File this under:Books I've read, but haven't bought. (If you read "The Believer" you get the picture, if you don't , then you should.)
This past christmas (little c) we celebrated by visiting my Mom down in Maryland. There, we met up with my sister and her amoroso Gary, and spent a few hours away from the fair town of Myersville in the looming, ankle torturing, cement pillar to American Bureaucracy, D.C.
It's fair to say we were glad to be in the Maryland /Beltway area, and stir crazy all the same. So we spent a few hours browsing the "local" bookstore, borders or barnes & noble, who can tell them apart? Anyways, I got sucked into looking at hundreds of books as usual, yet managed not to purchase one.
Gary walked in… a man on a mission; he had mentioned this author he wanted me to read, Edward Abbey. He said, "He's definitely chauvinistic and a misogynist, but if you can look past that and hang in there... you'll love it...really. That book made me cry."
Weigh that with the fact that Gary is a self-proclaimed outdoorsman and looks a wee bit like the late Governor of Minnesota and I thought; of course I'll read it. And so, 4 months later, between reading about 5 other books and many other reading materials, I finished.
Some might think that taking 4 months to read a book must not bode well for the book, well, maybe that is true for you. For me (I read The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky in about a year and a half) its small change. Not only am I a slow reader, and probably a wee bit dyslexic, but I can't ever read or concentrate on just one thing. My mind wanders. So, my focus does as well.
Back to "The Fools Progress"...I hated this book. I hated it so much that I fell in love with it. Despite all of Henry Holyoak Lightcap's name dropping of philosophers and writers, his philandering, his ceaseless unabashed collision with the world; he was the anti-hero that spoke only truths. I loved him, because, despite all the things he did and I "disagree" with, I've also done them. Done them in my mind and in my heart, and sometimes in reality time and again. Abbey's fearless portrayal of this man, his family, and his train wreck of a life, never relents truth.
Someday, I may read this again. I think I should read it when I'm much older. Gary told me a little back-story, which I've yet to verify, that this is a semi-autobiographical novel, and I won't give away the story, but I can see it.
Holyoak's meandering observations of our world and our country, seared into my brain as I read them. His narrations drew me into this disaster of a man minute by minute and day by day. Hence, every month I would need my fix of Henry Holyoak Lightcap, and you may too.
There comes a time, or times, when some of us need to throw some of the euphemisms away and just speak what we're thinking. Some of us do it often enough, like me, and I think that's why Gary handed me this novel. If there is one truth that one can glean, despite the challenges and despite all the rap the world will throw at you and you will throw at yourself, there is something that makes you individual, and no one can ever take that away. You simply give it back with no questions asked when the time comes and love it or leave it while your here.
There is a place for Edward Abbey...next to me in my uncle's "Ol' Blue" 1972 Ford F150, somewhere out there...maybe around 1982...maybe just yesterday.
Thanks Gary, and I think you can send me back "Sacrament" now. :)
