Category Archives: books

On "The Game of Thrones"

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I stopped reading this book on page 218, disgusted by George R. R. Martin’s total disregard for either his readers or his characters, so if that’s what you like about him, stop reading now because I’m throwing him under the bus. Perhaps some people find it refreshing to have every single good character in the book killed or maimed in some hideous way, but I find it boorish. Good characters do die sometimes, no doubt, verisimilitude has to be a part of any good novel, but Martin pushes the envelope just a little too far in dashing his readers hopes and expectations for any kind of happy resolution. In a certain way, he is a writer/conman who just keeps pushing his readers down the road of desperation and depression. Some readers like their novels dark and depressing, bereft of any hope or sentiment, maybe that’s what they expect out of life so that’s how they pick their novels. I don’t mind if my hero is in danger, that she has a challenge to resolve, that he suffers hardship or even dies, but there is a strange cruelty in Martin’s writing. His sadism as a writer transfers to a novel that makes people–his readers–suffer through all sorts of misfortunes and tragedies. The idea of dystopia is fundamental in the literature of the 20th and 21st century, and there is a long history of dystopic writings such as On the Beach, Brave New World, and 1984. Those are only three, but one might add Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to that list. Dystopia is certainly an important part of the Martin post-post-modern world, but it should be ingested in small dosis–too much, all at once, and it will make you a very dark person indeed. Martin’s world is a dystopia, no doubt, a decadent pseudo-medieval setting of wrecked castles, corrupt and traitorous rulers, and heroes who are not heroes. Martin’s dark take on his society was at first, for me, refreshing, mysterious, filled with interesting characters, but after 200 pages, the handwriting is on the wall. Why should I bother to depress myself with this kind of writing? Just when you think he’s letting one of his characters succeed, he kills them in some horrific way. He has a sadistic twist in his writing where he allows the evil people to wallow in their excesses while at the same time he punishes the good with nasty tragedies and unjust punishments. Novels, no matter how dark, need to allow their fictional inhabitants a chance to succeed and breath, and if the world does work, the evil will be vanquished and punished because in the real world we don’t get this kind of satisfaction very often, so we look for our heroes in books. The real world is a valley of tears, where the good people fail, our friends get sick and die, our relatives suffer from unemployment and exploitation. I have no doubt that many readers are right at home in Martin’s novels and do appreciate my comments, but I would have it no other way. Hundreds of thousands of readers like his books, but I am quite sure that there are plenty of readers out there who feel tricked, fooled, sad that they read all of those pages only to find that the bad guys have flourished, the good are all dead, and there really was no point in reading this in the first place. Life is too short to read novels that depress and sicken you. The ironic part of this is that when I started out reading this first novel I thought it was pretty good. No, I was wrong.

On "The Game of Thrones"

