A quick manifesto before I go.

I can change the world.  You can save the world.  We can create peace around the world.  It’s all true if you believe it.  No good story begins I knew I could not.  No good story begins I waited for someone else to.  Every person humanity has ever admired knew they could, from Jesus to Gandhi.  Imagine Jesus with the lepers telling himself he can’t heal these people.  Imagine Jesus waiting for Jesus.  It’s impossible.  What he thought is I must.  I must heal the sick.  I must stand up against injustice.  It is each human being’s responsibility to foster peace. 

And such a thing is possible is long as one understands the heart and integrity of humanity.  The answer to peace lies in between, in between Christianity and Islam, in between Communism and Democracy.  There are strengths and weakness to every idea and there is always room for improvement.  We must realize as people we owe loyalty to people and good not to ideas.  We must never become so attached to an idea that we separate from our combined human heart.  We must realize that humanity has one heart beat and through understanding and scrutiny we can achieve good. 

The world is meant to be at peace.  It’s only our ignorance and laziness that divides us.  Our ignorance blinds us from seeing others’ point’s-of-view and our laziness keeps us from accepting responsibility.  Too many americans say what can my president or politician do and too few say what can I do.  The universe might some times be cruel, but it does recognize true work ethic.  Ask yourself if you are pushing yourself as hard as possible.  Could you work harder?  Almost all of us could work harder. 

The last couple of months I’ve been asking myself if I started a literary movement what would I stand for.  I got the answer from an unexpected place.  I was watching “Seven Ages of Rock” on VHI.  It’s a seven part documentary on the history of Rock and Roll.  The punk and grunge parts stood out because of what they stood for.  The punk and grudge movements grew up around the idea of alienation.  Members of those movements felt alienated from the mainstream culture.  They thought the future was bleak and they wanted to draw attention to this fact.  I’ve always related to punk and grudge (lost generation and beatniks as well) but I think we can go one step further.  I think we can all say I’m alienated because, your alienated because, and with understanding of one another’s ideas we can create a situation where no one is alienated. 

I understand there never will be a perfect overlap between cultures, but there doesn’t need to be any volatility between ideologies.  I want to be a part of a generation who’s tough enough to scrutinize every situation without loyalty to any idea or one, but who’s also caring and intelligent enough to create solutions.  I want to be a part of a group who explores different ideas and finds a communal thread.  I want to be a part of the calm generation.

I want to explore the wonder of the world and I want to fear nothing.  FDR was right when he said we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.  This the terrorists are coming to blow our brains out we should blow them up first idea is a load of shit perpetuated by people whose brains are shit or who only want to capitalize on fear.  I want my generation to be Michael Jordan cold under pressure.  We must analyze the situation as far away from emotion as is possible.  We must see that the people who are attacking us are just as afraid as us and like us attack out of fear.  In order to find peace we must rid ourselves of fear and fill our heart with trust. 

Given these ideas I believe I want to develop a writing style that is unemotional in appearance, but shows deep emotional understanding.  What this means is that I don’t want to use hyperbolic verbs to create emotion rather I’d like to use value statements and dialogue to create drama and emotion.  Hemingway has done this.

I’d also like to explore the boundaries of humanity.  Because I have said I believe strongly in the potential of humanity I’d like to explore with the magic of every day life without delving too deeply in fantasy.  The idea is to applaud potential while still remaining in reality.  Marquez has done this.

I’d also like to explore the philosophy of several religion and spiritual longing.  Kerouac has done this. 

 I think by connecting these values with these literary styles a new form of literature that is devoted to human potential can be formed.  Now I need to shut my mouth and get to writing because ideas don’t mean shit if they’re not supported by hard work.

Job Interview III: The Payoff

When I left you last I was lost on the highway.  The highway system is different in Illinois then it is in Missouri.  I’d gotten off at what I believed to be IL 136, which was in fact not the right IL 136.  I’m use to being lost.  I have a terrible sense of direction, so I did what I always do: I trusted my intuition and when I finally realized I’d gotten completely off-track I asked for help.  A nice lady at a small gas station in a town called Carthage told me I’d gone the wrong way.  I wasn’t suppose to get off IL 336 for another 30-miles.  I lost half-an-hour, but I wasn’t running late.  I planned to be lost for an entire hour.  Self-awareness is an amazing thing.  If you know  you’re stupid it’s not hard to act accordingly.

