Bones Don’t Last Forever

Two consecutive reviews this morning….

See How They Run! See How They Run! by Harris Coverley

“He grabbed it by the frocky end and shoved it under the couch,…”

I simply loved this funny fable with strange names about a hierarchy of beings, and the nearest I can get is Lafferty or even Vance? But uniquely Swiftian in its own way, where wisdom is not necessarily wise enough to recognise a greater wisdom in a seemingly lowlier being. Pets and the bones they can’t let go of. And I myself gnawed away at the ‘hoom’, thinking it might be the David Hume who, according to the Internet, ‘argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience.’ Or ‘Lost’ Desmond Hume? Till I thought, with some relief, that this is not a fable at all, but an entertaining story for its own sake. Bones don’t last forever.

***

Chapter 7 of ’The Old Boys’ by William Trevor

“‘Oh puss, puss,’ cried Mr Jaraby, ‘what disorder is this?’”

“In anger the claws stabbed at the carpet, and Monmouth, baring a massive jaw, snarled at the tufts of wool.”

This chapter is extremely sad but also wickedly hilarious as we continue to witness the backbiting of the septuagenarian Jaraby husband and wife, blaming each other for each other’s insanity, and I even got confused myself who actually blamed the pussy cat and who owned it, as if it is owned by one of them, not both! To spite the other one, anyway? I sometimes have similar quandaries in my own life.

This chapter seems strangely in tune with my reading earlier this morning of a Coverley story HERE, a fact perhaps feeding my own mad illusion that I continue to possess — or to be possessed by — increments of an overseeing wisdom regarding the Jungian literary gestalt and its hierarchy of connections!
Even to the extent, in this chapter, it is said that “Dowse was the wisest man I ever knew” and “No, my puss, it will not do. We must mend our ways. We must bend to the greater authority.”
Meanwhile…
“Split the produce in half that I may see inside. How else to know if an apple or a grapefruit is worth its money?”
I must remember that when I next buy fruit at a greengrocer!

“He spoke to himself, although his wife was still in the room.”

***

Contexts of above reviews: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/04/28/theakers-quarterly-fiction-70/ and https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/03/31/two-novels-by-william-trevor/