Shower Curtains
craig king (ck31@ukc.ac.uk)
Wed, 20 Oct 1999 17:58:02 +0100
ello,
today i somehow struck up a conversation with a stranger in the library
about salinger.
she hadn't read any of his books and i mentioned franny and zooey, my
favourite, with its little pink cover and water-stained pages from the time
i read it beginning to end in the bathtub and almost collapsed when i
emerged as the heat had weakened my legs. she asked why i liked it. and i
told her about this marvellous scarlet shower curtain with canary-yellow
sharps, flats and so on all over it. and that if the bathroom in which zooey
reluctantly chats to bessie about franny ever dims in my memory there's
always this vivid scarlet and yellow shower curtain with zooey on one side
and bessie on the other, a cigarette in her mouth and a frown on his face.
that's what sprang to mind, first off, before anything.
i LOVE this shower curtain. it is the shower curtain of all shower curtains.
weirdly, somewhere at the heart of that precious little book, for me, is
this damn curtain with its strong colours and lengthy dialogues.
now my damn shower curtain insists on trying to attach itself to me when i'm
trying to wash my hair. and it is the most ugly of non-colours. at least
there is someone in the fictional world with a curtain worth talking about.
craig