Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Since so much of this work is about what's "normal" it's hard to unshackle from half-received postmodernism and just think for myself. The language I use is informed by lazy readings of Foucault and Nietzsche and Barthes, all internalized at various stages when I wanted approval by academics (as when I was applying for grad school).

• narrator
• subject
• colonized
• received
• text

To be normal is to be relieved, blessed, liberated. To believe what it is appropriate to believe. To be normal is to be in fellowship with Christ, to wear shirts with slogans, to enjoy sports without concern, to suspect. The real, red-state America is normal. It's also pretty fat. Poor people, at least in socialist sketches, used to be subdued and hungry; they had the meekness about them, but they are now weathered, angry, and huge.

Last night on my bicycle I rode through Central Park and fantasized about what it would be like to lose so much weight that Oprah would want to talk to me. The whole thing rapidly filled in: she would be touched by my book and invite me on. I would purchase a new suit and fly coach to Chicago. The regular fuss before being ushered onto the stage. I would sit and talk with her, and she and I would get along swimmingly, both doing our best. "And so you really wanted to do this?" she asks. "What made you decide to do this?" It is the most unerotic intercourse possible. I bow my head before her; allow her to draw me out. Would I have to invent a victimhood that didn't exist? It would be ideal if one of us could cry. I'm convinced we became a nation of victims because we were too ashamed to admit how deeply we felt things. You can trace it to the death of sentimental poetry. Victimhood is illiterate.

Weight: 298.5 lbs