{"id":92267,"date":"2015-11-24T14:48:12","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T19:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=92267"},"modified":"2015-11-24T14:48:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T19:48:12","slug":"the-worst-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/24\/the-worst-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worst Game"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Just as Nabokov would\u2019ve wanted it.<\/p><\/div>\n

The other day, I invented the worst game ever. It all started in the supermarket when I passed the processed cheeses. Velveeta, I read. Then, somehow, I found myself thinking, Velveeta, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.\u00a0Vel-vee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Vel. Vee. Ta.<\/p>\n

This was quite bad enough, but understandable. I tried it with Chiquita, and Ryvita, and then I forgot about it, because, well, it\u2019s asinine. Then, later in the day, I realized I was muttering, \u201cFlour. Light of my life, fire of my loins.\u201d And later, the same thing, but with asphalt<\/em> subbed in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And so I realized I had hit on a \u201cgame\u201d: put the name of any household object in front of the first lines of\u00a0Lolita<\/em>, and it\u2019s disturbing in a totally different way even than what Nabokov intended. Try it.<\/p>\n

Paper towel. Bread crumb. Old sponge. Bookmark. It\u2019s never appropriate. It\u2019s neither fun nor exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying to think of a name for it\u2014some play on \u201cConfession of a White Widowed Male,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>ideally, but it\u2019s not really gelling. Velveeta Haze? For the moment, the working title is Humversion. It\u2019s terrible, disgraceful, but then so is the \u201cgame\u201d itself (if it can be so dignified): a product of the dullest, silliest, most banal and corrupted part of the human brain. It\u2019s the same part of us that carries I LIKE BIG BOOKS AND\u00a0I CANNOT LIE<\/small> totes and Instagrams pages of Didion embellished by imaginative manicures, and admires pictures of nineteenth-century authors shirtless. It\u2019s the part of us that loves \u201cbooks\u201d but doesn\u2019t care much about reading. It\u2019s the bit that\u2019s so scared of the raw power of words that we reduce them, degrade them, make them part of a world that\u2019s as silly and unthreatening as an Anne Taintor refrigerator magnet. You may play it if you like\u2014I don\u2019t have a patent.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, I invented the worst game ever. It all started in the supermarket when I passed the processed cheeses. Velveeta, I read. Then, somehow, I found myself thinking, Velveeta, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.\u00a0Vel-vee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[11354,115,7651,20323,14254,966,14081,967],"class_list":["post-92267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-cheese","tag-food","tag-games","tag-household-objects","tag-internet-culture","tag-lolita","tag-reading-culture","tag-vladimir-nabokov"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVelveeta, Light of my Life, Fire of My Loins<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein invents a new \u201cgame.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/24\/the-worst-game\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Worst Game by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 24, 2015 \u2013 The other day, I invented the worst game ever. 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