"Esther M. Friesner - Jesus at Bat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

ESTHER M. FRIESNER

JESUS AT THE BAT

PHILIP ROTH HAD ALREADY written The Great American Novel; Victor Harris was
screwed. If you're going to be successful with the writing thing you have to
write about what you know, and the only thing Victor Harris really knew was
baseball. (He thought he knew sex, but that's another story.) The only
question
remaining was: How much longer would he be able to keep up the sweet,
unstressful position of sensitive, creative, Aspiring-Author/ Househusband
(without actually becoming Published Author/Househusband) before Barb, his
wife,
caught wise?

He kept a copy of Stephen King's Playboy interview prominently displayed in
the
small basement cubby that was his "office," the better to remind Barb of at
least one loyal lady who'd held down a decidedly unfun job (Dunkin' Donuts)
while hubby mud-wrestled with the Muse until he hit pay dirt. Stand by your
man,
it seemed to say, and soon you shall limo beside him. Cast your sugar crullers
upon the waters and they shall be returned unto you an hundredfold as caviar.
But the interview was curling with age faster than Victor's first rejection
slip
(also prominently displayed: it was from the New Yorker and had the
distinction
of sporting an actual, human, hand-written note of comment scrawled in the
margin, viz.: "Sorry." Whether this referred to the rejecting editor's regrets
or the manuscript's quality was best left nebulous) and Barb was starting to
get
the hard-bitten, narrow look of a ten-year-old facing off against parents who
persist in chirping about Santa. Not good.

So the King interview was a life-vest whose kapok molecules were rapidly
metamorphosing into cesium. Victor told himself that many a good woman of
Barb's
generation would be grateful to have a fulfilling multiphase career as
aesthetician by day, Amway rep by night, but Barb didn't see it that way. Why
didn't she appreciate the stresses of the Art? Why must he cringe each time
she
demanded, "Haven't you sold anything yet?" or "Why don't you go down to Four
Comers Used Cars and see if Jerry'll give you your old job back?" or "Why in
bell did you ever major in English? Everyone around here speaks it already."

Useless to attempt explaining the creative nature to such a scrawny soul.
Futile
to preach the exquisitely painful yet glacial process of inspiration,
motivation, and execution in l'oeuvre Harris to the heathen. None so blind as
they who will not see themselves vacationing in Hawaii this year -- again! --