Exit Ghost: oh yeah, and this

{ Tuesday, February 26, 2008 }

How'd I forget to mention it?

Since I've been reading and thinking about privilege and how it shapes narrative, you'd think it would have been the first thing I told you.

Since I was on the lookout for the word "privilege" anyway, the first time our narrator Mr. Zuckerman used it to contextualize an acquaintance, it glowed off the page as if under a black light.

But here it kept coming, faster and more often the farther I read. It was like one of those cartoon floorboards - step on the loose spot and WHAP! Privilege! And stagger around and the door slams on your nose, BLAP! Privilege! What a word to repeat so many times if you don't mean anything by it.

By the last third of the book it was funny. Not the word or what Mr. Roth meant using it, but how I was physically flinching and ducking at it and STILL getting poked in the eye. I never saw it coming.

Reading as an act of slapstick: as with any pratfall or pie in the face, I feel honored to have been part of the moment.

(Privilege.)

Next week, I promise (and you know who you are I am promising this to), Kavalier and Clay. Thanks for checking in, and cheers!

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