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I stopped reading this book on page 218, disgusted by George R. R. Martin’s total disregard for either his readers or his characters, so if that’s what you like about him, stop reading now because I’m throwing him under the bus. Perhaps some people find it refreshing to have every single good character in the book killed or maimed in some hideous way, but I find it boorish. Good characters do die sometimes, no doubt, verisimilitude has to be a part of any good novel, but Martin pushes the envelope just a little too far in dashing his readers hopes and expectations for any kind of happy resolution. In a certain way, he is a writer/conman who just keeps pushing his readers down the road of desperation and depression. Some readers like their novels dark and depressing, bereft of any hope or sentiment, maybe that’s what they expect out of life so that’s how they pick their novels. I don’t mind if my hero is in danger, that she has a challenge to resolve, that he suffers hardship or even dies, but there is a strange cruelty in Martin’s writing. His sadism as a writer transfers to a novel that makes people–his readers–suffer through all sorts of misfortunes and tragedies. The idea of dystopia is fundamental in the literature of the 20th and 21st century, and there is a long history of dystopic writings such as On the Beach, Brave New World, and 1984. Those are only three, but one might add Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to that list. Dystopia is certainly an important part of the Martin post-post-modern world, but it should be ingested in small dosis–too much, all at once, and it will make you a very dark person indeed. Martin’s world is a dystopia, no doubt, a decadent pseudo-medieval setting of wrecked castles, corrupt and traitorous rulers, and heroes who are not heroes. Martin’s dark take on his society was at first, for me, refreshing, mysterious, filled with interesting characters, but after 200 pages, the handwriting is on the wall. Why should I bother to depress myself with this kind of writing? Just when you think he’s letting one of his characters succeed, he kills them in some horrific way. He has a sadistic twist in his writing where he allows the evil people to wallow in their excesses while at the same time he punishes the good with nasty tragedies and unjust punishments. Novels, no matter how dark, need to allow their fictional inhabitants a chance to succeed and breath, and if the world does work, the evil will be vanquished and punished because in the real world we don’t get this kind of satisfaction very often, so we look for our heroes in books. The real world is a valley of tears, where the good people fail, our friends get sick and die, our relatives suffer from unemployment and exploitation. I have no doubt that many readers are right at home in Martin’s novels and do appreciate my comments, but I would have it no other way. Hundreds of thousands of readers like his books, but I am quite sure that there are plenty of readers out there who feel tricked, fooled, sad that they read all of those pages only to find that the bad guys have flourished, the good are all dead, and there really was no point in reading this in the first place. Life is too short to read novels that depress and sicken you. The ironic part of this is that when I started out reading this first novel I thought it was pretty good. No, I was wrong.

On Sherlock Holmes

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There are few characters in the fictional world of literary creations that are as pure as Sherlock Holmes. He is driven to solve the crime, not because he necessarily wants to see justice administered, but because the puzzle must be solved at almost any cost. I wouldn’t suggest that Holmes is obsessive or compulsive, but in a way, he certainly is. He doesn’t care about moral philosophy or the structure of the universe unless either of those topics would help him solve a crime. His ideas about crime and punishment are black and white, so his objective of putting the criminal away is clear and obvious. At the same time, he hasn’t the least bit for popular news, discussions of the weather, or sports, beyond his own training in boxing and stick fighting. Like most people, he loves to eat, listen to music, talk when the talk interests him, but the one thing he cannot escape in this life is solitude–no man is an island and Sherlock Holmes is no different. His ability to discern the important from the mundane and casual stems in large part from his willingness to narrate the facts of a case, but he needs an audience, and most of the time his sounding board is Watson. Watson is the sieve through which his reasoning passes. If he can tell Watson the story, he can figure it out. Holmes functions because of the power of narrative. He can work through the logic of the clues by building a narrative that makes sense, discarding incidental clues that may be red-herrings, and see through the smoke screen left by the criminals. In the end, the stories are all very similar about shame and hate, vengeance and envy, greed and stupidity, or love and jealousy, and Sherlock must sort out the facts without getting personally involved in any of it. Emotion is all too often the downfall of many a criminal, and Holmes works constantly to see through the intentions, let the clues speak to him, and resolve the problem at hand. Yet, I would also suggest that Holmes cannot do all of this work, wade through so much human flotsam and jetsam, and still be the least bit normal as a person. He’s interested in bee-keeping; this is his only outside interest that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with crime solving. Bees can’t really talk back, they have a collective conscience, they have no crime, their objectives are orderly and pure, free from envy, sloth, and ire. He admires them. If Watson were not there to act as chronicler and psychologist/therapist, Holmes would go crazy listening to the irrational world which surrounds him explode. Watson is the perfect foil for Holmes because he is a walking case to be constantly narrated and resolved, but Watson is also the perfect uninformed audience who needs the explanations to make the world return to proper working order again. After all, isn’t that what the detective does? Return things back to their proper place, pass out punishment, get the world to spin on its axis again, make sure the bad guys are put away, give a solution to the problem. Holmes wouldn’t be Holmes, really, without Watson, and Watson would just be retired, boring, military surgeon with a bad shoulder without Holmes. A more interesting symbiosis in the literary world would be hard to find.

