Romancers are funny. “Think of things that can’t be bought with money: (snaps fingers) like buying an old mansion, and fixing her up! Sure we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that ain’t about money. Shucks, that’s about love, and love ain’t got no physical part. Except for a big old house, that you bought and fixed up with…. Well, anyway.”

But at the same time, it is kinda brave, in a way, to start with the old man with the dead wife, you know. It’s like, Do you still want it, after it’s over?…. Romancers are usually a mix of the brave/intelligent and absolute coward’s nonsense, you know….

…. MY soul, though, has brown eyes.

…. But Nick does write pretty.

…. If Southern Living were a novel written by a guy, this would be it…. And if you ignore the fishing, it’s easier to feel like its non-vegan character is being thrust to the fore, you know.

…. It’s not cringe-y, essentially speaking, but I can’t see myself reading more Nick books. Then again, I did log (before deleting) two books of Douglas J. Moo: Paul’s Letter to the Conservative Snobs, Pt. I & Pt. II…. But I def can’t see myself running away with Nick, you know. He just never takes any risks, you know. And he is capable of running up little things, you know. Even just to take the Southern Living angle, it’s like: you’ve got to have the romanticized Southern wedding—without the money…. She’s got to have the magazine wedding lined up, and then cancel it, right…. The girl’s always got to walk away from the money! And so it’s like, the perfect traditional thing, only go easy on the guy, right—so perfect, so unproductive, so aristocratic, just no money, thanks…. And nobody ever really wants, that sort of thing, they just spend $8 //pretending// to, and I suppose an $8 lie is bad enough, right!

But it’s fine, once, you know.

…. Southerner: (doe-eyed) Let me tell you about Noah Nicholson. He done good. He plays the blues with blackie, reads poetry with his daddy, ain’t got no job, but lives in a big mansion he’s about to get evicted from, and he done use the spells and incantations of the black witchcraft of Europe to bind the president’s daughter to himself even though he ain’t got a penny to his name! He’s perfect!
Theologian: (barks) Listen to me! People! Are bullshit!
Southerner: (doe-eyed) Aww, but he just like you daddy—perfect!
Drunk Southerner: (drunk) (irritable) Ah, shut up, big daddy. This ain’t your jurisdiction. That kid done good. Being a romantic mean you ain’t give ‘em nothing. It means you a man. Hell, he done real good. (stares off into the middle distance, then spits into can)
Southerner: (doe-eyes, voice shaking) I love you, Drunk Southerner!

…. As for singing the blues with your neighbor, I don’t know how you describe that; you might just want to quote lyrics (he doesn’t); as for the poem quotes, when you’re quoting random lines from a poem from 100-150 years ago, in a popular book, often it’s like, quoting for effect: like firing for effect in a gun fight—it’s like, just get it in the air, right…. If you wanted to do a popular book properly, it’d be better to talk about what the poem is about or how it made you feel, which if done honestly is both more accessible and shows more understanding than just quoting for effect, and getting people to say, Wow! You’re better than me—I surrender! Take me to your leader! 👾 👽

I don’t mean that there’s only one proper way to write popular fiction, but if there’s multiple proper ways there are also many improper ways, many of which are the most favored by the self-hating masses, you know…. It was those men; it was the Druids—they studied poetry! 🧙‍♂️ Not like me! 🧌 Gosh, but if I could just lie about myself, and get my girl to believe it…. And my boss…. And my parents…. And the government…. And the media—well, maybe the media I can handle: I pay those people to publish those lies….

“Oh Noah, unlike other men, you’re intelligent!”
—a line not in the book

Ah, it’s too easy; what a slut this book is for punishment; it wants to get tied up and locked down, you know…. 😸😙🧨

…. In the real world they would’ve done what she came there to do, and they both would’ve known that it wouldn’t last, unless one of them was ~really~ stupid, (what, your parents don’t expect you to raise kids? You going to cut out your parents, or raise kids with Mr Impoverished Poets Society?—it almost makes it worse, you know, he can’t offer you your dreams, but he thinks he’s better than you, right), and then she would have gone back to her fiancé (or else try to and fail, and be ‘ruined’), and, you know—that’s what she went there to do. You spend time alone with your single ex-lover—with nobody else there, and nobody else knows…. And you’re saying that that’s not what you went there to do, from the moment go. (Hit it and then leave, right.) What are we, like, seven years old? A seven year old from South Carolina, I guess, and maybe before the Internet.

