March 23, 2020
What happens when I narrate my life? (Deja-vu. I’ve asked myself this question before, and on paper, in a journal, beneath a date I can’t remember).
I appreciate how Chekhov begins The Kiss in third-person omniscient and over a page inserts us into R.’s perspective: omniscient free-and-indirect?
Did I like the story? Today, it would have been titled: The Man who Wouldn’t Bear Another Disappointment (And Did He Sexually Assault Someone).
I prefer The Bishop as I read it now and make notes. (Is there something with these titles? The Kiss activates or initiates the story, so with The Bishop?)
The Bishop trembles in those first pages: recognition: the suffering, spiritual man (a self-conception of suffering).
Then: “Never had anyone spoken openly and naturally to him, as man to man, during the whole time he was there.”
