Just Stalin' Around: Day 11, and 22,036 Words

I couldn't have gotten through today's writing session without the help of everyone in the WhatsApp group. Seriously, where were we before the WhatsApp group?! Angela, if you are at all interested in understanding what some of these things are all about, there is room for you in the group :)

First, a short passage that incorporates some of yesterday's discussion:

“Is it okay if I meet you there?” Pickles asked. “I just bought some signs that I want to put up around my office. Don’t worry, I’m not just Stalin for time.”

The look on Oliver’s face could have easily given one the impression that he had swallowed an entire hoard of flies. The statement was as nonsensical as it was out of place in the context of the conversation.

They both acquiesced, albeit with considerable confusion, and watched him as he took out two small painted wooden signs. The first read, “Dad is a son’s first hero, and a daughter’s first love,” with a picture of a baseball glove and ballerina shoes. This sign would come in handy in case anyone unfamiliar with Western gender norms showed up and wanted a lesson on patriarchal values. The writing was also in comic sans, which would also serve as a succinct summary of what terrible taste looks like. The second one read, “My greatest blessings call me Mom.” It was scrawled in childish print, as if a child had printed it. This did not make sense as it was obviously written from the mom’s perspective.

“I didn’t know you had kids, brian,” Nora said.

“I don’t.”

Nora and Oliver were at a loss of what to say in response, so they wordlessly slunk out of his office.

This is an excerpt where Nora and Oliver converse on the way to the audition at Jackie's Place for the William Wandstein character. I totally failed at having them argue with each other the way that the characters are supposed to, but I guess I got tired of that. Not to mention that meeting my word count is basically the only goal for the day.

“Can I ask you some questions, or is this a one-way interrogation?” Oliver asked defensively.
“Interrogations, by their nature, tend to be pretty one-sided.”

“I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!”

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Except Jews, perhaps, who were pretty used to getting kicked out of countries and being persecuted by that point.”

Oliver nodded approvingly.

“Has your sister had any…misadventures when it comes to love, by any chance?”

“Did you and brian j. Pickles take something together without telling me? What is going on here?”

“Just making conversation,” Nora said as innocently as possible.

“This is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had. Well, aside from that conversation that we had with brian j. Pickles. So, this is the weirdest conversation I’ve had in the last ten minutes.”

“I know when to back off,” Nora said.

“Unlike the Spanish Inquisition,” they both said at the same time.

“What was your inspiration for Pride and Prejuwitch?” Oliver asked.

Nora looked at him for a moment.

“I thought that you weren’t interested in my book.”

“I have been told by Noah and others that I tend to lean on the judgmental side, to the point of unpleasantness.”

The joke that Nora could make was far too obvious. She just let it hang in the air.

“I must have read Pride and Prejudice ten times as a girl. And I also know a lot of other women who have done the same thing. There is something so brilliant about this story, where people are not who they appear to be and a mystery slowly unravels over hundreds of pages of satire about the British landed gentry in the 18th century. Austen has so much to say about the unfairness of the caste system, and how it leaves women in particular vulnerable if they fail to marry someone with money. It’s a love story first and foremost, I would say, and there is so much to enjoy about the relatable heroine getting the man of her dreams who she previously loathed.” Nora hoped that Oliver wasn’t growing suspicious about the similarities between their encounters and what she was describing.

“One thing that is so interesting about it, though, is how she turns the idea that caring about finding a husband is for silly women on its head,” she continued. “Trying to get a husband was a necessity for the main characters because of their family’s financial situation, and even though it gets treated flippantly by some men in the novel, they are the ones who are treated as the problem, rather than the women focused on marriage.”

Oliver was silent for a moment, taking in what she had said.

“I wanted to live in that world. Not in a literal sense, obviously, since it seems like women were pretty bored then. They mostly just went to different places in the countryside for months at a time, sewing and drawing and playing the pianoforte. But a world where Elizabeth earns the love of the brooding Mr. Darcy through wit, turns him down because she believes him to be a scoundrel, but comes to love him after she realizes that her assessment was based on false information and he goes to great lengths to show his love for her? It’s beautiful every way that it can be written.

“And, if I’m being honest, I just love writing assholes. I adore writing the scenes where Mr. Darcy is dismissive and arrogant, just as much as I love revealing what a scoundrel George Wickham is. I suppose I should ask, have you even read it?” Nora asked. “This wouldn’t have made any sense at all if not.”

“I haven’t,” he hesitantly replied, taking in Nora’s eye roll. “My sister has reproached me about that as well.”

“I guess I’m not surprised,” Nora replied, resigned. “I know a lot of men who are well-read, who have read all of the classics—Dickens, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Conan Doyle—but didn’t seem to get around to Austen. I’m not saying that there is something notable that differentiates Austen from these authors, but I’m also not saying that there isn’t anything.”

“I had read every single one of those authors by the age of twenty. I take your point.”

“Why?” Nora squeaked.

“What do you mean, why?”

“I mean, I just called you sexist, and you said, ‘I take your point.’ I suppose there is a first time for everything.”

“When a good point is made, I like to think that I can appreciate it, even if it contradicts the image I have of myself as someone who isn’t a sexist jerk.”

“Well I’m pleased to see that you are open to addressing reality,” Nora chided, partially joking but also not. She wasn’t willing to let go of the sexist undertones of their previous encounters.

“Tell me about Portman’s Complaint,” Nora said to change the topic. “How did that happen?”

“It took me about ten years to write it,” Oliver admitted. “I started writing it while I was at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.”

Of course, Nora thought to herself. Zoe had mentioned that he had completed that program.

“It was a really weird time in my life. I was drinking a lot of black coffee in coffee shops at midnight. The person who I thought was the love of my life broke up with me suddenly because they had been cheating on me. Angst and alienation were new feelings for me, and I thought that I was the most profound person in the world as I tried to explore it and turn it into art. It turns out that it was mostly bad art, and later in those ten years I had to fix a lot of it.”

“I can relate,” Nora laughed. “I have definitely made some choices with my writing that I wish I could take back.”

They passed the grand opening of the Kevin Smith Jorts Emporium, in Mirvish Village where the old Honest Ed’s discount store used to be. While Nora had been sad to see the old landmark discount store go, this was probably the only thing that could have opened in its place that would satisfy her. There was a lengthy line going around the block full of excited belt-wearers who were eager to smartly pair their belts from the 24-Hour Belt Emporium with a pair of jorts. Nora looked on approvingly as a man who was for some reason wearing a cape with jorts shouted to a store employee, “Move the jorts closer to the window!”

“It was also the first time that I was living in a city where I felt self-conscious about being Jewish, since there aren’t really any Jews in Iowa,” Oliver continued. “As you can tell, I have been inspired by Philip Roth and I wanted to turn those feelings into a book.”

“Is it worth me pointing out that when you base your work on Philip Roth it’s an homage, but when I do it with Jane Austen it’s fan fiction?”

“If I’m not mistaken, you already have.”

Nora had already had more successful interactions with this man today than she had in the past few weeks combined. Would it possible for her to just bypass all of those months of anguish and wandering through fields and just jump to the end of Pride and Prejudice? Past the Collinses and Wickhams and Colonel Fitzwilliams, past the arguments about Jane and accomplished women, to where she admired and loved Mr. Darcy, and he admired and loved her back?

Nora would later look back on this moment and realize how incredibly naïve she was.

Something big is going to happen and I mostly don't know what it is!