
XRAY SPECS: Chafed Elbows (1966)
Isn’t that what every artist wants? To do the thing in the way they want to do it and have everyone they care about want that for them, too?

Isn’t that what every artist wants? To do the thing in the way they want to do it and have everyone they care about want that for them, too?

The more of Elaine he had had, the less it felt like she belonged to him at all. Besides, he said, I have learned that even possession is a kind of disappointment.

A shocked reaction to this work really just makes my point about why I wrote this novel. It’s all so obvious, and I’m bored to death.

The rocking horse was hideous, though. It was the eyes. Wide open and vacant, set too high on that giant head. The foot-pegs had snapped off on Black Friday.

I find that autofiction writers tend to have great senses of humor, because without one they’d be too horrified to tell the truth.

While we wait for the fruits of deliberation, my mother asks me to get personal. I tell her I’ve been nightmaring about getting kidnapped and beating the captor up.

You wouldn’t go back in time, but you would stay forever in the present moment. At least that’s how the dream went.

She looked at that tree as if it were a murderer, and with hate in her eyes told me that in her dreams every night she sneaks over with an axe and chops it down with two strokes.

Christina was the John Swartzwelder and Kurt Vonnegut of this book – all of the funniest scenes and lines with the best comedic timing are hers.

At night I dreamt of pelicans strung up in the oaks by their beaks, choked in Spanish moss, the storm’s winds blowing them down. Cars sliding through gasoline, smearing their bodies into the street.