Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good by John Gould Read Free Book Online Page B

distraction-free confines of his own sanctum, important antecedents of any film he might be reviewing. He could refresh his impression of, say, Sarah Bernhardt’s
Hamlet
and Asta Nielsen’s
Hamlet
and Laurence Olivier’s
Hamlet
and Maximilian Schell’s
Hamlet
and Innokenty Smoktunovsky’s
Hamlet
and Richard Burton’s
Hamlet
and Nicol Williamson’s
Hamlet
and Derek Jacobi’s
Hamlet
and Mel Gibson’s
Hamlet
and Kenneth Branagh’s
Hamlet
and Campbell Scott’s
Hamlet
in preparation for reviewing Ethan Hawke’s
Hamlet.
(Hamlet, now there was a guy who knew how not to do anything. There was a guy who knew how to spend himself pacing his bone cage.) Mariko bought into this notion, and didn’t so much as roll her eyes when the mammoth Visa bill materialized. This would have been early Sophie days, after Mariko had twigged to what was going on between the two of them but before she’d sprung the news on Matt. Raising the question, goodness or guilt? Which of these was motivating his wife to be even kinder than usual? Was there any way to tell the difference, even from inside?
    Nowadays, at any rate, the big draw is cable. Matt keeps adding channels to the package, tier after tier—it takes longer every day, Mariko gripes, to establish that there’s not a blessed thing to watch. For Matt, though, this search, this daft scanning is precisely the point. He’s found that if he slows his breath and keeps his body perfectly still (the meditation motif again) he can click for a good half-hour before he needs to pee.
    There’s an added benefit, too, to this new rig. Mariko’s morning noises? Matt can drown them out. Why
start
each day, he figures, in a paroxysm of nostalgia? The quaint creak as his wife rummages through the closet for her robe, the gentle slap of her bare feet across the hardwood hall. The pensive interlude as she composes herself upon the potty, and then the crooning from the shower, to which Matt used to sing lamely along from the kitchen. Show tunes mostly, Hoshi’s thing, her mum’s thing. “I Could Have Danced All Night.” “I Loves You Porgy.” “I Cain’t Say No.”
    No. Better to spare himself this daily ordeal. Better to spare her, too, the ordeal of seeing him emerge, fuzzy-eyed and fancifully-crested, from his exile. Better to lie low till she’s gone out, or settled into her office at the far end of the house. Morning is his wife’s most tender time. Messing it up would make Matt feel like dirt, and does he need that? He does not.
    Kristin isn’t right. Katherine? She only said it once, and kind of gaspily at that.
    The hotel’s device takes a little figuring. By the light slicing through that slash in the curtains he finds the power button. By the light of the menu screen—“Welcome to the Starlight Executive Inn”—he finds the channel and volume changers, triangles aimed up and down.
    So let’s see now. Here’s that sitcom star, what’s his name, and he’s written a book about his ex-wife’s postpartum depression. It’s a courageous book (this by his own admission), and he profoundly hopes it will help others. Here’s a woman weeping, over the caption “Ellie—about to meet her son’s father.” Here’s an emaciated kid cooking baby rats over an open fire in an African savannah setting, and here’s that guy from
Jeopardy!
begging us for help. Here’s the news: West Nile virus, Vatican sex crime cover-up, still no WMDs in Iraq, rogue asteroid, White House press conference.
    REPORTER: “What do you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and would you consider campaigning for him?”
    THE PRESIDENT : “I will never arm-wrestle Arnold Schwarzenegger.” (Laughter.)
    The bigness and blandness, the sheer routinized horror of this world—surely it counts as some sort of meditative vision. Matt craves his regulars though, and hey, here’s
Law and Order,
that distinctive sting,
doingg-doingg,
a cross between a gavel gavelling and a cell door slamming shut.
    “These are their