Real life doesn't have a narrative arc
Feb. 21st, 2019 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beehammerYesterday I wound up with a case of literary whiplash so bad I'm still feeling it.
I was reading an Ask Polly column, as one does, and off on the little sidebar were a few links. Most-viewed stories. It looked like a mix of gossip, literary essay, longform journalism. The things you see in a normal digital clone of New Yorker. One of them was titled "The Mom Who Has Sex With Her Husband Every Night."
Oh, I thought. A short story.
It was odd. The tone was perfect--very The Arrangements--as it explored the narrow confines of an alienated upper-class housewife, but none of the points it was making panned out, or if they did the critique was oblique at best.
I had, of course, missed the tastefully small "Sex Diaries" series breadcrumb at the top of the post. It didn't drop until the end of the--unsatisfying! lacking in denouement! thematically muddied!--entry that this was an actual person's anonymously submitted account of their actual life.
A person had written this about themselves and then sent it in as nonfiction. I'm still seesawing back and forth between "This person submitted a work of fiction in the hopes of getting it published and just lied about it." and "This person. Exists? At least one of them might have genuinely done this?". My brain has fallen into a hole and can't get itself out.
I was reading an Ask Polly column, as one does, and off on the little sidebar were a few links. Most-viewed stories. It looked like a mix of gossip, literary essay, longform journalism. The things you see in a normal digital clone of New Yorker. One of them was titled "The Mom Who Has Sex With Her Husband Every Night."
Oh, I thought. A short story.
It was odd. The tone was perfect--very The Arrangements--as it explored the narrow confines of an alienated upper-class housewife, but none of the points it was making panned out, or if they did the critique was oblique at best.
I had, of course, missed the tastefully small "Sex Diaries" series breadcrumb at the top of the post. It didn't drop until the end of the--unsatisfying! lacking in denouement! thematically muddied!--entry that this was an actual person's anonymously submitted account of their actual life.
A person had written this about themselves and then sent it in as nonfiction. I'm still seesawing back and forth between "This person submitted a work of fiction in the hopes of getting it published and just lied about it." and "This person. Exists? At least one of them might have genuinely done this?". My brain has fallen into a hole and can't get itself out.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 06:54 pm (UTC)