Word: authorly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...plan file is like a calling card, announcing your position and social status to whoever wants to call on you. Since anyone can finger your account, a plan file is theoretically written for everyone to read. But at the same time, the text establishes an intimate bond between author and reader. To finger someone's account means expressing interest in that person, however benign, and the plan file must by its very nature take that attraction into account...
When executed skillfully, plan files present a snapshot of the author's values and intellectual preoccupations. Some people, however, seem to think that a plan file is the e-mail equivalent of a high school yearbook. They abuse our patience by writing 10-screen long plan files, filled with every obscure reference, movie line and aphorism they've collected over the past year. Such hodgepodge plan files are universally condemned by the critics. If you're about to put down 40 or so witty saying please keep the following maxim mind: Unless you're Voltaire, I really don't care...
...misdelivered to your house--you know you really shouldn't be reading it, but it's just too absorbing to put down. When the intended audience is a tight group of friends, the plan file is characterized by cryptic in-jokes, humorous anecdotes and such. In other cases, the author knows he or she is being stalked by a particular person (usually some jilted romantic flame), and tailors the text accordingly. These plan files are addressed to a mysterious "you," and contain accounts of the exciting/depressing life the author is leading without said person...
...that, of course, is neither Jay's, nor Kureishi's, concern. Instead, Kureishi succeeds in creating a vivid portrait of one particular man's experience with one particular woman--a portrait that bears a striking resemblance to the author's own life. The reader does not have to like Jay for this to be powerful, if not exactly joyous, reading...
Like Kureishi, Taylor begins at the moment before separation, then works backward through the marriage and its turning points, which also include the author's adultery. In Taylor's case, however, the decision to split up is mutual, and his writing, lucid and lovely, creates a sense of intimacy with the reader that Intimacy fails to do. We get a clear view into Taylor's windows, but we are not disgusted by what we see. "At what precise point does the breakdown of a marriage become irretrievable?" the author wonders. "While it requires will to make a marriage work...