The road was wide-open the rest of the way.  I don’t think I saw another car.  I was expecting Illinois to be big city, but it was ag country out here.  If I were in the mood for introspection my mind would have raced, but I wasn’t thinking about much at all.  I thought about what I was going to say about the future of journalism and what my part was in it, but I didn’t get that deep.

I arrived at my interview half-an-hour early (because I only got lost for half-an-hour rather than the alloted complete hour), but Matt was ready to see me.  He was a short pudgy man in glasses.  He had a sensitive look in his eye, but I don’t know much about him.  He did say he followed a girl across the country and that’s how he found his way here.  Maybe he’s a romantic.

The building was on the corner of a strip mall.  The lobby wasn’t what I was expecting at all.  There were four employees, all middle-aged.  The back room was bare except for stacks of old copy.  They used to print the newspaper there, but they don’t anymore.  Now they sent the pdfs to some bigger town and they print the paper.  Matt told me they scrapped most of their old equipment for parts.  The microfiche is kept at the library.  Any overhead that could be cut apparently was.  I guess that’s the state of the journalism industry.  It was also impractical for me to think I’d start at some major newspaper.  These things take time.

Matt took me into his office, after he introduced me to everyone.  It seemed weird to do things in that order.  I wore a sports jacket and slacks to the interview.  Originally, I wasn’t going to wear the jacket.  I told my dad that I didn’t need to wear a jacket for some small town newspaper in Illinois.  He said that was insulting and that I should dress for the job I want and not necessarily the one I’m going for.  In hindsight he was completely right.  My swagger and appearance helped me a lot in this interview. 

When I was in school I always thought that talent was the only thing that matters.  I never thought appearance or swagger mattered.  I thought talent was the only thing that mattered, but I didn’t understand that talent isn’t palpable it’s ethereal.  It comes and goes as it wants.  The only way to keep it is to constantly work on it, to believe in it and take chances with it.  Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book on this phenomenon.  In his book Outliers he says in order to be successful one must spend 10,000 hours performing tasks in their field.  And I learned talent is related to personality. 

Have you ever noticed that enormous rock stars do whatever they want, but everything they do makes sense.  Look at pictures of Bob Dylan’s clothes from the 1960s.  They’re hideous, but yet it was ok for Dylan to wear them.  I think there are two reasons for this.  First, his willingness to try new styles exposes him as a leader.  His style is supported by his words and so it’s ok.  And second his world adds up.  You have to be an absolutely amazing person to have explored your whole world, expose yourself to new ideas and still have no holes.  John Lennon is an even better example of this.  His clothes, his music and his many interviews all add up to a man who believes in peace.  Clothes can tell people you’ve spent a lot of time piecing the world together and that you are some one to be followed. 

Matt and I were talking for a while about college football and Haiti, nothing substantial.  Finally, he told me he needed for me to write something on deadline.  I said sure thing and then I wrote 200 words summarizing what some guy said at a press release about freedom of speech.  It was actually pretty interesting.  He was condemning censorship in favor of reason.  It was very miltonesque, which I enjoyed because if Lennon’s thing is peace mine is faith in humanity.  How do you dress for faith in humanity?  I’m going to need a stylist.

He read it and told me it was a formality.  He offered me the job.  I was stunned for a little bit, but I knew I needed to get started.  I’m not getting 10,000 hours of writing experience working at Cracker Barrel.  I took the pay cut and told him I’d start March 1.  On the ride home I thought about all the people I’ve loved and how I’d miss them.  I thought about writing posts for every person that I ever called my best friend.  I thought about whether this was the right direction.  I brushed it off.  There’s no way I could know that because in the real world every story ends to be continued.

job interview II: four hours is a long drive

When I left you last I was traveling down the rock and roll highway passed the literary city on my way to an interview.  I was ruminating on the accomplishments of writers who came before me.  Then I began to internalize what I must do next.  It’s amazing how much a road or city can symbolize.  The smallest things in the world when viewed from the proper vantage point is miraculous.  Marquez is fantastic about this.  Everything in his world is magical, but yet practical.  That’s how my world is.  I think a good man should do only one thing: maximize wonder and alleviate pain.

This is easier said than done.  You can’t find wonder in Burma or Zimbabwe.  There are places in the world where there are overwhelming problems.  Writers have to be there.  As a writer you’ve got to be willing to put yourself in dangerous situations in order to help other people.

