hands. Carefully, like I was daring myself, I said: if I lash out at you it's just because you don't seem very vulnerable to it.
He looked at me then. He didn't even laugh, it was just a kind of frowning look, like he thought I was mocking him. Okay, he said. Well. I don't think anyone likes being lashed out at.
But I mean you don't have a vulnerable personality. Like, I find it hard to imagine you trying on clothes. You don't seem to have that relationship with yourself where you look at your reflection wondering if you look good in something. You seem like someone who would find that embarrassing.
Right, he said. I mean, I'm a human being, I try clothes on before I buy them. But I think I understand what you're saying. People do tend to find me kind of cold and like, not very fun.
I was excited that we shared an experience I found so personal, and quickly I said: people find me cold and lacking in fun.
Really? he said. You always seemed charming to me.
I was gripped by a sudden and overwhelming urge to say: I love you, Nick. It wasn't a bad feeling, specifically; it was slightly amusing and crazy, like when you stand up from your chair and suddenly realize how drunk you are. But it was true. I was in love with him.
yikes. relatable
also, nice illustration of inside/outside, being unable to see how someone feels about the other, etc. always alone inside our own heads, with our stupid hangups about how no one else is like us!
I've never worked hard at anything, I said.
That must be why you study English.
Then he said that he was just joking, and actually he had won his school's gold medal for composition. I love poetry, he said. I love Yeats.
Yeah, I said. If there's one thing you can say for fascism, it had some good poets.
He didn't have anything else to say about poetry after that. [...]
rough
She seemed irritable, almost about to express something, but then her eyes became calm and remote.
You think everyone you like is special, she said.
I tried to sit up and the bathtub was hard on my bones.
I'm just a normal person, she said. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they're different from everyone else. You're doing it with Nick, you did it with me once.
No.
She looked up at me , without any cruelty or anger at all, and said: I'm not trying to upset you.
But you are upsetting me, I said.
Well, I'm sorry.
inspo for eve (to neil). because he believes he himself is special, therefore he wouldnt spend time with someone who wasn't also special
Was it not good? I said.
Can we talk?
You used to like it, didn't you?
Can I ask you something? he said. Do you want me to leave her?
I looked at him then. He looked tired, and I could see that he hated everything I was doing to him. My body felt completely disposable, like a placeholder for something more valuable. I fantasized about taking it apart and lining my limbs up side by side to compare them.
No, I said. I don't want that.
I don't know what to do. I've been feeling fucking awful about it. You seem so upset with me and I don't know how I can make you happy.
Well, maybe we shouldn't see each other any more.
Yeah, he said. Okay. I guess you're probably right.
the misunderstanding here is so painful, so brutal, it seeps out of the page like poison
reading someone, concluding the wrong thing (based on fears), then saying something that makes the other person conclude the wrong thing (based on their own fears)...
The restaurants and bars all had miniature Christmas trees and fake sprigs of holly in the windows. A woman went past holding the hand of a tiny blond child who was complaining about the cold.
I waited for you to call me, I said.
Frances, you told me you didn't want to see me any more. I wasn't going to harass you after that.
I stopped randomly outside an off-license, looking at the bottles of Cointreau and Disaronno stacked up in the window like jewels.
love the way she sandwiches the convo in between observations
(ofc, the real revelation here is the miscommunication)