On Sherlock Holmes

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There are few characters in the fictional world of literary creations that are as pure as Sherlock Holmes. He is driven to solve the crime, not because he necessarily wants to see justice administered, but because the puzzle must be solved at almost any cost. I wouldn’t suggest that Holmes is obsessive or compulsive, but in a way, he certainly is. He doesn’t care about moral philosophy or the structure of the universe unless either of those topics would help him solve a crime. His ideas about crime and punishment are black and white, so his objective of putting the criminal away is clear and obvious. At the same time, he hasn’t the least bit for popular news, discussions of the weather, or sports, beyond his own training in boxing and stick fighting. Like most people, he loves to eat, listen to music, talk when the talk interests him, but the one thing he cannot escape in this life is solitude–no man is an island and Sherlock Holmes is no different. His ability to discern the important from the mundane and casual stems in large part from his willingness to narrate the facts of a case, but he needs an audience, and most of the time his sounding board is Watson. Watson is the sieve through which his reasoning passes. If he can tell Watson the story, he can figure it out. Holmes functions because of the power of narrative. He can work through the logic of the clues by building a narrative that makes sense, discarding incidental clues that may be red-herrings, and see through the smoke screen left by the criminals. In the end, the stories are all very similar about shame and hate, vengeance and envy, greed and stupidity, or love and jealousy, and Sherlock must sort out the facts without getting personally involved in any of it. Emotion is all too often the downfall of many a criminal, and Holmes works constantly to see through the intentions, let the clues speak to him, and resolve the problem at hand. Yet, I would also suggest that Holmes cannot do all of this work, wade through so much human flotsam and jetsam, and still be the least bit normal as a person. He’s interested in bee-keeping; this is his only outside interest that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with crime solving. Bees can’t really talk back, they have a collective conscience, they have no crime, their objectives are orderly and pure, free from envy, sloth, and ire. He admires them. If Watson were not there to act as chronicler and psychologist/therapist, Holmes would go crazy listening to the irrational world which surrounds him explode. Watson is the perfect foil for Holmes because he is a walking case to be constantly narrated and resolved, but Watson is also the perfect uninformed audience who needs the explanations to make the world return to proper working order again. After all, isn’t that what the detective does? Return things back to their proper place, pass out punishment, get the world to spin on its axis again, make sure the bad guys are put away, give a solution to the problem. Holmes wouldn’t be Holmes, really, without Watson, and Watson would just be retired, boring, military surgeon with a bad shoulder without Holmes. A more interesting symbiosis in the literary world would be hard to find.

On (not) thinking

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For some, thinking is way over-rated, but for many, thinking is what keeps us (out) of trouble. The problem with thinking is clear: the thinker must constantly be examining the moral and ethical problems that assault them on daily, if not hourly, basis. One must always weigh the pro’s and con’s of any particular decision and not blindly follow the orders of those who would make you act badly. This last sentence seems simple enough and most people who agree with it, but following its tenant, that all actions have moral and ethical implications in a wider world, is more difficult than that. How often have we made a stupid mistake, said something foolish, done something idiotic, and said, “What was I thinking?!” You cut yourself will cooking because you were too lazy to get the appropriate knife. The answer to that particular question only too often is, “I wasn’t thinking at all.” This is the problem: thinking takes work, so it necessarily violates my number one rule about human beings: we are lazy to the core. We would rather lie on the sofa eating potato chips and drinking beer and watch reruns of “Friends” than do any actual work of any kind–of any kind at all. Often, it is easier to let others do our thinking for us, but this is problematic for a couple of reasons not the least of which is the question of self-interest, and we don’t ask ourselves a basic question: why does this person want me to adopt their position on any given position? Are my interests exactly the same as the person who is trying to persuade me? More often than not, the answer is “no,” but for many people the work of thinking is just too unbearable, to difficult to do, too complicated. I am often amazed by people who claim to follow a political party without really understanding all of the tenants that such a party might adopt. Yet, this is just a small part of the not thinking problem. Most problems that people face on a daily basis are usually much more complex than they think. In fact, most problems–abortion, immigration, tax reform, gay rights, large government, religious freedom, death penalty, gun rights, free speech–are extremely complex, have multiple sides to each argument, cannot be simplified or reduced in a way that makes them understandable or simple. Complexity, then, is what makes thinking so difficult. Some people resort to a maniqueistic or reductive method of viewing the world which divides everything into a black and white, this is wrong, this okay, world, but the problem with that is that very few ethical problems are that simple. The moment you decide to think about something, you assume an ethical responsibility for it, which forces you to become a part of the solution, which is perhaps a good thing. What thinking will do for you is help create a series of cognitive dissonances that will make your life that much tougher. You will be forced to look at real problems, such as childhood hunger in classrooms, and wonder why our politicians live so high on the hog, but they cannot solve the problem of hungry children. Thinking may also lead you to think that this is a problem that must be solved some other way, leaving politicians out of the loop. Of course, you could also adopt a laissez faire attitude about thinking and turn on the television to watch mindless reruns of mindless shows that would have been better off never having been made in the first place. Thinking is always a choice, an uncomfortable one, but a choice. You can let the talking heads on television fill your mind with hate and venom toward your fellow man, or you might read a book, write a poem, sing a new song, design a new piece of cloth, bake cookies, paint a picture, build a new piece of furniture, plant a garden, clean out the garage, fix a broken switch, or do anything that requires a modicum of thinking. If you think, critically is helpful, and don’t let yourself fall into a passive vegetative state of non-thinking, you may not be happier, but you will be more active in whatever you do. Thinking is not for the weak of heart, or for the followers, but everyone can do it.