It’s an overwhelming profession for sure.  Being a great writer requires so much and you get so little.  All you need is a pure heart, absolute determination, incredible integrity and intelligence.  Basically, you need to take on everyones problems and all the stress without receiving anything in return.  You need all this and you need to ask for nothing in return.  This job is offering $9.50.  Marquez made nothing until after he was 40.  Hemingway shot himself.  Kerouac and Fitzgerald nearly drank themselves to death.  Proust and Salinger both died alone after locking themselves in their own home.  Great writers are constantly overwhelmed.  If you’re not stressed than you’re not trying.  Writing is an addiction.  If you can do anything else you probably should.

I exited my brain when I realized I’d gotten off the map quest directions.  Fuck maybe I should have been a doctor.

Haha, I bet you didn’t think I’d do this..  to be continued once again

I love the fucking Beatles

My ipod isn’t working and I thought all my music was lost, but luckily my friend Michelle got the entire Beatles catalogue for Christmas.  She burned it for me.  My thing is simplicity.  I believe every story or everyone should be defined in one sentence.  If I was going to define why the Beatles are great in one sentence it would be: They make everything ok. 

That’s a difficult thing to do.  If it was easy to be happy everyone would do it.  In their music the Beatles created a template on how to be happy.  First you must set an ideological base.  What do you stand for?  Then you must assess obstacles and then you need a plan to overcome said obstacle.  For example, in “All you need is Love” the Beatles weigh several other factors versus love and decide “all you need is love”  Happiness is simplicity.  It’s having want you need without being burdened by wants.  It’s loving yourself because you are who you want to be.  I can subscribe to that.  It’s funny because that antagonism exists in modern music in reverse.  There are many songs where the artist is shocked they aren’t happy when that have so many things.  Think any Nickleback song and that awful song about lips like an angel and you’ll get the point.  These people are unhappy because they want everything but they don’t care about anything. 

Artists are indicative of the era they live in.  The Beatles couldn’t have been the Beatles now.  2000s America was the decade of more.  More casual sex.  More money, but there was no order or purpose.  1960s America was the decade of Kennedy and Bob Dylan.  Everything had a mission statement.  It was cool to care.  It was cool to be political.  It was even cool to have a spiritual base.  You could even be unorthodox.  Music stars now can’t do anything without consulting a publicist.  How boring.  Bob Dylan and the Beatles could experiment with religion because it was important to them.  That couldn’t be done now.  The studio would intervene immediately.  Could you imagine the line Jai guru deva om in modern music?  Of course not, but in the 1960s you could overlap Buddhism, Christianity and Hare Krishna.  You could join East and West.  Now we can’t even join religion and science.  It’s the most natural thing in the world for human beings to try and make sense of the world around them yet for some reason religious experimentation has been pushed to the periphery of popular culture.  I don’t understand why this is. 

My own theory is that we are living in the age of pessimism.  The media constantly shows terrorism and bad politics and humanity is losing trust.  What do people do when they are scared?  They insulate themselves from outsiders by associating only with very like minded people.  The religious right is a creation of fear not of love. 

The Beatles weren’t like that.  They were optimists.  All of the world’s problems could be solved if we understood one another.  They explored everything and strove for the best possible outcome.  They explored the whole world from the local (Penny Lane) to the metaphysical (Across the Universe) and found wonder everywhere.  And this is a significant thing.  It’s a cliche thing, but when you see the wonder in small things there is no need to ever be unhappy.  You can see people with different ideas not as enemies, but as challenges.  Their ideas can reinforce your own.  The Beatles had the best message of last century: With Love and understanding you can make everything ok.

What I want out of life

Right now in my life I wish I was writing more.  I wish I had a job at a small paper and I wish I had a group of writers to hang out and talk shop with, like Hemingway in co in Paris, or like Marquez in Colombia.  Great writers always hang out with other writers at least until they get competitive.  And it would be nice to have a nice girl who stood for the same things that I did and who liked to write a lot.  It would be cool if she was goofy/totally stupid, and I’d like my writer friends/girlfriend to like the outdoors.  I like adventure and I like to read about adventure.  How cool would it be to race in the Iditarod?

Just me in the cold with no one else around but dogs.  Controlling sled dogs is hard.  You definitely have to be a man.  They like to fight each other and they don’t respond to any weakness.  You have to be a dominant figure to control sled dogs, but I feel like it would really test my meddle and I have no doubt I could do it.  I’d love the challenge of struggling to survive in the cold with little to it.  Adversity makes me feel like a man.  I guess most guys are that way. 

