* My crack research and fact-checking team informed me that I made a mistake in my June 8th blog post and urged me to correct it. I taught Brit Lit at the U of O in the spring of 1986, not 1985.
1. I took the Camry in today for a 60,000 mile service job and the guy at the service counter gave me two bits of good news. First, everything checked out great. Second, he told me, "You are taking very good care of this car."
2. This service job took a little over three hours and it was the best three hour waiting period I can remember thanks to the novel Lonesome Dove. For three hours of uninterrupted time, I absorbed the trials, camaraderie, heartbreak, brutal violence, cruelty, bravery, devotion, and other aspects of this epic story.
The novel serves as a way of illustrating why the question, "Did you like it?" is nearly impossible for me to answer about a book, a movie, a piece of classical music, or other works of art.
I do not like the violence, brutality, and cruelty that takes place at certain times in Lonesome Dove.
I do, however, understand its necessity in telling this story truthfully. The novel portrays a world of ruthlessness as well as a world of admirable human persistence and endurance, of men working together to drive the cattle, protect one another, and to survive the difficulties of life on the Great Plains.
So, yes, I read passages today that I wish hadn't happen and that I did not like.
I read other passages that moved me, that made a deep impression on me, and that I did like very much.
So, the question I ask myself as I read is not, "Do I like this book?", it's more along the lines of "How is this book affecting me, what feelings is it stirring in me, what's it making me think about, what is its impact?"
3. A good example of the book having a deep impact on me is Chapter 65. It features July Johnson trudging by himself across the emptiness of the Great Plains. The emptiness of the landscape correlates with his own inner feelings of emptiness, his questioning not only if life as any meaning, but if it's worth living and whether he should end his own life.
His ruminations upon emptiness and meaninglessness are at the core of existentialism and Chapter 65 is a profoundly existential chapter -- and echoes other existential passages in Lonesome Dove.
(Note: This is the third novel in a row, the first two being So Far Gone and The Horse, that deal with the spiritual, mental, and emotional weight of isolation and loneliness -- more existential exploration.)
Reading this chapter took me back to Lou's Broken Wheel on East Cameron Ave. in Kellogg. I don't remember if it was our Thanksgiving break or the Christmas break, but it was 1973 and Roger Pearson, Steve Jaynes, and I were nearing the halfway point of our sophomore year of college.
The three of us were enjoying a beer or a cocktail and getting caught up on what was happening for each of us at college. I know Steve was at the Univ. of Idaho. Roger was either at Linfield or had transferred to the U of Idaho. I was at North Idaho College.
I, not having yet understood my ability to kill a conversation, told Steve and Roger that I was really into existentialism.
And I was.
The questions and explorations of the existential fiction I was studying at NIC were especially poignant to me after nearly being killed in July of 1973 in an accident at the Zinc Plant.
Steve and Roger went silent.
I suddenly realized this was not good cocktail/what did you do this fall at school talk at Lou's Broken Wheel.
We changed the subject and went back to talking about more comfortable things (thank goodness).
And now, nearly fifty-three years later, I still have the potential to be a conversation killer in social situations, so when I'm asked what I've been up to, I don't talk about going to the symphony, listening to lectures, attending a Science/Nature blook club in Spokane, reading the variety of books I enjoy, existentialism (for God's sake!) etc. and find other ways to answer that question that fit the social situation better.
It's not a problem.
And, in these social situations, I learn a lot I don't know about regarding what's happening in Kellogg and Shoshone County and what's going on with the different work forces in the Silver Valley. I hear stories about people's cruises, their logging history, truck driving, military service, restaurants, who has passed away recently or is in poor health, road trips, and a lot of other things that expand my world.
I do my best, though, by remembering that evening back in 1973 at Lou's Broken Wheel, not to be a wet blanket, a conversation killer.
I do my best not to be too different.
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