"The Maples had talked and thought about separation so long, it seemed it would never come. For their conversations, increasingly ambivalent and ruthless, as accusation, retraction, blow, and caress alternated and canceled, had the final effect of knitting them ever tighter together in a painful, helpless, degrading intimacy...Bleeding, mangled, reverently laid in its tomb a dozen times, their marriage could not die. Burning to leave one another, they left, out of marital habit, together. They took a trip to Rome." --the opening paragraph from John Updike's "Twin Beds in Rome"
Four posts in a row from New Yorker fiction podcasts! I will have to find something different for tomorrow as I have burned through my stash, but man...this is a great story. A fantastic portrait of marriage.
No comments:
Post a Comment