#86

Read a book by Terry Pratchett! It had been a very long time. I read a few at a formative age, but I guess Kurt Vonnegut sort of took over that conceptual reading space. If I had to pick a culprit. The truth is I read one I didn't much care for, thought I'd have a break, and never thought to return. But this one, Hogfather, was both excellent--truly, magnificent and pretty much genius--and seasonally appropriate. 

Before that, I had quite abandoned Susan Sontag, carried away as has been my wont since age eight by Madeleine L'Engle's incredible powers. We all have a literary mother. My Mother brought me the Time Quartet after a trip back to the U.S., and put them in my hands, saying she had a feeling I would like them. It really was a feeling, too. She knew nothing whatsoever about them, had never heard of them, saw them on the shelf while looking for a gift for me and felt those would be good, not only good, but Good. Moms, man. I thanked her, privately feeling that she was almost ridiculously and perhaps even mockingly mistaken; the books looked weird, and also soft in some way beyond the pastel palettes and gentle linework of the covers. They were shelved and went unread for some months, but I read at such a pace in those days that they were all I had uncracked, and thus I deigned to read the first sentence of Wrinkle, which, (famously) of all the possible sentences in the wide, wide world of sports, went "It was a dark and stormy night." 

That second sentence, though. Immediately assuages any sense of betrayal. From there, relentlessly, it's nothing but one of the finest artistic achievements ever, straight-up one of the best books of all time. All of them are. I weep to read them. Nakedly, messily, ecstatically, sorrow breaking me open and joy tearing me apart.

*

You know what? That opening line still kills and I'm never really mad to see it. Charles Schultz used it all the time and it was always good. Just, when I was a little kid, I was for real considerably snobbier than I am now. Pretty embarrassing. Reading a lot is my main thing and and on that turf, I could be unkind. Have been unkind. Could still be unkind, if cornered. Tigers, leopards, spots and stripes, scorpions and their stingers, you know.

For example: don't ever try to have an argument with me about a book you haven't read, or bring a book you haven't read into a argument. I'll find you out quick--I make it a point to admit outright if I have not read a book, since anyone who tries to make you feel bad for not reading a book is straight-up bullying you and I don't give a fuck what bullies think of me--I will call you out on the spot, and I won't let you walk away feeling good about yourself. I don't care about what you haven't read at all, I don't care if you don't read stop signs, but pulling that shit is the stuff of cravens, jackasses, and again, bullies.

It can never be said enough: all that a bully is good for is being defeated. It is up to everyone else to grow strong enough to defeat bullies, and if necessary, strong enough to protect, help, and support those who for some reason or another are particularly vulnerable to bullies. In addition, bullies come in all shapes and forms, and everyone has it in them to protect someone from some bully in a way best conferred to their own suite of talents and abilities--some bullies are even thus engaged, for life is rarely as simple, cut, and dried as we like to declaim. Support systems and coping mechanisms; complex, layered. 

However, bullies are always welcome to get their miserable lives right, and until then, all they deserve is defeat, frustration, and the obdurate, mute hatred of the universe.

What they generally get is something else. 

I've always had a strong personal sense that everything shakes out in the end, though; even, in unseen ways, minute by minute and hour and by hour. Imbalance is part of a larger balance and all that. Inborn subjective comforts are a lucky thing, existence-wise. Bolstered, if you are lucky, by exceptional books.

Good night!


--JL