Reading Addict

Say midlife crisis and your first images are bound to be impractical sports cars, hair implants, and gold jewelry. The words predictable, pathetic or cliché may come to mind. Maybe it is a result of my own age that I’m feeling a little less harsh and a little more empathetic about the experiences of those entering middle adulthood. Maybe it’s discovering the novels of Jonathan Tropper.

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 Toole’s novels remained unpublished during his lifetime, but after he snuffed out his own life at the young age of 31 his mother sent away his manuscripts to publishers.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.

Those of us who live in the U.S. of A. hear of “wars and rumors of wars,” but our children are usually spared the horrible details. This is not true of the child soldiers on distant shores who meet war in the close up and personal way that young Ishmael Beah did. In his book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier , It is 1992, andtwelve year old Ishmael, his brother, and a few friends leave their village in Sierra Leone, West Africa in hopes of becoming rap stars in a talent show.

I heard an interesting factoid the other day, or perhaps I read it. I probably read it. Sounds like something I would have picked up in Mental Floss magazine. Anyway, the article, or perhaps clever individual, said that adults, on average, have a mere 20 minute attention span. At first I was offended, thought it didn’t give us enough credit, but then I decided it was probably accurate, and maybe even generous. The point is, sometimes I am too high strung or too busy to sit down and read a novel.

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.