
I present to you the first two sentences of the short story “The Monologue,” by Simone de Beauvoir:
“The silly bastards! I drew the curtains they keep the stupid colored lanterns and the fairy lights on the Christmas trees out of the apartment but the noises come in through the walls.”
So this, the reader warmly thinks, is a Christmas story!
Um, rather, coldly, you say?
Be that as it may, this Christmas story, true to its title, is, definitively, a monologue. But rant is the more appropriate word. (I don’t know the story’s title in the original French. But let’s not go down that rabbit hole today, as we did last time.)
The female ranter begins by inveighing against some men who, apparently, have the gall to make merry, during the holiday season, outside her apartment. And then comes one of my favorite sentences in the entire short story collection (titled The Woman Destroyed):
“The swine they are shattering my eardrums I’ve no more plugs the last two are jamming the telephone bell they are utterly repulsive yet still I’d rather have my ears shattered than hear the telephone not ringing.”
Ha! That’s a good one. I like it. Thank you, de Beauvoir! Now that’s a comical sentence.
And I especially like reading it on Christmas Eve, as I write this blog post. Alone. Working in my home office. By myself. With no Christmas decorations up. Not even one. Except the ones I never took down from last year. Because I have an F-ing concussion, and the thought of getting the Christmas box out from under the stairs? Too much, apparently, for my concussed brain to process. And, oh, all this dizziness I’ve been feeling lately, it’s just grand. Between all these dosage adjustments and head-bobbling exercises, how’m I supposed to walk down stairs, anyway? It’s as if my psychiatrist and physical therapist are in cahoots. They probably are, the silly bastards! Well, silencing the phone and lying down is a better fate, anyway, than listening to the phone not buzzing. What a holiday season. And all these people driving around, getting into traffic jams, swearing at one another. When some of us can’t drive at all, because of our concussed brains. Utterly repulsive.*
*Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: Happy holidays, and lots of love, everyone!
Happy Holidays Liza!
Love your stories…hope you feel better.
Zeev
Happy holidays, Zeev! Thanks and hope to see you soon!
Liza… would you like to go away for the weekend with me to Charlottesville Virginia? I’ll come get you.
I’ll email you 🙂
Happy Holidays to you too, Liza! Hang in there.
Thanks, Jean! 🙂
Excellent post. It reminds me of a funny Christmas Story from the modern age:
One time I was visiting my brother and his family a couple months before Christmas, and was seeing how the kids, then children, totally were into the “Guitar Hero”.
I pulled him aside and asked I could do an early Christmas gift by getting them Rock Band, which had the guitar, keyboard, drums and mic.
The whole family could join in.
He said yes. The kids go crazy and we unpack and set up the system. Even the Olde Woman is interested “ooh – this has a mic!”
So we pick like the first song to play and I think Jim picks “Gimme Shelter”. “I love this song”.
You sure? “Oh yeah!”
So we basically, as a family, play a song with little kids with a chorus “rape, murder. It’s just a shot away. It’s just a shot away.””
Happy holidays!
Oh boy, great story….