New York Times Kills Fiction

Last month I renewed my subscription to the New York Times. For a few heady weeks I was on top of it, reading every article and wanting to talk about it all. Poor George, after one particularly long current event laden phone conversation, there was a lull in the conversation, I could hear him sighing in relief. He is not used to having to talk about anything more pressing than 'what's for dinner?" with me. "Do you think they really had nuclear weapons in Syria? " I said. Gentle Reader, I can not repeat his response.

But fortunately for my relationship, reading the NYT and keeping up with it requires eternal vigilance---one moment of weakness, one skim of an article, one memo taken home to read on the train, one dipping into my novel in the morning and---I'm behind. It's like Ursula in 100 Years of Solitude constantly fighting off the ants invading the house in Macondo. She is always bustling through the rooms fighting them off with poisons and her energy. All the characters laugh at her and she seems like a crazy woman obsessed, but she never stops. The minute she dies though, they take over the house. I'll probably be found dead under a load of back issues of the NYT and the New Yorker. Suspect George!