sidonie de colette

ok, so....this evening without a baseball world series game.....we bathed and retired early.....me to the upstairs loveseat to finish a reread of anita brookner's hotel du lac......an 80's novel that once won the booker prize......and as i re=reread the last two chapters.....it occured to me that i had read these sentiments before....somewhere in colette's extensive arsenal of prose...(the vagabond? or the break of day?)...omg...what a moment of clarity it is to see a writer for her muse........and from there the other connections were made......there can be no living female writer who cannot be traced back...by 6 degrees or less...to something that colette wrote...because she was the cutting edge of her time....the one who wrote about loving both men and women before it became fashionable...and worshipped cats.......to write about leaving an insincere spouse.....to pine for a younger lover.....and gosh darn if she wasn't able to find denouement without death....at least in most of her works......and the one novella where someone of substance does die.......well...she needed to give it up for the plot line to be successfull........and so i am completely overwhelmed that a writer i discovered by complete accident would so dominate my life's reading adventures......and subvert my dining possibilities......now that i have commited to a parisian spring break i long to sit at colette's table at le grand vefour in la palais royale...but meals there cost upwards of $100...and i will be dining with someone who would prefer a corndog.......but i digress from the genious of colette......even in her dotage she never had to try to be witty........her last collection of thoughts....the blue lantern....was such a poignant testimony to her way with words.........ah well.......i may continue to read anita shreve, and anita brookner, and iris murdoch, and lorrie moore and joyce carol oates...but i will always assume that their every move is one that sidonie de colette already covered...............and covered well.....yeah, yeah, yeah....colette didn't actually go by her given name, which i have surely misrepresented here.....but it looks good.... that is all.....