One paragraph

 

INFLUENCE

"The racket, man, America's tongue stuck to your mouth!"

Having only each other coming home and throwing off your coat of 

mail, stoking the millennial fire with your little drum hum valley path he

sang moana Havana heaven cabana -- in the cool nights an evocation of the

moss-grown throttle perched on the equally quantified balustrade. 

"It's a great apartment." Such party language ruptures the glistening

talents Girl's identified and throws her odd ideas on the floor by drink;

she giggles, she absorbs, she has her tassels straightened for the rest of

the week she is mollified.

The first paragraph of Chapter 4 [Trash] of Lisa Samuels' Tender Girl (Dusie, 2015). 

The full title is Tender Girl: A Novel. In a strange kind of way it strikes me as the title of a poem. 

However that may be, I found that when I copied this out, I felt the need to retain the same line breaks as the original. Maybe I noticed that in the printed book the lines are left-justified but not full justified. Also, the paragraph is really three traditional-novel paragraphs jammed together, without spaces between. 

Well, Tender Girl is a story, of sorts. Lisa skirted story in earlier books like Tomorrowland and Anti M. Here she's circling a bit nearer, but not much. At the foot of each page there's a one-line commentary on what's going on (kind of like those side-legends in the Ancient Mariner). The commentary is useful but playful. For this paragraph, the commentary is GIRL RESOLVES SOUNDS AS MUSIC. As you can see, it picks up only one strand of what's happening. 

Girl (the book's shark-human heroine) is moving between various men companions. The book recounts a search for language. But that's enough for now. This post is content to be taken aback by the prospect of these two hundred pages, the intricate artistry of the text.