I know what I want out of life.  I need to stop thinking about it.  I need to make it happen.  I’m doing my best.  I’m applying at nearly every writing position in the country.  Unfortunately, the job market isn’t so great right now. 

One last note.  I’ve decided to focus this blog a little more and hopefully I’ll update more often.  This blog is now dedicated to my job struggles.  I might write about adventure interest from time to time, but I’m not sure yet.  I watched the first season of climbing Everest and it definitely made an impression on me.  I’m now reading Edmund Hillary’s memoirs, so maybe I’ll comment on that.

I was reading…

I was reading an editorial on contemporary fiction about novels and what the good ones do.  It was fantastic and pretty much everything I’ve been trying to articulate for a while.   I’m glad there are people who write about writing because I hate it.  And I’m terrible at it.  It’s one thing to study syntax, philosophy, and writing and then come up with a particular style.  It’s another thing to be able to explain yourself. 

I hate explaining myself.  Part of me finds it annoying because I think it’s prideful to explain onesself.  I also think explaining onesself takes the mystery away.  I hate to show people what I write before it’s done because I want it to look magical.  I think it would be terrible to be an editor for precisely this reason.  As an editor you see writing come together incrementally.  And all writing does come together incrementally.  There is no magic writer who shits out masterpieces.  Writing is just like any other occupation.  The harder you work the better you are.  The more you revise the better.  But watching something come together incrementally isn’t exciting.  You get used to it.  It’s like if someone builds a skyscraper down the street from your house.  If they did it incrementally it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.  But if they just plopped a skyscraper in a suburban area you’d be like holy shit where’d that come from?  I want people to say holy shit when they read me. 

And another part of me thinks that learning to write or learning anything is an eternal process.  I am only focused in doing and getting better.  I don’t take a lot of time to understand what I do because it will slow me down.  And if I slow down then other people will gain on me.   Writing is a competitive venture for me (a lot of things are).  That’s part of the reason I don’t understand Ivy League writers.  They seem cliquey and derivative like an oligarcy.  No one wants to be the best.  They just want to be a part of a group that gets sold.  They don’t have Hemingway’s spirit for certain.  I’m probably in the minority, but I wish there was less security (who you know and how well you sell yourself) in writing and more old-fashioned pissing contests.  I want writers to solidifiy their styles and challenge each other to be better.  I want writers to take chances, write horrible books and regroup.

The most important trait of a good journalist.

While putting my cover letter together,  I was thinking how an unhappy childhood could lead to better writing like Hemingway said.  I thought about my childhood and who I’ve become and I’ve decided there really is no replacement for an unhappy childhood.  Unhappy children learn understanding that rich children never can.  It’s a defense mechanism.  When you see your mom falling drunk down the stairs you can’t say she doesn’t love me.  You have to say there is an environmental pressure that’s causing her to act this way.  Kids selling drugs and doing drugs aren’t bad.  There is a reason they became what they became.  You develop the desire to understand the environmental pressures that cause a person to become what they become and you understand human beings aren’t always in control.  It’s like learning a foreign language when you’re young.  It become easier to suspend judgment for the rest of your life.  

Not judging is natural when we love someone.  We’ve all let poor behavior go unquestioned because that behavior is just so and so.  Every one has said that’s just how so and so was raised.  When we know someone we make allowances for behavior and confrontations are avoided.  Most human beings don’t abuse this trust because if someone cares about us we want to maintain that image.  There is only one negative to understanding and giving the benefit of a doubt: it takes a long time to form a world view.  It’s much easier to form a world view and then when the pieces don’t fit blame the deficiencies on individual character rather than ones misunderstanding of the world.  That’s just lazy.  Anyone who wants to be a good writer should be able to work a lot.  Writers should train like the intellectual equivalents of fighters.    

I hope that this style of writing makes a comeback.  I’d love to read a story on the genesis of a terrorist.  No one is intrinsically a terrorist.  Something has to cause that.  If you can find the cause then you might be able to stop it.  Great writing should foster an understanding that makes discussion and resolution possible.  Bad writing causes dissidence.

I should write

The more I write the less I am able to write.  Every time I write the revision process takes a little longer.  I am not going to worry about form or punctuation or spelling on this one.  I’m just going to vomit it out.  Here are some things I would write about if I had more time.

