The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [43]
Oh!
That was—
That was—
Do it again.
Oh God, they never told us about this, back in the loaf. Jesus, I’m crumbling all over the place.
I don’t care.
Mnmmmglmph!
Ahhhhh . ..
Warm, drizzling rivulets soak my being; molten, swirling, sun-coloured puddles drench my cracked, scabby and burnt skin—my death so near. Already I can sense teeth coming my way, and yet the fear is gone. I feel free! I feel dirty! I feel submissive! I feel . . .
I feel . . .
I feel . . .
. . . the end.
C+
Bethany, I didn’t totally feel like I was being buttered, like I really was the toast. As a writer, you have to empathize. At Thursday’s workshop, I want you to listen to some of the other butterings that will be read aloud. They’ll give you a better feel on how to connect with your protagonist. I think that, collectively, we will arrive at a satisfying creative solution.
Bethany
Roger,
You’ve missed five days at work now. Why are you skipping work so much? Are you sick? I feel ridiculous leaving correspondence in your basement suite’s mail slot, but I’ve got no intention of knocking on your door. Leaving you this note is the extent of my act of reaching out to you.
My theory is that you’re not sick at all. I think you’re sitting inside your place, getting hosed and cursing the universe, probably because you’re mad at your ex-wife and her lawyer.
I think you’re going through a bad patch, but I also think you’ll be out of it soon, so I’m going to write this and stick it through your door and then not worry about you any more. You’re certainly not missing anything at work, but I did this one freaky thing you might find interesting—and of possible use to you as a novelist.
After going to visit Kyle’s grandmother’s grave, I got to thinking about death more than usual, and I figure that someday you’ll write the words THE END and Glove Pond will be finished. That’s got to be sort of like death, don’t you think? And unlike real life, in a book, you know exactly when the end is going to happen.
And because you know when the end is coming, you’ll maybe feel some sort of pressure near the end, like, Holy shit! This puppy’s going to be finished in maybe five pages! No three pages! Augh! The end is near! The end is near!
And so here’s my idea: I figure that the mental pressure of smashing into a book’s end must squeeze something out of a writer. It must force them to cough up some sort of essential truth, because it’s now or never.
With this in mind, I took the bus to the library and went into the fiction section and got a cart and chose a hundred novels at random from the shelves: potboilers, Nobel Prize winners, sci-fi, romance—everything. And I had a pile of coins and I went and photocopied the last two pages of each book and then I went to a coffee shop and read those hundred last pages looking for a common theme, and you know what? I found one. It’s not in every book, but it’s in most books. It’s this: when a book ends, the characters are often moving either towards or away from a source of light— literally—like carrying a candle into a dark room or running a red light at an intersection or opening curtains or falling into a well or—this list goes on. I circled all the bits about light, and there’s no mistaking it.
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Hope to see you soon, Roger.
Joan
Roger,
You’ve had a week to digest the custody results. I hope you’re over it and not getting all maudlin or shaving your head into a Mohawk or some other crazy shit. I’m writing because of—oh Christ. A few days ago I was in the living room, picking up empty coffee cups, and I looked outside and there was this girl staring at the house—early twen- ties?—one of those Goth kids, pretty in a way, if she’d trowel off all the white junk on her skin. Why do kids do that these days?
I didn’t give it much thought, but an hour later I looked out, and she was still staring. So I opened the door and asked her what she wanted, and she blushed (I’m assuming, beneath all the white junk) and mumbled something and