RESPONSE.
"It's my mother. She's standing in the yard in a cornflower blue dress hanging laundry on the line. She has wooden clothes pegs in her mouth and more in an apron tied around her waist. Her fingers are busy with a sheet. She's singing quietly in Polish.
Flash.
I'm lying on the floor, looking up at the stripper's dangling breasts. Her nipples, brown and the size of silver dollar pancakes, swing in circles--out and around, SLAP. Out and around, SLAP. I feel a pang of excitement, then remorse, and then nausea.
And then I'm...
I'm..."
(next chapter)
"I'm blubbering like the ancient fool I am, that's what."
Although part of this quote is kind of disturbing, this quote has a great significance to the transition Jacob is undergoing after leaving college. He wants to experience new things, but at the same time he feels guilt in going against what his mother would expect of him. He has been living in the moment, and now really wants to go back to his old life. At the end of the quote when Jacob says, "I'm blubbering like the ancient fool I am, that's what," it is the beginning of the next chapter. This book has now been split into two stories, the first about the main character as a young man experiencing new things as a college-run-away, the second about his life in his nineties. Reading the second split part of the book, Jacob can be viewed as a grouchy old man, in great denial, and wishing he could go back. He talks about how he looks nothing like himself anymore. He also fathered five children, is a widower, and now lives in a nursing home with a bunch of old people he doesn't like, and a bunch of nurses he doesn't like either. The second story I predict is just going to be about him at the ending of his life. I also predict it's going to be more about what he believes now and what he is still learning even in his mid nineties.
Flash.
I'm lying on the floor, looking up at the stripper's dangling breasts. Her nipples, brown and the size of silver dollar pancakes, swing in circles--out and around, SLAP. Out and around, SLAP. I feel a pang of excitement, then remorse, and then nausea.
And then I'm...
I'm..."
(next chapter)
"I'm blubbering like the ancient fool I am, that's what."
Although part of this quote is kind of disturbing, this quote has a great significance to the transition Jacob is undergoing after leaving college. He wants to experience new things, but at the same time he feels guilt in going against what his mother would expect of him. He has been living in the moment, and now really wants to go back to his old life. At the end of the quote when Jacob says, "I'm blubbering like the ancient fool I am, that's what," it is the beginning of the next chapter. This book has now been split into two stories, the first about the main character as a young man experiencing new things as a college-run-away, the second about his life in his nineties. Reading the second split part of the book, Jacob can be viewed as a grouchy old man, in great denial, and wishing he could go back. He talks about how he looks nothing like himself anymore. He also fathered five children, is a widower, and now lives in a nursing home with a bunch of old people he doesn't like, and a bunch of nurses he doesn't like either. The second story I predict is just going to be about him at the ending of his life. I also predict it's going to be more about what he believes now and what he is still learning even in his mid nineties.
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