Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "hannibal-lecter"
On the Way to Readercon
You know that scene in the book HANNIBAL--the one Martin Amis so rightly pegged as the exact point where Thomas Harris lost track of the rest of us, because suddenly he assumed we were sympathizing WITH the serial killer?--where Lecter is on a plane, and a single mom sits down in the seat next to him with her kid, and commences continually checking the kid's diaper (ultimately by plunging in a finger)? And we're supposed to be grossed out BY THE MOM?
I...I think I maybe understand that moment a little better now. Or else I've become Lecter. Or...
See, given the nature of my life, the wall-to-wall parenting-teaching-writing-doing, I spend at least twice as long as any plane trip I'm going to take will actually take on picking what I'm going to read on that trip. It's a little, rare ritual. a tiny gift of four or five straight, almost unimaginable hours. A mirage in my world. A treasured one.
Yesterday, on the flight to Readercon, I hadn't even gotten my ripped little backpack open before He came.
Yes, He was...big. Flowed majestically over armrests. But he's allowed. On the other hand, I'd like to have asked him--if, you know, I'd been able to get a word in, at any point--whether he really couldn't feel, didn't notice, that the point of his elbow had found a spot pretty much dead center in my chest, just right of my heart, pinning me upright in my seat as though with the spike of an iron maiden, or just thought that's where elbows belonged.
I'd also brought a wrap for lunch. Tuna, I think. I can't say, because I can't remember, because as He and his elbow were getting themselves settled, he looked down, noted my just unwrapped wrap, and said, "Hey, that looks good, what is it?" And then stuck his finger under the wrappy part, into the tuna, to see.
Then he commenced speaking.
I will not repeat the conversation. Sorry, lecture. I literally am not sure I spoke beyond "Uh, well--" before the elbow issued a warning dig--suggested that I might break the fellow's flow--and silenced me again.
I think my favorite bit was when he leaned over to the guy on the other side of him, who'd been watching the Netherlands-Argentina penalty shootout, and asked the score. The guy glanced up very briefly, answered in German. Lifted his hands in apparent incomprehension.
I guess that guy picked up English during the game, as he was having a lovely phone conversation with his wife at the baggage claim a few hours later. When he saw me staring--rubbing the sore spot in my chest--he gave me a single, sheepish, proud-of-his-not-German-self smile...
I...I think I maybe understand that moment a little better now. Or else I've become Lecter. Or...
See, given the nature of my life, the wall-to-wall parenting-teaching-writing-doing, I spend at least twice as long as any plane trip I'm going to take will actually take on picking what I'm going to read on that trip. It's a little, rare ritual. a tiny gift of four or five straight, almost unimaginable hours. A mirage in my world. A treasured one.
Yesterday, on the flight to Readercon, I hadn't even gotten my ripped little backpack open before He came.
Yes, He was...big. Flowed majestically over armrests. But he's allowed. On the other hand, I'd like to have asked him--if, you know, I'd been able to get a word in, at any point--whether he really couldn't feel, didn't notice, that the point of his elbow had found a spot pretty much dead center in my chest, just right of my heart, pinning me upright in my seat as though with the spike of an iron maiden, or just thought that's where elbows belonged.
I'd also brought a wrap for lunch. Tuna, I think. I can't say, because I can't remember, because as He and his elbow were getting themselves settled, he looked down, noted my just unwrapped wrap, and said, "Hey, that looks good, what is it?" And then stuck his finger under the wrappy part, into the tuna, to see.
Then he commenced speaking.
I will not repeat the conversation. Sorry, lecture. I literally am not sure I spoke beyond "Uh, well--" before the elbow issued a warning dig--suggested that I might break the fellow's flow--and silenced me again.
I think my favorite bit was when he leaned over to the guy on the other side of him, who'd been watching the Netherlands-Argentina penalty shootout, and asked the score. The guy glanced up very briefly, answered in German. Lifted his hands in apparent incomprehension.
I guess that guy picked up English during the game, as he was having a lovely phone conversation with his wife at the baggage claim a few hours later. When he saw me staring--rubbing the sore spot in my chest--he gave me a single, sheepish, proud-of-his-not-German-self smile...
