Status Updates From Leaving the Atocha Station

“…in the flattering light of the subjunctive.”

my guy is like the modern tom ripley except he doesn’t actually commit any crimes (yet?) he just goes around lying to people for no reason. but i’m tolerating this better than ripley so far partly because this pov is fascinating & the writing is juicy 😋

“Each member of this shadowy network resented the others, who were irritating reminders that nothing was more American, whatever that means, than fleeing the American, whatever that is, and that their soft version of self-imposed exile was just another of late empire's packaged tours.”

“I just smiled slightly in a way intended to communicate that my own compliment had been mere graciousness and that I in fact believed his writing constituted a new low for his or any language, his or any art.”

“I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed... Even in the most dramatic scenes…what moved me most was less the pathos of the reunion and his passing than the action of prepositions, conjunctions, etc.; the sweep of predication was more compelling than the predicated.”