Check out the following passage from Shoplifting from American Apparel‘s opening Gmail chat conversation between Sam and Luis:
“When Marissa and I fight we lay on our sides for an hour in different rooms and wait for the person that was mean to come into the room and say they are sorry, then we existentially attack each other in very quiet voices,” said Luis.
Jonathan Franzen, hip but unhip enough that he was forced to reveal to the handlers of the State of New York that he did not live in Brooklyn, wrote in his 2006 memoir The Discomfort Zone:
We reacted to minor fights at breakfast by lying facedown on the floor of our respective rooms for hours at a time, waiting for acknowledgment of our pain.
Actually, re-reading this passage in the Franzen book, which I remembered only imperfectly, brings up more similarities. Franzen and his wife are losing it after spending too much time isolated together; Sam and Luis talk about how they “go inside ourselves, and play around inside our own mental illness.” And both are really hard to read, and that sure isn’t because I’m not sympathizing.
Recent Comments