back toJacket2

Jacket 20 — December 2002   |   # 20  Contents   |   Homepage   |  Catalog   |



Dell Olsen

from ‘Corrupted by Showgirls’

... from Parataxis magazine, Cambridge
Back to Parataxis contents list


Later you die of pneumonia and I am even more driven to provide the best — I expand my business to a succesful chain of five restaurants. Usually a male moves unhappily through and over her.


Day/Light/Active v. Night/Dark/Passive are notes taken home and left in a drawer. While at work he worries about the gender of her actions. Once feted now they recall in greater detail while sleeping. The poor are filtered.


NOW GET IT CODED TOGETHER — this cuts out the difficulties of translation. A gentle dissolve through beaded curtains. My horizon as such has gone on the blink. Some of us are like them without wearing wigs — but that’s quite normal.


I am dressed for the country, or the city — where we have come to expect the violent deaths of animals. At the end of the feature, she is led off by detectives — I saw their hooves sticking up into the air from inside the trucks.


This attention to herself instead of the man is the obvious narrative fault of the story. Emit flows of understanding for how she feels about stockings. All the footpaths were closed down for fear of muddy boots.


A scientist has found a gene for a protein that fluoresces under ultra violet light. All that day they were still grazing in the open fields. Finally, when she is confronted by him, she denies her guilt, then tries a different tack, seductively disrobing.


While building her business empire, she becomes romantically involved with an impoverished playboy but she later ends the relationship when he becomes a financial drain. Still wondering about soya milk? Information volunteers queue for extra cash.


And is what is safe static? When the financier’s watch is found on her body, the police assume that she is the killer. Innocent ones are forgotten about, naturally, I telephone to notify him of this latest development


but he has taken an overdose and lacks the strength to answer the call. Their happiest moments are outside in the sunlight. I play opposite him as a governess who is haunted by the murder of her predecessor. What happens —


isn’t the process of it happening — on the hour a bulletin. Most unsavoury character to date, an attractive but slothful dame who carelessly drops gum wrappers and spits grape seeds on the floor of her apartment as smoke rises


Because she is superstitious she is frightened that she is promiscuous. Faced with a mound of unpaid bills, she gets a job as a waitress. A portrayal of an unbalanced woman who succumbs to nocturnal trances, made up from thin air,


such as a minor injury just happening out of shot. Nightly reports of numbers. Reciprocity in an exchange of looks, ‘I know you think you’re too beautiful to hit.’ A visual movement that smells of flesh burning instead of perfume. Horrified


as later when I found them locked in a passionate embrace. After fleeing the house, she hears gun shots, after recovering from her initial shock she flees. After accidently killing a military policeman in the way, she allows him to take the blame.


Her spoiled eldest daughter is horrified to discover the source of her income. The culled ones don’t say anything, obviously. She tries unsuccessfully to explain her real identity, even pointing out the dissimilarity of the scar,


Afterwards she realises she is 99.8% identical to everyone else. He is appalled to learn that she has lied about her condition. She explains a coherent expression of a world view that is silver and backless, while tearfully promising to change her selfish ways.


By chance, she is walking on a street nearby, dressed in a coat and scarf nearly identical to hers. She makes an unsuccessful attempt to poison him. There’s a sense of people not being there and then coming back to get a closer look.




Check out this author’s work: Bookstores in Britain, and in the United States

Jacket 20 — December 2002
  Contents page
Select other issues of the magazine from the | Jacket catalog | read about Jacket |
Other links: | top | homepage | bookstores | literary links | internet design |
Copyright Notice: Please respect the fact that this material is copyright. It is made available here without charge for personal use only. It may not be stored, displayed, published, reproduced, or used for any other purpose

This material is copyright © Dell Olsen and Jacket magazine 2002
The URL address of this page is
http://jacketmagazine.com/20/pt-olsen.html