On (not) thinking

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For some, thinking is way over-rated, but for many, thinking is what keeps us (out) of trouble. The problem with thinking is clear: the thinker must constantly be examining the moral and ethical problems that assault them on daily, if not hourly, basis. One must always weigh the pro’s and con’s of any particular decision and not blindly follow the orders of those who would make you act badly. This last sentence seems simple enough and most people who agree with it, but following its tenant, that all actions have moral and ethical implications in a wider world, is more difficult than that. How often have we made a stupid mistake, said something foolish, done something idiotic, and said, “What was I thinking?!” You cut yourself will cooking because you were too lazy to get the appropriate knife. The answer to that particular question only too often is, “I wasn’t thinking at all.” This is the problem: thinking takes work, so it necessarily violates my number one rule about human beings: we are lazy to the core. We would rather lie on the sofa eating potato chips and drinking beer and watch reruns of “Friends” than do any actual work of any kind–of any kind at all. Often, it is easier to let others do our thinking for us, but this is problematic for a couple of reasons not the least of which is the question of self-interest, and we don’t ask ourselves a basic question: why does this person want me to adopt their position on any given position? Are my interests exactly the same as the person who is trying to persuade me? More often than not, the answer is “no,” but for many people the work of thinking is just too unbearable, to difficult to do, too complicated. I am often amazed by people who claim to follow a political party without really understanding all of the tenants that such a party might adopt. Yet, this is just a small part of the not thinking problem. Most problems that people face on a daily basis are usually much more complex than they think. In fact, most problems–abortion, immigration, tax reform, gay rights, large government, religious freedom, death penalty, gun rights, free speech–are extremely complex, have multiple sides to each argument, cannot be simplified or reduced in a way that makes them understandable or simple. Complexity, then, is what makes thinking so difficult. Some people resort to a maniqueistic or reductive method of viewing the world which divides everything into a black and white, this is wrong, this okay, world, but the problem with that is that very few ethical problems are that simple. The moment you decide to think about something, you assume an ethical responsibility for it, which forces you to become a part of the solution, which is perhaps a good thing. What thinking will do for you is help create a series of cognitive dissonances that will make your life that much tougher. You will be forced to look at real problems, such as childhood hunger in classrooms, and wonder why our politicians live so high on the hog, but they cannot solve the problem of hungry children. Thinking may also lead you to think that this is a problem that must be solved some other way, leaving politicians out of the loop. Of course, you could also adopt a laissez faire attitude about thinking and turn on the television to watch mindless reruns of mindless shows that would have been better off never having been made in the first place. Thinking is always a choice, an uncomfortable one, but a choice. You can let the talking heads on television fill your mind with hate and venom toward your fellow man, or you might read a book, write a poem, sing a new song, design a new piece of cloth, bake cookies, paint a picture, build a new piece of furniture, plant a garden, clean out the garage, fix a broken switch, or do anything that requires a modicum of thinking. If you think, critically is helpful, and don’t let yourself fall into a passive vegetative state of non-thinking, you may not be happier, but you will be more active in whatever you do. Thinking is not for the weak of heart, or for the followers, but everyone can do it.