My car is nearly dead.  Actually, at the moment it is dead.  It’s a cadaver to be tinkered with.  Now that it’s dead I can pull it apart and look at its anatomy.  I feel like a first year medical student.  It’s gross and there’s gunk everywhere, but it’s kind of neat.  My unexpert diagnosis is the fuel pump is dead or the fuel filter is clogged.  The fuel pump is like a heart.  It pumps fluid through out the body and the fuel filter is like an artery.  When it’s clogged fluid can’t be pumped through out the body.  Last year I changed the fuel lines, so basically I am giving my car a whole new circulatory system.  Not bad for a first year student.

I’m going to back track now.  If I were concerned with form I wouldn’t do this.  My car died on the highway.  I was trying to go home after graduation and it just died.  It’s got nearly 200,000 miles so it wasn’t much of a shock.  I was in the left lane and the car stopped getting gas, shut off and idled down the road.  I turned my blinker on so I could get over.  I was slowing down quickly and there were trucks in the right lane.  I think they were trying to let me in front of them because they slowed down to about 30 miles an hour before they realized my car was dead.  I made it over to the shoulder and parked in front of an exit sign.  I barely made it past the exit.  Cayce picked me up.  I told my sister I wasn’t coming back to St. Louis, read and went to sleep.  My car was gone the next day.  It was towed to a place where the receptionist lady chain smoked cigarettes.  Her ash tray was the size of a frizbee.  You need a big ash tray for that many cigarettes.  A sign on the wall said something like forgiving is good for Christians, but bad for business.  My car almost made it home from the tow place.  Close enough that it didn’t get towed again, but I was still mad at it.  Don’t you know I’m your doctor.  Don’t mess with me.  I’ll kill you bitch.  Maybe that’s what it wants.  It wants to die.  Nope, not going to happen.  I’m keeping you on life support.

If I had time to write I’d probably write about working 30 hours from Saturday to Monday.  That was a pretty tiring experience.  My back hurt on Tuesday.  A sign that I’m getting old.  I use to believe hard work will get you anywhere, but know I think hard work will get you an early grave.  Hard work’s for chumps.  I’m cashing in my journalism degree for some big time cash, a 40 hour work week and benefits.  You get benefits, money and you only have to work 40 hours a week.  And you get to meet interesting people and learn about their values and how they became successful.  It’s charity. 

Which reminds me I’ve been reading a lot lately and I’ve been networking.  Networking is scary for me.  I don’t want people to feel used.  I just want like minded people who have the same concerns as me.  I hope we can help each other.   Berkley Hudson has been helping me.  As has a lady on the journalism school whose name I can’t spell.  Hopefully, I’ll have a real job soon.  I’d miss some of my friends if I left though. 

At work when it’s slow Cayce and I play a game.  

To play the game you’ll need hollow eggs and a knife sharpener.  The eggs are the ball and the knife sharpener is the bat.  You can use anything you want for the bat, but the ball must be hollowed out eggs. 

To hollow an egg poke wholes in both sided then blow the yolk out one end.

Once the egg is hollow, one person should pitch it to the other.  The batter then hits the egg.  When hit it should make a loud noise and explodes, sending itty bitty white shrapnel all over the place.  If it doesn’t then you’re doing it wrong. 

I think I’ll always play eggball even if I become a big wig journalist.  I’d get a new car though and I’d blow this one up like they do on Mythbusters.  I’d gut the car and put the frame on a track going a hundred miles an hour toward a heavy swinging arm that shatters  it, sending Ryan’s car shrapnel all over the place.  That would be cool.

Can I still write?

It’s been a long time since I last wrote, but I’m tired of studying.  I worked earlier so I don’t have to work tonight and I can’t afford to go out.  I don’t want to think about life after graduation and I don’t want to read a book.  My car’s broken down, so I can’t drive anywhere and my big story is almost done.  I might as well blog.

I don’t know what to write about though.  I guess I could talk about how I’ve offended some people.  I never mean to, but sometimes these things happen.  In a blog I wrote a while ago I said somethings about Sean Sposito that upset him.  Sean Sposito is one of the most determined journalists I’ve ever met.  He jumps into any story and he helps young journalists.  He helped John Randles tremendously and he was willing to help me.  I have no doubt he’ll be incredibly successful.  But…

I have to stick with what I said previously.  I never try to hurt anyone, but I write truth.  That episode had an impact on me.  I feel like being a journalist is a great responsibility.  We should not blow things out of proportion.  Has anyone else been watching the swine flu coverage?  It’s bullshit.  This isn’t even a deadly disease in areas with good medical coverage, but it’s on every channel.  If I were covering that story I’d write this article:

Swine flu isn’t a big deal.  Go back to work.

