![]() ![]() She was also a chronic alcoholic, married three times, and a mother of four sons. She worked as a cleaning women, an ER nurse, a creative writing teacher for prisoners, a writer, and an academic. She lived in Alaska, the US Midwest, Texas, and Santiago, Chile. Unlike William Stoner, however, Lucia Berlin experienced a life of incredible diversity. As with Williams’ hero (or antihero, depending on your perspective), Lucia Berlin died with her hand on the favourite of her short story collections. This death in mediocrity serves as the inevitable conclusion of an unremarkable life, challenging the reader to consider the true meaning of a person’s place in this bustling world of cross purposes and essential solitude. In John Williams’ highly under-appreciated novel Stoner, the story’s eponymous character dies with his hand upon his only published work. I like to wait and see the names appear in the mirror vision of the dryers. Tina, Corky, Junior. Their husbands wear blue overalls with names in script on the pockets. Towels, pink shortie nighties, bikini underpants that say Thursday. Grain stores and motels for lovers and old women with hennaed hair who do their laundry at Angel’s. Shabby shops and junkyards, secondhand stores with army cots, boxes of one-socks, 1940 edition of Good Hygiene. “Angel’s Laundromat is in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ![]()
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