On Pi, Richard Parker, and Don Quixote

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I am reading “The Life of Pi” (Martell) again, and I am again troubled by the dueling stories offered by Pi to the Japanese insurance investigators. Most anyone who has read the novel gets a pie (Pi?) in the face toward the end of the novel when Pi offers up an alternative story/explanation to his time at sea, adrift, in a life boat. His alternative story involving his mother and a couple errant crewmen is a shocking reversal to his story about the tiger Richard Parker and their solitary days adrift at sea. The insurance investigators are mesmerized by Pi’s story of survival, danger, and fear, but they are also incredulous, and could not believe Pi’s wild story of shipwreck and survival in a lifeboat with a full-grown Bengal tiger. After they question his story–no tiger to be seen anywhere–Pi tells an alternative version that does not involve a tiger, but his alternate version is violent, tragic, grisly, sad, and mundane, lacking the verve and imagination of the same story involving Richard Parker, the tiger. The insurance investigators, who by their very nature must be cynics, are only looking for the facts, and an imaginative and unbelievable story involving a non-existent (at least from their point of view) tiger will not help them settle a multimillion dollar claim on the lost ship. They are pragmatists. They want an explanation they can sell to others. The problem is that Pi tells two stories, one, about how he tames a tiger and rides out a long shipwreck narrative at sea, the other story, the short version, is about how Pi might have witnessed the murder of his mother while he himself might have murdered others in order to survive. During my first reading experience with Pi and Richard Parker, I opted to believe the strange story that Pi narrates about his life in India, the crossing on the ship, the shipwreck, the lifeboat, and Richard Parker. The story is elaborate and unusual, but it chronicles a fight for survival, the ability to adapt to changing circumstance, courage and the unwillingness to just give up in the face of horrible odds. Pi works to train the tiger, fight off boredom and fear, fishes, collects fresh water, does everything in his power to survive. He makes a heroes journey from the depths of despair to the top of Olympus when he and Richard Parker finally come ashore in Mexico. This is a story about the strength of the human heart, about human ingenuity, about loving life, about surviving in the face of enormous odds. Pi’s story about his interactions with a Bengal tiger seems highly improbable given the killer nature of a hungry predator. In fact, Pi’s story is so improbable that it seems impossible, but there is a huge distance between improbable and impossible. Perhaps believing in one story or the other is a question of what Cervantes called “verisimilitude” in a narration. The Spaniard felt that although readers had to suspend their disbelief while reading a novel, a writer must also give his readers a place to “hang their hats,” so to speak–that the story had to have its feet on the ground at some point to be believable. If you are writing about a crazy guy who thinks he’s a knight, plays with horses and swords, you must first make him a regular guy who people might meet in the street on any given day, so before you invent Don Quixote, you must first invent Alonso Quijano, the Good. I believe Jan Martell is playing on the ground between fantasy and verisimilitude, walking a thin line between what is possible and improbable and impossible and fantastic. Martell rocks the narrative boat by offering a very real alternative that lacks any sort of improbable elements–no tiger, no fantasy, handing readers a problem: which narrative do they choose to believe.

