What You Get

 "....it filled Payne with the joy of knowing that expressways are inhabited by artful dodgers, high handed intuitive anarchists who don't get counted but believe in their vast collective heart that the U.S.A. is a floating crap game of strangling spiritual credit."

From The Bushwhacked Piano, by Thomas McGuane

This is what you get when you read fiercely original authors. McGuane is just such an author. He is 84 years old. I discovered him last year while reading a biography of Jimmy Buffett (with deep sadness) shortly after he died. Buffett was pals with McGuane and respected his writing. I figure if Buffett liked him he is worth checking out. I've been reading him ever since.

I find a lot of authors that way. It's a cool way to explore new territory because you do not know what you are going to find. But I digress.

Did you read that sentence I quoted from The Bushwhacked Piano? What did you think?

Fucking crazy, right? You need crazy. I need crazy. Life is boring, crazy is good. Bizarre is even better.

The thing is, depending on your temperament, you either think it's fucking rubbish, you find it amusing, or you think there's really something there.

I have been reading a lot of comfort food authors lately - they soothe my brain. C.J. Box, John Sandford, Vince Flynn, James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane - I gobble them up, they entertain me, they take me away, as Calgon bath products used to do.

But my brain requires bizarre from time to time. I gotta have it. At the very least, challenging. Piano is an acid trip from page one. You open up the book, get a good grip on the cover, and jump in with both feet until you get bucked off (if you are faint of heart). Me, I hold on.

Ever read William S. Burroughs? Holy shit - if he doesn't melt your brain, causing it to run out of your ears like rainwater through a gutter spout - then you are a tougher man than I.

It's easy to read comfort food books and that is good. They get your mind off your mind. But they don't feed your mind. An unfed mind is a dead mind.

PB&J is wonderful food, you can eat it every day in endless variations - assuming your food budget and refrigerator can accomodate 15 varieties of jelly. But after 105 consecutive days of that, you covet steak - Delmonico to be exact. You lust for it. And when you eat that steak it changes you. Suddenly you can't live without the finer things.

But, of course, you can't really afford the finer things. For Christ sake, that's why you were eating PB&J in the first place. So you settle for semi-finer things from time to time, and enjoy your comfort food just as much.

Reading challenging books is like that. You stretch your brain to the limit, as lightning and thunder rearrange your brain cells, but only temporarily.

Then you fall back on John Sandford. And love it.

But never Stephen King. I got sick of him a long time ago.

Didn't you?