Meme scheme

Isabella Snow tagged me with this meme business that's done the rounds in the land of bloggery like a persistent case of the clap.

The nearest book to hand (at the time of my finding out about getting tagged) with more than 123 pages in it is The Story of O, which has been lying on top of a stack of CDs for a couple of weeks. On top of it is something much less risque, weighing in at a measly 118 pages. This is fortunate for my reputation, because the shorter book is about vegetable gardening, and had it been a few pages longer, you might well get a few choice sentences about getting rid of slugs. Instead we get these 3 sentences, as requested:

"Once you have brought her there, the matter will be completely out of your hands, and anyway, if she wants to leave she can leave. Come along now."

He had gotten suddenly to his feet, leaving the money for the bill on the table.

And...? So what? Somehow I don't have the heart to make anything of this incidental transition in Reage's glorious, dreamlike story. It's not an accident that this book was sitting so close to my desk - I refer back to it often, sometimes just to help me think.

But it's not the book - the one that made me want to sit in the dark late at night and type rude things into my computer. So, instead of reproducing this meme in a reckless bout of unprotected tagging, I'll just recommend to you Nicholson Baker's The Fermata. It's a book about the depth-charge power of erotic writing, about the sensuous joy of crude, earthy language. It made me want to write; it still makes me want to write. Pass it on.