Profound Moments

A WRITER'S WIT
One of my big beliefs about Washington is that we highly overstate the power of individuals and highly underrate seeing Washington as a system, in general, but, in particular, we highly underrate the power of Congress.
Ezra Klein
Born May 9, 1984

New Yorker Fiction 2016

Karine Laval

May 9, 2016, John L’Heureux, “Three Short Moments in a Long Life”: A man gives a first-person account of three significant episodes in his life. ¶ “The Spy” is concerned with the narrator’s obsession with Beverly LaPlante, a girl in his second-grade class, who disappears until she reappears in the third grade cussing a blue streak because she knows she will die of polio. In “The Writer,” the narrator’s ire over being well-published but poorly compensated for it spills into an encounter with a young man resembling Jesus, who appears at his door asking for a donation. He gives. In “The Substance of Things Hoped For,” the narrator is reduced to being referred to as a “white male, eighty,” by hospital staff when his wife calls 9-1-1. At this point in his life the man has been diagnosed with Parkinsonism, not quite the disease, but not quite free of it either. He and his wife conspire together to end his life by not ever calling 9-1-1 again:

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“I say, ‘I’ll miss you when I’m dead.’ And in a while there comes the final moment: the earth stops turning and a luminous silence descends. And then, as we draw one last breath together, I snatch your hand. And hold it. Holding it, and holding it, and still holding it, I breathe out.
     Still, I’ll miss you when I’m dead” (61).

You can’t write more profoundly than that about dying of a dread disease. At least I don’t think you can. L’Heureux’s The Medici Boy came out in 2014.
Photography by Karine Laval.

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 
Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

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