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2013-01-18 - 1:22 p.m.

What do you do with a writer like John Cheever? Admire his delivery system but cringe at the stories themselves? Man, they're brutal. You begin reading a story about a Midwestern couple headed to New York to kick off a grand adventure in the theater business and you just know that there's a negative-13 percent chance that they're going to end that story happy. Just no chance. Reading a writer like that is like pinching your thigh until you bruise. But the bruise will be beautiful.

The cold leads to clarity, I think. Why is that? The air itself is clear, and crisp, and without moisture. But, walking, the sun a degree or two warm on your face but the air otherwise pinching your eardrums, your nostrils, the world clears up a little, as if everything--the bricks, the bare branch ends, the pigeons--have constricted enough so that whatever's left out in the open has no choice but to be tight, and crisp, like a cranberry skin, left out in the cold.

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