If you’re jonesing for a good piece of fiction, gentle reader, you might want to give Life of Pi a try. After a fantastic introduction, the first third of the book veered into surprising soapboxes on zoos and pluralism. Polemics are interesting and welcome, don’t get me wrong, but not when they’re nestled in a piece of anticipated fiction. It’s like sinking into a big, juicy sandwich, expecting a rough and fiery center, only to bite into something hard and smooth. You hunger for Aesop, but eat an editorial instead.
The rest of the novel, however, delivered all that was expected, and how! I want whatever Yann Martel was smoking when he wrote the narrative proper. It’s a simple story about being at sea, but it’s a powerful, charmingly crisp story about being at sea. One of the joys of reading is realizing that you’re in repose, stuck in the here and now, and that you’re also a part of the page, playing white to the author’s black.
And the cover illustration? That was nice as well.
“I would be a Christian, if it weren’t for the Christians,” goes the famous line from Gandhi, and he certainly rings as true as a broken church bell from time to time.
There are flashes, gentle reader, when an Internet advertiser seems far less culpable than a judgmental, hypocritical Bible thumper. The man of the pop gets more brownie points than the man of the cloth, if only for a moment.
And even as the lamb was lead to the slaughter, all around him roosters crowed and hens clucked loudly, oblivious to the Sun.
Exoneration, even if it may be partially delusional, heals a sore throat far better than all the herbs from Switzerland.
God save us all, indeed.
Whenever I make my daily trip to a certain soapbox, I am often seized with a severe fit of consumptive disagreement. It sometimes gets so bad that only smelling salts from Sir Schitzendippen will revive me, followed by a fantastic lightshow performed by albino Ukrainian vagrants. See, I’m still righteously outraged about the position that some fools take on the whole imps v. elves issue. I’m a forgiving soul, however, so let’s put old disagreements aside.
In fact, I’d like to do the exact opposite and give my hard-won and all-important Seal of Approval for the post dated 10/21/03. Truly, the loss of any CEO is cause for great sadness, but the disappearance of this particular business–CEO, skyscraper, even the office chairs are gone–is disappointing indeed. Secondhand Rants offers a formal farewell to One-Woman Times, then, as well as a goodbye to her well-wrought and literate posts. They will be missed.