twenty-two before 22
i’m reading 22 books before my 22nd birthday—in three monthsArchive for April, 2007
#2 of 22
‘Night, Mother (1983)
by Marsha Norman
Drama, One Act
89 pages
Beginning:
Mama: Jessie, it’s the last snowball, sugar. Put it on the list, O.K.? And we’re out of Hershey bars, and where’s that peanut brittle? I think maybe Dawson’s been in it again. I ought to put a big mirror on the refrigerator door. That’ll keep him out of my treats, won’t it? You hear me, honey? I hate it when the coconut falls off. Why does the coconut fall off?
Somewhere in the middle:
Mama: Jessie, how can I live here without you? I need you! You’re supposed to tell me to stand up straight and say how nice I look in my pink dress, and drink my milk. You’re supposed to go around and lock up so I know we’re safe for the night, and when I wake up, you’re supposed to be out there making the coffee and watching me get older every day, and you’re supposed to help me die when the time comes. I can’t do that by myself, Jessie. I’m not like you, Jessie. I hate the quiet and I don’t want to die and I don’t want you to go, Jessie. How can I—How can I get up every day knowing you had to kill yourself to make it stop hurting and I was here all the time and I never even saw it. And then you gave me this chance to make it better, convince you to stay alive, and I couldn’t do it. How can I live with myself after this, Jessie?
End:
Mama: Loretta, let me talk to Dawson, honey.
#1 of 22
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)
by D.H. Lawrence
Novel
321 pages
Beginning:
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habits, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen,” (3).
Somewhere in the middle:
“It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises grasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, we there is true air. I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish,” (285).
End:
“But a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says goodnight to lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart,” (324).
