I’ve been writing about my disenchantment with books. Not that the stuff I’ve been reading hasn’t been good, quite to the contrary, but it’s been a long time since I encountered magic. Anne Enright‘s The Gathering gave me that magic. It is a bleak, almost painful book, and in parts it hurts. I’m not exaggerating when I say it sent me into a minor depression. But I had to keep going back to it, much like a child picking at scabs, making a healed wound bleed again.
I’ve moved on since to Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which is a good antidote with all its dreamlike strangeness. I sometimes feel I should read less and see more, have more conversations, but then I’m drawn back to books by an invisible elastic cord that gives me some leeway, but pulls me back again.
Reading has somehow become an organic part of my daily routine: if I can’t find a novel, short story, or poem, I’ll find a magazine or newspaper, if I can’t find those, I’ll find a brochure, or a menu, or a manual. Failing all this I’ll go a little cuckoo in my head and snap at people. Somewhat like when I’m hungry. The minute I’m bad-tempered my hubby asks me if I’m hungry, I guess he should add ‘do you need a book?’ Reading is the best education there is for writing, so I suppose I shouldn’t be complaining.
Been writing the past few days, and two of my short pieces got put up in the local webzine, so everything is mostly on the up and up. I should be happy, “should’ being the operative word, but that’s okay too, because I find I tend to write more and write better when I have this nameless melancholy.
No, but now that you have mentioned it, will be on the lookout.
have you read The Road by Cormac McCarthy? one of my faves of all time.