Distractions

I could not resist the London Review of Books at Borders. I was taken in not so much by the piece on Stephen Spender, but by this lovely sketch on the cover:


pleasant imagery 

Well of course, once I picked it up, I had to read it (good-bye productive afternoon at Borders). I spent far too much time on it, including on the last page with the listings of “personals.” I actually don’t much read personals, but recently I’d looked at those in the New York Review of Books and I was curious how these might be different.

For instance, in the NYRB someone had posted this:

IF LOVE TAKES, we’ll keep one NYC co-op and sell the other to establish a B & B upstate. You’ll garden, I’ll cook, we’ll write more books, play backgammon, embrace each other’s grown children. I’m a woman (62); you’re not.

That is some ad. It seems more of a quest for a lifestyle than for a partner. I wonder if there’s room for his input. Wouldn’t another game do, for instance?

So then there’s the LRB. More sedate perhaps? Well, consider this posting:

Not everyone appearing in this column is a deranged, cross-dressing sociopath. Let me know if you find one and I’ll strangle him with my bra. Man, 56.

Or this:

An inspired calligrapher can create pages of beauty using stick ink, quill, brush, pick-axe, buzz-saw or even strawberry jam. Pangrams of delight, but the worst sex you’ve ever had with a dumpy kibitzer (M, 41)…

Good grief. Suddenly the NYRB “wants to open a B & B” ad is looking like the winner of the lot. I suppose if there’s a guy who’ll go so far as to agree to sell a New York co-op and to dig trenches in some run-down B & B, he wont much mind a game of backgammon now and then, if it’s absolutely essential to her happiness.