All Amanda Can Jet

I wrote something for The Hairpin.

The Book: Learn Descriptive Cataloging, by Mary Mortimer.

The Man: Early 20s, nice smile, gray sweatpants, red shirt.

I’m riding the recumbent bicycle, trying to pay attention to how exactly the Library of Congress creates copy catalogs. I’m also entirely alone in the bike area, because it’s only the early afternoon. This guy saunters over, looks me up and down and settles into the bike next to me. I flip a page, there’s silence for a few moments, and then — “How many calories do these burn?” I look up. “Oh, I’m not really sure, I think it says on there.” I look down. Flip a page. “What’re you reading?” “Uh, it’s a book about library cataloging, for grad school.” I show him the cover and go back to my reading. “Why’re you reading that? That sounds boring.” “Yeah, it’s pretty boring, it’s for school.” “Hm. I wouldn’t read that for school.” I’m unsure what to say so I nod and keep reading. He gets up and leaves after a minute.

Me: Can I leave a message for someone regarding the classes?

Cute gay guy working at front desk: Of course! Let me get you a paper. [hands me paper, and a pen] Good things, I hope.

Me: Well, sort of. I want to complain about one teacher and praise another.

Him: Ohhh. I see.

I write for a few moments.

Him: [leans in, whispers] Be nice.

Me: What? I’m not going to be a bitch. It’s just that when one person is exceptional at their job, it calls into question the work of those who aren’t as good.

Him: Yeah, just don’t write ‘I HATE HER!’ ‘cause she’ll get into trouble.

Me: I don’t hate her. I don’t have any feelings about her. But she isn’t very good at her job. She wants everyone to like her so much that it’s extremely uncomfortable to even look at her. Her constant need for validation comes across as desperation of the most palpable sort, and it verges on disturbing.

Him: I’ll pass this right along to my manager.

Me: Yeah, it’s mostly incoherent. Feel free to read it.

“‘Sometimes he takes that hour just reading, we’ll get out of bed and just read aloud to each other. He has so many books. Like, just books and books and books and books.’”

-Jessica Simpson on her new fiancee.

Giving a building a good skeptical kick, as you might the tires of an old car, serves as a larger metaphor for Huxtable’s critical tack. Her brand of journalism – one she once summarized as a persistent search for “quality, responsibility, and good sense” – asks not so much “Is this cool?” as “Is this necessary?” It’s an ethos Huxtable feels is increasingly lost in current criticism.

                 -Aaron Britt, [emphasis mine] Dwell Magazine, March 2011

“Did you read Beryl Markham’s book, West With The Night?… She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers … it really is a bloody wonderful book.”

Afton: I want to have a kid like they do in the movies from the ’50s. After a few people run around getting towels and hot water, I lie around in my bed in a beautiful white gown while some one else mostly takes care of my child, also in a lovely white gown of some sort.

Amanda: and then this rosy cheeked youngin is presented to his father who’s been lounging outside in a blue suit, smoking a pipe, and maybe he comes in in like a day and says, “well done, Betts! A son, I have a boy!”

Afton: That’s how I’m gonna have my kids.

Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis

The Man Whom Women Loved: The Life of Bror Blixen by Ulf Aschan

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

Conversations with Flannery O’Connor by Rosemary Magee

Between Two Seas by Carmine Abate