Good Legs by Joshua Ferris, 2014
The magic trick:
A cavalier narrator who rips through large life events with mere phrases
We finish this week’s SSMT triptych on the theme of clever relationship metaphors with “Good Legs” from Joshua Ferris, which gives us a cavalier narrator to enjoy.
He’s all flash and dash as he rips through a couple decades of his life. He’s focused on the history of his relationship with one “old flame.” But the narration is so stylized and moves so quickly through life events that major changes are summarized only with witty turns of phrase. There is a real writer’s glee in paring big things down to semi-shocking chopped descriptors. We have to assume there was real emotion – grief, worry, sadness – along the way. But the narrator isn’t letting us in on that level.
And that’s quite a trick on Ferris’s part.
The selection:
We drove a Penske to Brooklyn and unpacked during the blackout. My old flame dressed in a power suit and began spending her days at Federal Plaza, eating Peking duck for lunch. She was going places. I was the same old me: reading Bellow out on the fire escape. I liked to wander our Carroll Gardens neighborhood before the gates came up in the morning. For Thanksgiving that year, she made eight courses for just the two of us.
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