How many articles would I sell?  Probably none.  I guess you’ve got to make a living, and honesty doesn’t sell.    But how can we challenge the government or investigate when the people don’t trust us?  Can a swine flu journalist tell stories about oppression in Burma?  Can the same person that says a pig apocalypse is on its way be trusted to explain the nuances of military dictatorships and how such regimes reproduce themselves? We need to think about our reputations.  Once people think you can only give them melodrama they’ll never come to you for intellect.  By giving the people drama we’re losing our ability to affect society.

That’s enough of that.  After work today I discovered a new show.  It’s called the deadliest warrior.  In the show two legendary warriors pseudo-fight one another.  For example, in the first episode I saw an apache fight a gladiator.  They tested apache and gladiator weapons in different scenarios such as long range, medium range, short range and then they add a special weapon.  I could use a lot of words describing how they do this, but I’ll just say they use the warriors weapons to beat the hell out of ballistic gel or pigs.  A katana cut straight through two pigs and a great ax cut through a human skull and bone.  It was awesome.  Then they take those numbers and crunch them into a computer to see who wins.  If you watch this show just to see the last fight you’re probably going to be disappointed.  I really thought a viking would kill a samurai, but if you’re just watching to see science and stuff getting shattered you’ll probably enjoy it. 

There aren’t a lot of shows that are both nerdy and violent.  I guess mythbusters would be the only other one and who doesn’t love that?

Book Shopping

One of my favorite things to do is shopping for books.  I go to amazon.com and I sift through all the titles that are absolutely necessary reading.  The excitement some people get from clothes shopping or car shopping I get from book shopping.  Though, if I could ever afford to buy a car I’d get excited for that too.

This book shopping experience was better than ever for two reasons: First, I haven’t book shopped in a while and second, it was free.

Book shopping was free because my parents gave me a $100 Amazon gift card for Christmas.  It was a brilliant present.  Every year they ask me what I want and every year I tell them the same thing.  Nothing, we are too poor to buy presents we find interesting for a week or so and then never use again because it’s that time of year.  We should save our money and buy things we need during the year as we need them.  But when they offered to buy me books I agreed.  I love books.  I’m not some book worm who interacts with people solely through books.  I’m a better-than-averaging looking guy who’s in pretty good shape, but I love to learn.  And I love to learn about people’s beliefs, how they fall in love, and what virtues they value.  I also love writers that dare to develop their own style and stand for their own things.  It takes a lot of courage to stand alone.  I hope I can do that someday.

This book buying experience was also special because it had been so long since I lost bought books.  I just finished reading Anna Karenina a month ago, and I’ve been really busy since this is my last semester before I graduate.  Even if I weren’t busy Anna Karenina  would have taken a long time to read.  It’s over 800 pages long and it’s in small print.  My copy had someone’s email address in it.  I keep wanting to email whoever and ask them what they thought of the book, but so far I’m too much of a coward.

The star of this book buying experience was Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the greatest living author.  No one writes like him.  He allows the world to be wonderful, spontaneous, cruel and beautiful.  While all the American writers are solving the world Marquez is marveling at it.  I don’t understand why we don’t marvel like we used to.  We go to grad school and suddenly we believe we’ve pulled back the curtains revealing all the world’s mysteries.  The world doesn’t need anymore books by east-coast grad students.  I’ve decided I won’t ever read another book by an east-coast grad student, or probably a grad student in general.  I don’t have time to read ”refined” books.  Everything gets compartmentalized, so there’s order, but that isn’t real.  Marquez allows the world to be disordered.  He uses and misuses politics and religion.  He allows those virtues to clash with other virtues and there is some small conclusion, but no definite ending and behind everything the world is miraculous. 

Some people call him a magical realistic writer, but he says he’s just a realist writer.  I agree I think because he isn’t bound by his senses he’s allowed to explore a more complete reality, but at the same time he’s pragmatic enough to not go too far.  I’m excited about the four books of his I ordered.  I can’t wait to read them.  Also, I got “A Farewell to Arms” for $.01.  That’s a good deal. 

I already want to buy more books, but I have to read these ones first.  That’s a book buying rule: read before you buy more.  I had to institute this rule because books I might someday read got too exciting…. Only now do I realize how dorky I actually am.