I did need to cleanse those haunting images from my mind. I took a bike ride to the local book store and picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s new book of old short stories, While Mortals Sleep. Just the thought of a new book by Vonnegut is reassuring. The stories were written many decades ago but never published. And now we get to read sentences such as, “It was a swell morning.” The line reeks of sincerity and self-mockery at the same time, and would be excised from just about anything written today. But there it is. New Vonnegut. A treat waiting for me in the next few days. In the introduction, Dave Eggers writes, “You as the reader know that by the end of the story, you will get somewhere. That Vonnegut will tell you something with candor and clarity. That being a decent person is an achievable and desirable thing.” Vonnegut captured perfectly.
Just read A Death in Belmont, about the Boston strangler, by Sebastian Junger. I wasn’t particularly interested in the subject and had never read anything by Junger, but the book was lying around the house, waiting to be read. (I have a lot of books that fit that description. My guess is I’ve read about 70% of the books I own.) The book is fascinating in the connections Junger draws between innocence and guilt, between good luck and bad, between evil and good. I thought I knew about the insanity plea, reasonable doubt, and a host of other legal and psychological concepts, but each time I was surprised by intricacies I’d never plumbed. So while part of the book was page-turning and, as you might expect, graphic, much of it was academic. I felt like I was listening to a patient and thorough professor make a case. By the end, the case is left in doubt, through no fault of Junger’s. In fact, that’s probably the strength of the book. He allows the facts to unfold and guides as far as he can, leaving us to our own conclusions.
I did need to cleanse those haunting images from my mind. I took a bike ride to the local book store and picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s new book of old short stories, While Mortals Sleep. Just the thought of a new book by Vonnegut is reassuring. The stories were written many decades ago but never published. And now we get to read sentences such as, “It was a swell morning.” The line reeks of sincerity and self-mockery at the same time, and would be excised from just about anything written today. But there it is. New Vonnegut. A treat waiting for me in the next few days. In the introduction, Dave Eggers writes, “You as the reader know that by the end of the story, you will get somewhere. That Vonnegut will tell you something with candor and clarity. That being a decent person is an achievable and desirable thing.” Vonnegut captured perfectly.
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November 2019
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