I started reading the _____ book while waiting for the
Downey Street bus. I bought it an hour before at Kenn's
Bookstore which was, at that time, housed in the small
mall off Hickeeen Street, an short walk to the bus stop
station where I started reading the __________ book.
Then the bus came.
Settled in a seat by the window, I started looking out
the window, and for a time I forgot about the _______
book. Then, after I had looked out the window for three
blocks, I thought about the ______ book and picked up
where I had left off when the bus stopped to pick me up.
Reading, I thought,
"This is going to be a long ordeal."
There was no plot, and the writing, while dramatic and
evocative, didn't yield itself easily to much meaning.
This looked like one of those books that makes sense
locally, but certainly not globally. And I wasn't too
much in the mood for three hundred pages of random ram-
bling, even if it was lively and firey rambling.
However, after I gave up my expectations of plot, I got
into the book and enjoyed it. The author tells the story
of Chris Jaynes, a man who hangs around Paris, starves,
mooches off people, and has lots of sex with prostitutes
and other women he can take advantage of.
His friends are all either marks or fellow leeches. And
that's pretty much it. The thing to get used to, to make
it make sense, is that the book proceeds forwards in
time, but the jumps between paragraphs are unpredic-
table.
There are no "Three years later"s to guide you along. You
end a paragraph about one living situation, and the next
one takes place two months later.
The author doesn't just move the "story" along two months--
he moves to what he's thinking about right then two months
later.
Understand this secret and the ______ book becomes much
more readable. I finished reading the ______ book on a
trip to New York, staying with my brother, his lady, and
his two daughters, one of which I 'thought' I was in love
with even though she was only 17 years old; and then on
... to visiting with my ex-fiance again; and then spend-
ing a few days with a beautiful woman who lives in Duluth,
and then leaving Canada to spend a few days with the ex-
fiance again along with our friends from college and pals
I used to play touch football with when I lived with my
uncle on Cape Cod.
Yes, by then I had finished the ______ book, at last.
After I finished the ______ book, I wound up in a blur of
odd and weird emotions and sexual tensions, unrelieved due
to a committed relationship with a Tahitian girl, thou-
sands of miles away.
Reading the ______ book gave me an even more surreal
edge to my life, helping me to resist the urge to bury
my feelings under a thick layer of intellectual detach-
ment.
I let jealousy, happiness, lust and resentment take their
turns with me rapid fire, not trying to stop or encourage
them, yet not acting on them either. To be true to the
messages I received from the ______ book, I should
have ditched all my female pals to catch one of the last
remaining strip-shows at Times Square and then nothing
more than drink coffee and share late night talk with a
clerk in some cheap hotel.
But I'm not Chris Jaynes; I am Hayseed Huck.
I'm glad I read this book, and I will never think about
girls the same way again. But I can't help but be a lit-
tle depressed. After reading this author's exciting prose,
how can I call myself a writer?
After reading of Jaynes's adventures, how can I call my-
self a man?
Hayseed Huck
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