nick

Speculative fiction has never really been my bag. Sure, I like a good SciFi fare every now and then, but you won’t catch me reading the Left Behind series and if you press me about it, I’ll probably succumb to opining that most of Philip K. Dick’s books seem less like novels than rituals in paranoia. Doesn’t exactly make for interesting character driven fiction.

Speculative fiction has never really been my bag. Sure, I like a good SciFi fare every now and then, but you won’t catch me reading the Left Behind series and if you press me about it, I’ll probably succumb to opining that most of Philip K. Dick’s books seem less like novels than rituals in paranoia. Doesn’t exactly make for interesting character driven fiction.

So Charlie comes over to my house to pick up a ‘zine and he looks at me and Charlie says “Nick, you gotta read this book.” He plops a book down on my couch.

So I says to Charlie, “Really? I do? Why is that?”

To which Charlie says to me: “Nick. You must read this. I read it in a day. Then I gave it to Jay and he read it in a day. I got it back from Jay and gave it to Kate and she read it in a day. Kate gave it back to me and I gave it to Zach and he read it in a day too.”

Perhaps you’ve heard the tragic story of John Kennedy Toole, the author of A Confederacy of Dunces . Toole’s novels remained unpublished during his lifetime, but after he snuffed out his own life at the young age of 31 his mother sent away his manuscripts to publishers. He eventually posthumously received a Pulitzer Prize in 1981.

I make no bones about it that I have certain ‘weaknesses’. That I can put on my Rob Gordon hat and prattle away into the wee hours about the best Stones record, that Volume IV will change your life, why any true outsider art will always be better than Basquiat, or the psychologically damaging ramifications of not reorganizing my books and records at least twice a year. These are obsessions and I encourage you to walk softly, perhaps even shield your eyes from time to time, while viewing.