Word: houseguests
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Sontag doesn't own a TV, though she did rent one last month to please a houseguest. (Regarding it with the look of a bird that has found a meteor plunked in her nest, she shrugs, "I haven't turned it on yet.") She also has no phone-answering machine, no word processor and, in most of her two-bedroom New York City duplex, no air conditioning. The coolest spot in the place is likely to be the sun-room that opens onto a small terrace. That was where she spent much of the past summer, with its Egyptian heat...
...this one about intellectuals and Communism, taking as its point of departure the disillusioning trip that the writer Andre Gide made to the Soviet Union in 1936. And then there's a short book on Japan. And then . . . Well, at least the tube won't be distracting her. The houseguest has departed, and the men have come to retrieve the rented TV. "I did watch a bit of it," she admits. "But I couldn't watch much. The thing about television is, it goes too slow...
Nothing in this scene overtly suggests the imminence of comic catastrophe. But experienced readers of Thomas Berger will immediately put on their crash helmets and fasten the safety belts. Newcomers are advised to follow suit. The Houseguest, Berger's 15th novel, picks up some of the pieces scattered by the explosive anarchy of his Neighbors (1980). Once again, an apparently stable domestic setting warps and buckles into chaos, and kindred characters struggle to adjust to a world in which the outrageous has suddenly become the norm...
...first thing that goes awry this fine Sunday morning is that Chuck oversleeps, leaving the promised breakfast unmade and each of the Graveses peckish and unsettled. When he finally appears, the man who has so far embodied "Doug's idea of a perfect houseguest in all ways" behaves oddly. He takes advantage of a moment alone with Doug to confide that one of Doug's recently ditched mistresses has been threatening to make trouble, but then assures his host, "This is something that requires no effort at all on your part. I'll see it's taken care...
...demanding a signed blank check and displaying (accidentally?) a holstered revolver strapped around his ankle. Doug is shaken by this experience. "How's that for a Sunday at the shore?" he complains to his daughter-in-law. "You can get your head blown off for no reason, by a houseguest you don't even know...