White trash
Two reasons why not to read White Oleander:
I sat at the empty drafting table next to my mother’s, drawing the way the venetian blinds sliced the light like cheese.
As we drew close, murmuring softly into each other’s necks, the Herald Tribune slid off the feather bed and fell to the floor in a soft cascade, burying my mother among her headlines, news of other crises and personages.
(Apart from being lousy with cheap sentiment and dulled by bad similes, just how many necks can one person have? Miaow.)
And instead go read Manhattan Transfer again:
He sat staring at his hands; they were red and dirtgrained and trembling, his tongue was like a nutmeg grater from the cheap whiskey he had been drinking the last week, his whole body felt numb and sodden and sour. He stared at his hands.
They are passing under Brooklyn Bridge. There is a humming whine of electric trains over their heads, an occasional flash from the wet rails. Behind them beyond barges tugboats carferries and tall buildings, streaked white with whisps of steam and mist, tower gray into sagged clouds.
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