The Digested Twenty-first Century Read Free Page A

strike you that I like to hint at truths. This is because I fear you might stop reading were you to guess that the story really was as predictable as it first seemed.
    Our guardians, particularly Miss Emily, took good care of us. Most of us, apart from poor Tommy, became competent artists and we were, in our way, quite happy, though a sense of dread would run through the school when Madame came by to take the pick of our artwork.
    We had very few personal possessions but that never botheredus. My treasured item was a Julie Bridgewater tape. How I loved to dance to it! Sadly, it got lost one day.
    I can see you are becoming deeply affected by the poignancy of our situation. I should have loved to have told you at this point of how we felt about having no parents, of how we tried to escape into the outside world. But I can’t. Emotion and interest have no part in this story.
    As we grew older we started to have sex with one another, though the enjoyment was tempered by the fact that none of us could have children. Tommy and Ruth even became a couple when the three of us left Hailsham and went to live at The Cottages.
    Improbable as it may seem, I used to enjoy looking at porn mags, though this was partly because I hoped to spot my possible. We were all obsessed with meeting our possible – our real-world entitie – and Ruth once thought she had seen hers in Norwich. But it turned out to look nothing like her, which left her depressed for days. I suspect you’re beginning to know how she felt.
    Ruth and Tommy split up before Ruth made her first donation and she completed while making her second. I became Tommy’s carer and we started to have sex after his third donation. We hoped to defer his fourth donation for a few years, but a chance meeting with Madame and Miss Emily stopped that.
    ‘Deferrals are not possible,’ Miss Emily said. ‘You are mere clones – organ donors – and we’ve tried to make you as happy as possible.’
    This came as quite a shock, though I dare say not to you. Tommy completed during his fourth donation so I’m left alone, to drone on.
    Digested read, digested: The triumph of style over substance.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005)
    What about a teakettle? What about little microphones? What about writing the same book again and seeing if anyone notices?
    I’m nine years old and I’m an inventor, computer consultant, astronomer, historian, lepidopterist, and I write to Stephen Hawking. I’m no ordinary boy, but the creation of a writer who’s trying too hard. That’s why you’ll find doodles, photographs, pages with just a few words on them, blank pages and very small print littered throughout the text.
    Dad got killed on 9/11. We used to look for mistakes in the
New York Times
together. I picked up the messages he sent from the World Trade Center before he died, but I never told Mum. She spends most of her time with Ron.
    Why I’m not where you are – 5/21/63. I’ve lost the power of speech, I can only communicate in writing. Then you came along, you whose eyesight was failing and asked me to marry you.
    I can feel my prose dazzling from within. I find a key on the bottom of my dad’s vase. This is the key to his life. I see the word ‘black’ printed beside it and decide to visit every person called Black in the telephone directory. I will travel the five boroughs on foot and find the entrance to the mystical sixth.
    My feelings – Dear Oskar, This is hard to write. Your grandfather could not speak and I could barely see, but we joined our lives in a place of Nothing and Something. He left when I was pregnant with your father. Love, Grandma.
    In the evenings, I’ve been playing Yorick in Hamlet, but Mumonly came once because she was out with Ron. In the day I’ve been walking the streets with a 103-year-old man.
    Why I’m not where you are – I lost my love and punctuation in the firestorm of Dresden your grandma was her sister when she got