I just read the short fiction by Elif Batuman in the January
23 New Yorker. I quite liked the story (first generation freshman college
student at Harvard), but two sentences stood out for me. "The cocktail
party was reproduced in miniature in Gary's eyeglasses." And "Such
names were unheard of in New Jersey, where everything was called Ridgefield,
Glen Ridge, Ridgewood, or Woodbridge."
That first
sentence is a transition, from the narrator's surprise to her reply. But I
can't help wondering how the author came up with
that image. "Gary's eyeglasses" play no other role in the story, and
the cocktail party is a cartoon being shown in an art seminar. How long did it
take for Batuman to come up with that image? What other images did she try out?
What made her choose this one over the others? Writers' questions.
The other
sentence just made me laugh. I know two women who once lived in one of those
New Jersey towns, Ridgewood or Ridgefield, I can never remember. They have long
since left, now residents of New York City, where they are much more
comfortable and happy.
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