Jane Doe did not kill Karen Silkwood.”
“Yes,” Mike says, “I see what you’re saying. It’s the peninsula story.”
And he tells us the peninsula story:
A man and a woman live in a house on a deserted peninsula. The man’s mother comes to stay with them, and the man goes off on a business trip. The woman takes the ferry to the mainland and goes to see her lover. They make love. When they finish, she realizes it’s late, and she gets up, dresses, and rushes to catch the last ferry home. But she misses the boat. She pleads with the ferryboat captain. He tells her he will take her back to the peninsula if she gives him six times the normal fare. But she doesn’t have the money. So she’s forced to walk home, and on the way, she’s raped and killed by a stranger.
And the question is: Who is responsible for her death, and in what order—the woman, the man, the mother, the ferryboat captain, the lover, or the rapist?
The question is a Rorschach, Mike says, and if you ask your friends to answer it, they will all answer differently.
Another lightbulb moment.
This one marks the end of my love affair with journalism and the beginning of my understanding that just about everything is a story.
Or, as E. L. Doctorow once wrote, far more succinctly
“I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction; there is only narrative.”
From my script for When Harry Met Sally
HARRY
Why don’t you tell me the story of your life?
SALLY
The story of my life?
HARRY
We’ve got eighteen hours to kill before we hit New York.
SALLY
The story of my life isn’t even going to get us out of Chicago. I mean, nothing’s happened to me yet. That’s why I’m going to New York.
HARRY
So something can happen to you?
SALLY
Yes.
HARRY
Like what?
SALLY
Like I’m going to go to journalism school to become a reporter.
HARRY
So you can write about things that happen to other people.
SALLY
That’s one way to look at it.
HARRY
Suppose nothing happens to you? Suppose you live there your whole life and nothing happens. You never meet anyone, you never become anything, and finally you die one of those New York deaths where nobody notices for two weeks until the smell drifts out into the hallway?
A guy walks into a restaurant
I’m having dinner at a restaurant with friends. A man I know comes over to the table. He’s a famously nice guy. His marriage broke up at about the same time mine did. He says, “How can I find you?”
We can’t do everything
I’m sitting in a small screening room waiting for a movie to begin. The room fills up. There aren’t enough seats. People are bunching up in the aisles and looking around helplessly. I’m next to my friend Bob Gottlieb, watching all this. The director of the movie decides to solve the problem by asking all the children at the screening to share seats. I watch in mounting frustration. Finally, I say to Bob, “It’s really very simple. Someone should go get some folding chairs and set them up in the aisles.”
Bob looks at me. “Nora,” he says, “we can’t do everything.”
My brain clears in an amazing way.
Nora. We can’t do everything.
I have been given the secret of life.
Although it’s probably a little late.
And by the way
The other day I bought a red coat, on sale. But I haven’t worn it yet.
The Lost Strudel or Le Strudel Perdu
Food vanishes.
I don’t mean food as habit, food as memory, food as biography, food as metaphor, food as regret, food as love, or food as in those famous madeleines people like me are constantly referring to as if they’ve read Proust, which in most cases they haven’t. I mean food as food. Food vanishes.
I’m talking about cabbage strudel, which vanished from Manhattan in about 1982 and which I’ve been searching for these last twenty-three years.
Cabbage strudel is on a long list of things I loved to eat that used to
“Yes,” Mike says, “I see what you’re saying. It’s the peninsula story.”
And he tells us the peninsula story:
A man and a woman live in a house on a deserted peninsula. The man’s mother comes to stay with them, and the man goes off on a business trip. The woman takes the ferry to the mainland and goes to see her lover. They make love. When they finish, she realizes it’s late, and she gets up, dresses, and rushes to catch the last ferry home. But she misses the boat. She pleads with the ferryboat captain. He tells her he will take her back to the peninsula if she gives him six times the normal fare. But she doesn’t have the money. So she’s forced to walk home, and on the way, she’s raped and killed by a stranger.
And the question is: Who is responsible for her death, and in what order—the woman, the man, the mother, the ferryboat captain, the lover, or the rapist?
The question is a Rorschach, Mike says, and if you ask your friends to answer it, they will all answer differently.
Another lightbulb moment.
This one marks the end of my love affair with journalism and the beginning of my understanding that just about everything is a story.
Or, as E. L. Doctorow once wrote, far more succinctly
“I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction; there is only narrative.”
From my script for When Harry Met Sally
HARRY
Why don’t you tell me the story of your life?
SALLY
The story of my life?
HARRY
We’ve got eighteen hours to kill before we hit New York.
SALLY
The story of my life isn’t even going to get us out of Chicago. I mean, nothing’s happened to me yet. That’s why I’m going to New York.
HARRY
So something can happen to you?
SALLY
Yes.
HARRY
Like what?
SALLY
Like I’m going to go to journalism school to become a reporter.
HARRY
So you can write about things that happen to other people.
SALLY
That’s one way to look at it.
HARRY
Suppose nothing happens to you? Suppose you live there your whole life and nothing happens. You never meet anyone, you never become anything, and finally you die one of those New York deaths where nobody notices for two weeks until the smell drifts out into the hallway?
A guy walks into a restaurant
I’m having dinner at a restaurant with friends. A man I know comes over to the table. He’s a famously nice guy. His marriage broke up at about the same time mine did. He says, “How can I find you?”
We can’t do everything
I’m sitting in a small screening room waiting for a movie to begin. The room fills up. There aren’t enough seats. People are bunching up in the aisles and looking around helplessly. I’m next to my friend Bob Gottlieb, watching all this. The director of the movie decides to solve the problem by asking all the children at the screening to share seats. I watch in mounting frustration. Finally, I say to Bob, “It’s really very simple. Someone should go get some folding chairs and set them up in the aisles.”
Bob looks at me. “Nora,” he says, “we can’t do everything.”
My brain clears in an amazing way.
Nora. We can’t do everything.
I have been given the secret of life.
Although it’s probably a little late.
And by the way
The other day I bought a red coat, on sale. But I haven’t worn it yet.
The Lost Strudel or Le Strudel Perdu
Food vanishes.
I don’t mean food as habit, food as memory, food as biography, food as metaphor, food as regret, food as love, or food as in those famous madeleines people like me are constantly referring to as if they’ve read Proust, which in most cases they haven’t. I mean food as food. Food vanishes.
I’m talking about cabbage strudel, which vanished from Manhattan in about 1982 and which I’ve been searching for these last twenty-three years.
Cabbage strudel is on a long list of things I loved to eat that used to
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