More from _Happy All the Time_
Still enjoying Laurie Colwin's 1978 novel Happy All the Time. Here are a couple more bits worth snipping for my commonplace book.
On p. 87, Vincent (one of the male leads) is in love:
Love, he reflected, was not at all like science. It seemed unfair to him that there was nowhere one might research except to go to the thing itself.
And from pp. 100-101, an exchange between Guido (the other male lead) and his new secretary Stanley, who's taking a leave of absence from being a college student:
Stanley wrote a rapid, legible hand. He made excellent coffee. He loved to answer the telephone because of the groovy voices and he did in fact type like a demon. Shortly before lunch, he presented Guido with a stack of typed letters. All the w's had been left out and were written in an Italic hand.
“Is the w key on that typewriter broken?” Guido asked.
“No, man. It's a little device I made up from going crazy typing term papers. See, you pick a letter and then you leave it out and then you write it in. It's a little challenge. I discovered it when I was on ups.”
“Ups?” said Guido.
“Speed,” said Stanley. “You know, amphetamines and stuff. All us young persons used to do it. My mind was turning into pea soup, so I stopped. But you discover some really weird stuff, like what I call 'the left-out-letter syndrome.'”