it's also the sort of place where you could see someone with a burger in one hand and the paris review in the other. annoyingly pretentious? well... that's actually me! seriously, i bought the latest issue at spoonbill & sugartown booksellers on bedford ave the other day. it had an interesting interview with the novelist kazuo ishiguro. i was totally intrigued by the story of a radio play he once sent to the bbc:
"It was about two young people who work in a fish-and-chips cafe. They are both severely cross-eyed, and they fall in love with each other, but they never acknowlege the fact that they're cross-eyed. It's the unspoken thing between them. At the end of the story they decide not to marry, after the narrator has a strange dream where he sees a family coming toward him on the seaside pier. The parents are cross-eyed, the children are cross-eyed, the dog is cross-eyed, and he says, All right, we're not going to marry."
i had a strange emotional reaction to this. i was delighted to find this emphasis on the unspoken, perhaps a seed of his later masterpiece, The Remains of the Day. on the other hand, i was totally disturbed by that ending, probably because i've always been a bit bothered by the idea that decisions about life and partnerships are determined biologically. i know, a bit much to be brooding about over hamburgers and fries.
