a bit more

I just finished Flowers for Algernon, which I guess is another book I should have read some years ago and am glad I didn't. It's nice to keep some things for when you're older. That's what I'm telling myself anyway as I read anything that isn't Proust. I'm saving Proust for when I'm an older, better person...

Anyhow, I picked up Algernon thinking that it was a book about a soldier in World War One, which may have been why I avoided it. I honestly don't know where I got the impression that such was the subject of the novel(la), but for those of you who don't know, Algernon is the purported journal of a mentally-retarded man who undergoes a procedure that turns him into a genius... and all the trouble that would go along with an extreme change in world-view and intellect. Anyhow, while there are some parts that feel repetitive and general, and the novel definitely feels dated and could not be published in this day and age, but overall, the book was fascinating and I cried at the end. I'm such a girl.

I know this writer through a friend, and while he has garnered an amazing amount of press and publication and praise (the triple crown for any writer) has become something of a minor scandalmonger. He's a bit of an anarchist, which I admire, but I find his refusal to acknowledge the meaning of some words as juvenile and pseudo-philosophical. Any one else, sure, can totally ignore the social contract we have created with one another, but when you're a writer, you can't refuse the value of a word. Even if you think a word has limitations, or it is often used incorrectly or without the angle or depth you would give to the word, you can't discount the word at its base. Unless it's a recently invented word. Like gigabyte. Though I could provide a definition, I don't really know what that word means either.

Anyhow, I've read some of this writer's work, and I'm not a fan. We're in a tough world, we writers, and while I can't help but envy anyone who has more productivity, I bridle at those whose success seems to come without warrant and who take a glib view of literature. This is holy ground. You can raise your voice and wave your hands, whatever, but don't go peeing all over place.