Those who wolf can’t read Wolfe

I was a teen. My friend Jo loaned me a book, Memoirs of an Invisible Man.

I began to read, and I became violently ill with a stomach virus. It wasn’t the book’s fault, I don’t suppose, but it didn’t matter. My stomach thought it was the book’s fault. My brain is in thrall to my stomach and dares not contradict for fear of revolt. If there is one thing you can be sure of in life it’s that you do not want a revolting stomach. Trust me.

In any case, the stomach won. The book was Bad. Evil and No Good. The book caused more queasiness than mayonnaise in the sun. I gave it back to Jo who, safe in her ignorance, didn’t know that it was barftastic.

Years later, I found that my boyfriend had a copy of the book. Despite that, I still married him, thereby proving that it’s occasionally fine to upset the stomach, but only if there’s sex involved.

Fast forward to Friday. I was reading Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer. (I had qualms about checking this out of the library, though my husband assures me that they’ll just think I’m reading about politics again.) I was hungry and had some leftover chili in the fridge. Too much chili for one bowl. Too little chili for two. I got a bigger bowl and I wolfed. Verily.

Oh, and did I ever pay. But that is another tale, a colorful one. Let it just be said that I became indisposed and that Shadow of the Torturer has become only the second book on my stomach’s hit list.

If I were honest, though, I’d admit that I don’t really mind. It’s a good book. I was far enough in to say that. And far enough in to say that I wanted to escape it, wanted to tear myself free from its relentless melancholy. I chose an awfully dramatic way of going about it, but guilt free. Next, my stomach is planning the overthrow of Communist China through the consumption of spring rolls. Never underestimate its power.

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