On Pi, Richard Parker, and Don Quixote

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I am reading “The Life of Pi” (Martell) again, and I am again troubled by the dueling stories offered by Pi to the Japanese insurance investigators. Most anyone who has read the novel gets a pie (Pi?) in the face toward the end of the novel when Pi offers up an alternative story/explanation to his time at sea, adrift, in a life boat. His alternative story involving his mother and a couple errant crewmen is a shocking reversal to his story about the tiger Richard Parker and their solitary days adrift at sea. The insurance investigators are mesmerized by Pi’s story of survival, danger, and fear, but they are also incredulous, and could not believe Pi’s wild story of shipwreck and survival in a lifeboat with a full-grown Bengal tiger. After they question his story–no tiger to be seen anywhere–Pi tells an alternative version that does not involve a tiger, but his alternate version is violent, tragic, grisly, sad, and mundane, lacking the verve and imagination of the same story involving Richard Parker, the tiger. The insurance investigators, who by their very nature must be cynics, are only looking for the facts, and an imaginative and unbelievable story involving a non-existent (at least from their point of view) tiger will not help them settle a multimillion dollar claim on the lost ship. They are pragmatists. They want an explanation they can sell to others. The problem is that Pi tells two stories, one, about how he tames a tiger and rides out a long shipwreck narrative at sea, the other story, the short version, is about how Pi might have witnessed the murder of his mother while he himself might have murdered others in order to survive. During my first reading experience with Pi and Richard Parker, I opted to believe the strange story that Pi narrates about his life in India, the crossing on the ship, the shipwreck, the lifeboat, and Richard Parker. The story is elaborate and unusual, but it chronicles a fight for survival, the ability to adapt to changing circumstance, courage and the unwillingness to just give up in the face of horrible odds. Pi works to train the tiger, fight off boredom and fear, fishes, collects fresh water, does everything in his power to survive. He makes a heroes journey from the depths of despair to the top of Olympus when he and Richard Parker finally come ashore in Mexico. This is a story about the strength of the human heart, about human ingenuity, about loving life, about surviving in the face of enormous odds. Pi’s story about his interactions with a Bengal tiger seems highly improbable given the killer nature of a hungry predator. In fact, Pi’s story is so improbable that it seems impossible, but there is a huge distance between improbable and impossible. Perhaps believing in one story or the other is a question of what Cervantes called “verisimilitude” in a narration. The Spaniard felt that although readers had to suspend their disbelief while reading a novel, a writer must also give his readers a place to “hang their hats,” so to speak–that the story had to have its feet on the ground at some point to be believable. If you are writing about a crazy guy who thinks he’s a knight, plays with horses and swords, you must first make him a regular guy who people might meet in the street on any given day, so before you invent Don Quixote, you must first invent Alonso Quijano, the Good. I believe Jan Martell is playing on the ground between fantasy and verisimilitude, walking a thin line between what is possible and improbable and impossible and fantastic. Martell rocks the narrative boat by offering a very real alternative that lacks any sort of improbable elements–no tiger, no fantasy, handing readers a problem: which narrative do they choose to believe.

