"Tampa"

Alissa Nutting’s “Tampa” is recognized as being sort of a reverse of Nabokov’s “Lolita”. In “Tampa” it is a hot dame, Celeste Price, who is drawn to that mythical isle of lovely children of the age of, I guess, twelve to fifteen, and they are boys instead of girls (boys of nine and ten probably would not do for a woman). Ms. Nutting, by having a female pedophile, is able to do some things with her protagonist that Nabokov probably could not do. We see a much colder predator. There is no tortured romance here.

This excerpt comes from the opening page of the opening chapter. It is the night before Celeste begins her job as an eighth-grade English teacher, and she is very excited. In this excerpt we learn that she is also married, which gives her some wealth and a normal cover.

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Thursday Morning

I went to bed at ten last night. I decided that the best way to fight my body's low ebb in the evening was to just go with it. Though, I feared that this would mean a four o'clock morning, and I was right.

Celebrities and Stuff

"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO): Net Neutrality" (Watch on YouTube)

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Kay

A surprising blast of pleasant news. Pop will be going to Kay this weekend. I didn’t think this would ever happen again, and even said so to Pop. He said that he needs to help her with her groceries. So, it seems that she is playing off the fact that Pop has her come here on our grocery days, to have him go to her on her grocery days. That sounds great to me. I will take whatever I can get, whenever I can get it, beggar that I am.