One Nick Sparks, one Cold War Clancy—no more.

…. People want to create this impression that they’ve always advised you to act the right way, even though a lot of these Nick stories are the lure of the forbidden, breaking the rules because the damn lawyers deserve it, and we deserve it because we’re not //like// those damn rebels, you know—they should welcome it from //us//; we’re Different. Nick wraps up his stolen goods like Santa Claus and gives them to children, right; he’s like Taylor Swift, saying he cheated in order to do the right thing, and then explaining it to his pastor because he’s forgotten—the whole damn thing, what kind of life he was living.

On RHOC, Vickie was talking to her daughter Briana, like, I order you to get a boyfriend with more status, more money, you know, like, the caricature mother telling her 18-year-old daughter to dump her boyfriend and go prospecting. But this is so much worse, even than Briana doing that. To be engaged, and the whole town knows about it, and to go looking for another decade’s trouble, you know, and to call it “poetry”, like…. Backstreet Boys poetry, you know: quit playing games with my heart, with my heart; I should have known from the start, from the start….

Allow me to be a little prescriptive: you grow up, right, and stop believing those lies that poets tell: (Joel Osteen on random negativity) Don’t believe those lies!…. You know, the lie of being John England the white boy poet, and living in another galaxy, specifically in a pool of filth you’re slurping up because you live in a garbage dump in the Betatron Galaxy, right; it’s like…. At first, you don’t know any better; but then, later, you do. The story is like, so regressive. Politically, socially, psychically: zero steps forward and four steps back, you know.

…. The mother and the fiancé (the people who don’t want the affair to happen) aren’t really a big part of the book, so I’m not analyzing specifically their B.S. as much as the people about to start banging (because that’s what rose-blossoms do). Certainly jealousy isn’t attractive, you know, although Allie sounds like a real gossip-preacher, judgmental and pseudo-elevated (when elevation in itself can be bad enough), in the fiancé’s memories, though, so…. I don’t know. It’s worse than the RH girls, to be honest. At least those people, I buy that they’re like that, although sometimes it’s like…. Seriously, Slade? I guess it’s still 1955 for you? —But like, the hallucination of 1955 (or 1945) is even crazier, you know.

…. Come for the sexism, stay for the sex….

Surrender to the shame. 😸….

God, it’s so fake.

I think that the little people should follow their heart, Carson.
Of course, my Lord.
But what if they don’t realize how perfect I am…. and how defective They are.
If I may, my Lord: we All realize that; I give you my word. I’ll beat the other servants into line, my Lord. And then I’ll fall asleep at your feet like a dog.
Ah, Carson. You are my favorite dog.

…. —But Allie, if you lose your mind, who will lie to the children? The children want their mother to lie to them. Who else but her can elide over the difficulties of life, while still feeling sorry for yourself, like a good romantic should?…. As the woman of patriarchy, you have rights and obligations, you know! So stand up and say to that demon, Arise, let us go from this place, and make sweet love upon the heather. No, wait; that’s not it….

…. —Do not lie, child. It is rude!
—But if I don’t lie, about what society is like…. What people are like; how they act…. People won’t fall in love!

…. I’ll stuff a little medicine in it, and then people will get it. I’ll get by. Sociology and psychology can kiss my ass. I’ve got the doctor. I’m siding with the big man.

—God, how people must hate themselves! Incidentally, others. Mostly, themselves.

…. Golly, there’s no-one like you, Noah! No-one else in our glorious worker’s paradise of peasants and pollyannas—oh, what’s this—sorry! No-one else in our glorious football fantasy country music Confederate Empire, has, ever! I mean, actually to BE the way that everyone else pretends to be but lies about! No one else in the KulturBuro had even considered it! How unique! How exquisite! You’re perfect! But we’re going to have to ask you not to come back, you know. It was a nice $9 fantasy, but really you disgust me. You’re a sham. You’re not real. Don’t come back here, ever again.

…. “And for God’s sake, don’t sleep with anybody else’s wife, either!” /he lands on the street/

Hysterical. ( )

If this plot was any thinner, it would be a crepe. Granted I did see the movie first, but the plot is so predictable and the writing is not great. The ending of the book is a lot less satisfying than the movie. ( )

At least it’s short. ( )

First edition signed as new