On reading for pleasure

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I bought a book the other day, and it is no great work of art, but it will be fun to read–action, mystery, good tough guys, hot sexy women, suspense, chases, gun fights, love scenes, evil rotten bad guys, breathless landscapes, strange religious manias, mistaken identities, stunning denouement, victory lap for the hero and his girl. There are times when you just cannot read another serious book for your research, another book on literary theory, another article of literary criticism before you start to question your own sanity. Reading for pleasure, for many of us academic ivory tower sorts, is a lost art, or at least we have forgotten that reading can be fun, a vicarious thrill, an intriguing mystery, a heart-breaking romance, an existential journey on blue roads, a search for meaning in a nihilistic culture of rampaging consumerism, a coming-of-age epiphany. Reading is fun, but when it is also your job you might lose track of the fun. If reading ceases to be fun, then it can only be work, and too much work makes Jack a dull boy. When I started out reading as a small child, all of reading was fun. I read about adventures, dinosaurs, soldiers and battles, inventors, magicians, wizards, flying. The world of fun reading is almost boundless. Later I discovered Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, Daniel Dafoe and Bram Stoker, Stephen King and Peter Straub, and reading was still fun. Somewhere along the way, however, I went to college and starting reading things that were more informational and less fun and reading became a burden. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved reading, but when reading is a chore, you start to hate doing it, and even the books you loved in the past become a part of that burden and those chores. Nevertheless, even during college I learned to love Hemingway and Faulkner, Shakespeare and Wilde, Eco and Borges. They made me read Cervantes, and I found out he was a genius. Then I read García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Rulfo, Castellanos, Allende, and Carpentier, and I was hooked on reading forever. Reading for pleasure is an escape for the imagination, a letting the monsters go, a moment to forget about the pressures of the day and let the mind wander into other places and times, to walk in the footsteps of heroes looking for the Grail, of detectives trying to return social stability to an unstable world, of explorers headed to the center of the earth, of a scientist traveling into time. So I have no problem with buying a nice, fat potboiler for reading on the plane, or before going to bed, or for a lazy Sunday afternoon. No, I can’t pull a don Quijote and lose myself in endless narratives of fantasy and adventure, but from time to time, it cannot really hurt. A giant here and there, an evil villain, a frantic chase across an urban landscape, climbing mountain, riding a griffin, skulking through an underground passage, a dead body or two, a tragic love affair (although all love affairs are tragic), impending doom. You know you love it too, a guilty pleasure that lurks within your library that you pull out and read from time to time. You feel nostalgic, you know every word, you remember entire descriptions, but it is a pleasure, and you will return time and time again, and you love it.

On reading for pleasure

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I bought a book the other day, and it is no great work of art, but it will be fun to read–action, mystery, good tough guys, hot sexy women, suspense, chases, gun fights, love scenes, evil rotten bad guys, breathless landscapes, strange religious manias, mistaken identities, stunning denouement, victory lap for the hero and his girl. There are times when you just cannot read another serious book for your research, another book on literary theory, another article of literary criticism before you start to question your own sanity. Reading for pleasure, for many of us academic ivory tower sorts, is a lost art, or at least we have forgotten that reading can be fun, a vicarious thrill, an intriguing mystery, a heart-breaking romance, an existential journey on blue roads, a search for meaning in a nihilistic culture of rampaging consumerism, a coming-of-age epiphany. Reading is fun, but when it is also your job you might lose track of the fun. If reading ceases to be fun, then it can only be work, and too much work makes Jack a dull boy. When I started out reading as a small child, all of reading was fun. I read about adventures, dinosaurs, soldiers and battles, inventors, magicians, wizards, flying. The world of fun reading is almost boundless. Later I discovered Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, Daniel Dafoe and Bram Stoker, Stephen King and Peter Straub, and reading was still fun. Somewhere along the way, however, I went to college and starting reading things that were more informational and less fun and reading became a burden. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved reading, but when reading is a chore, you start to hate doing it, and even the books you loved in the past become a part of that burden and those chores. Nevertheless, even during college I learned to love Hemingway and Faulkner, Shakespeare and Wilde, Eco and Borges. They made me read Cervantes, and I found out he was a genius. Then I read García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Rulfo, Castellanos, Allende, and Carpentier, and I was hooked on reading forever. Reading for pleasure is an escape for the imagination, a letting the monsters go, a moment to forget about the pressures of the day and let the mind wander into other places and times, to walk in the footsteps of heroes looking for the Grail, of detectives trying to return social stability to an unstable world, of explorers headed to the center of the earth, of a scientist traveling into time. So I have no problem with buying a nice, fat potboiler for reading on the plane, or before going to bed, or for a lazy Sunday afternoon. No, I can’t pull a don Quijote and lose myself in endless narratives of fantasy and adventure, but from time to time, it cannot really hurt. A giant here and there, an evil villain, a frantic chase across an urban landscape, climbing mountain, riding a griffin, skulking through an underground passage, a dead body or two, a tragic love affair (although all love affairs are tragic), impending doom. You know you love it too, a guilty pleasure that lurks within your library that you pull out and read from time to time. You feel nostalgic, you know every word, you remember entire descriptions, but it is a pleasure, and you will return time and time again, and you love it.