The News of the World: Stories by Carlson Ron

Author:Carlson, Ron [Carlson, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780393245417
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1987-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

THE TIME I DIED

I READ a lot. I mean: I read everything. I always have. It used to really drive Grant crazy. My whole side of the bedroom was a hazard: stacks of pamphlets, magazines, papers, paperbacks, and about four dozen hardback books which I received from my book club and the library. But I love to read. Grant would say, “What’s in that damn book, anyway?” But he really didn’t want to know. I know this because several times I answered him. “Honey, this book is about Bud Sackett trying to deliver cattle to Santa Fe …” or “The woman in this article says she lost forty pounds of ugly fat by chewing each bite thirty-one times. …” But before I could finish the explanation, Grant was in the other room cranking the channels like he was trying to start an outboard motor.

I read a lot of trash. I do. I read The Realms of Twilight Tabloid News of the World from cover to cover. I’ve read all the stories about people coming back from the dead, and all twenty-one people have said about the same thing: there’s that white room and some floating and their relatives and most of the time some music. I have also read some fine books, such as Madame Bovary, the biography of Dorothy Kilgallen called Kilgallen, which my book club sent me, and a large book called The Gulag Archipelago, a book which scared the devil out of Grant. “What language are you reading now?” he said.

Maybe I read too much. But I always felt it was better than drinking too much or chasing around. Later, that is what Grant got into. I suspected he was having troubles, and then I found out when he gave me herpes two. It’s a virus. He stopped coming home. I really started reading.

I was reading fourteen hours a day. In one day I read Are You a Genius? Great American Mystery Stories (the whole volume), The Book of Lists II, and Frankenstein, which turned out to be different than I had ever thought. I was during this heavy reading period that Susan, my maid of honor, my best friend from high school, since before high school, called, and that led to how I died and why I’m in the hospital now.

Susan has a great attitude. She got married in high school to Andrew Botts, one of the most popular guys in our class, and then about three years ago, Andrew split. He’s in California now, but Susan never let it get her down. She smiles about him like she knew it all along.

She used to call me up and talk, and then sometimes I’d have her over for dinner with Grant and me. Grant didn’t like her, because he couldn’t figure her out; but it was okay, because he would eat and then go in the other room and crank the channels, and Susan and I would talk for three hours. In fact, I’d rather be with Susan, talking, than alone reading in bed.

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