Still Life with Woodpecker is one of my favorite books. I've read it maybe seven times in the last two years. I find something new that I love about it each time I read it. This is one of my favorite conversations between Leigh-Cheri and Bernard Mickey Wrangle:
"Barking at the moon?"
"What about it?"
"That's all our love was to you?"
"That's all love ever is. Love is not a harpsichord concert in a genteel drawing room. And it sure as hell isn't Social Security, Laetrile, the Irish Sweepstakes, or roller disco. Love is private and primitive and a bit on the funky and frightening side. I think of the Luna card in the Tarot deck: some strange, huge crustacean, its armor glistening and its pincers wiggling, clatters out of a pool while wild dogs howl at a bulging moon. Underneath the hearts and flowers, love is loony like that. Attempts to housebreak it, to refine it, to dress the crabs up like doves and make them sing soprano always result in thin blood. You end up with a parody. There's lots of pretty sounds that describe 'like,' but 'love' is more on the order of barking. I'm sorry about the note, though. I wrote you another, softer one, but by the time I'd lined up a postman, you'd already galloped out of Seattle on the sultan's main dromedary. Maybe I couldn't blame you - but I could ache."
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