Have you lived? Then why can’t you ever laugh?

Nobody wants to read a whole novel anymore. The form died a long long time ago. But it’s still possible to experience superior prose in a few hours. Here are the best.

Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West

Cat and Mouse, Gunter Grass

Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevski

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

Hard Times, Charles Dickens

Master and Man, Leo Tolstoy

I used to think, well, never mind what I used to think. It’s irrelevant now. It’s just that I feel the need for someone else to read, or have read, something. Anything other than Philip Dick or Robert Heinlein. And Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke don’t count either.

You can find them all at Amazon and probably at Kindle too. Maybe some are free.

I enjoyed fiction once. I stopped enjoying it when I developed objections to linearity as writing technique. But now I miss the shared knowledge of the canon. There were a lot of us who had read the same books, shared the same touchstones of what we used to call culture. People who had read at least one more book than Atlas Shrugged.

Never mind. It was a fugitive desire. Gone by morning, no doubt. Probably inspired by all the fake sophistication of Red Eye. None of them knows anything, has ever read anything, or believes in anything. They’re just smart.

I want to shoot pool. Something real for a change. And quote Swinburne to somebody who knows what I’m saying as well as he can play eight ball.

Ever done a four wheel drift? A wheelie? Never mind.

Just tired of fake and hollow wit and wisdom. Not that you exhibit that routinely. But I miss the richness of life, the laughter and thought as well as the ideology. Forgive me.