what we need, when we need it

An amusing little book (my favourite kind) about a writer who tumbles into hard times and low-end forgery. The trajectory goes

successful biographer
rushed book which fails
too much time off
neither the skills nor the disposition to do anything else
suddenly an older woman living alone with her cat
looming homelessness
desperate, tentative first acts of literary forgery
full-time fraud
detection and capture

Really, the whole affair was just another form of unauthorized biography, only with more inhabiting of character. And the book has the prank-ish tone of someone who touched bottom, behaved badly but came out in the sun in the end.

* * * * *

The Michael Jackson nonsense is dying down more quickly than I expected. Honestly, when I came home from work that day and C told me, my first reaction was that it was probably one of the better outcomes he could hope for, as opposed to having his face fall off a couple years from now. If fame has an arc then Michael was a meteor.

* * * * *

A bit out of sorts today, filing away a mental note (with underlining and exclamation marks) to abstain from the house brews at a certain downtown pub because they always leave me worse for wear the next day.