After a lengthy hiatus, I am prompted to write about my summer project. Entertainment Weekly magazine published a special double issue July 5/12, 2013. Their writers and contributors put together lists of the "100 All-Time Greatest" movies, books, TV shows, albums, and stage productions. My project is to read the books on the list that I have not read. So far I have been astounded. How did I miss The Children of Men by P.D. James? I am not a big fan of science fiction but this one - set in 2021 - is crafted in elegant language. The time is a few years after Science has determined that the last born generation of human beings cannot reproduce. So you have to ask yourself - what is the point? What is the point of maintaining museums, homes, buildings, parks, families, et cetera, et cetera. I hate to be trite but this book is truly thought-provoking.
And how about A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole? Toole was evidently a tortured soul, brilliant in his college career teaching literature, and frustrated by not getting this work published. So he killed himself. Years later his mother, through sheer persistence and a lucky contact with Walker Percy, got his masterwork published. And it won the Pulitzer Prize. If you have any experience at all with New Orleans, drunks, gay men, and/or pretentious academicians, this book will resonate. It is hysterically funny in parts. The writer is eerily a pre-Ken Kesey.
I am one third into Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. If you want to get inside the head of a U.S. soldier fighting in Iraq, this is the book. OMG. This is great. Stay tuned.
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