Not Dead Yet
Started and finished reading Blankets by Craig Thompson yesterday. It was, of course, really good but also one big "Awww" throughout. Really needed to read it right now and I'm glad that I did. It was like reading Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri - also at just the right time. Funny how things work out that way. Maybe everything happens for a reason, maybe there is no rhyme or reason. Maybe it's just timing. Maybe it's an internal divining rod that leads you where you need to go. Maybe. Or not. I read an article in LA Weekly last week that describes it all much better than I ever could: "Not Dead Yet: The Novel as Lifeline" by Joe Donnelly. Relevant excerpt:
"I read and I read and I read. I read like Forrest Gump ran, because I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go. He went running. I went reading. Novels mostly. The supposedly dead form...If the novel were really dead, I would be, too. And I’m not. So it can’t be...None of these selections was planned. I wasn’t following anybody’s syllabus. I just picked stuff off my shelves and read. I didn’t care what it was, but it all seems to make some kind of sense now...books came at a time when I was ready to move out of my internal universe and back into the world around me. They made for a nice, easy transition."
"I read and I read and I read. I read like Forrest Gump ran, because I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go. He went running. I went reading. Novels mostly. The supposedly dead form...If the novel were really dead, I would be, too. And I’m not. So it can’t be...None of these selections was planned. I wasn’t following anybody’s syllabus. I just picked stuff off my shelves and read. I didn’t care what it was, but it all seems to make some kind of sense now...books came at a time when I was ready to move out of my internal universe and back into the world around me. They made for a nice, easy transition."